FACT our own scope and price · INFERENCE statements about agencies and free tools
Three ways to find out what is wrong with a store, and what each one actually hands you. We sell the third one, so read the first two columns as our summary of the market, not as a measured study.
| Agency retainer | Free crawler | US$59 Quick Audit | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What you get | A deck plus a roadmap, scoped by the retainer | A crawl export you interpret yourself | A 7-page PDF: ten issues ranked, evidence, exact snippet |
| Time to first answer | Usually 1–3 weeks after onboarding | Instant, but it is raw data | Within 24 hours of payment |
| Cost | Monthly retainer, typically four figures | Free to low monthly | US$59 once, no subscription |
| Who does the work | An account manager and a junior | You | You apply the snippets; we give the exact text |
| Ongoing | Yes, by design | Yes, if you keep using it | No. One report, one payment |
INFERENCE Retainer pricing and timelines vary by market; the ranges above describe what we see in quotes, not an audited sample. FACT Our column: US$59, 7 pages, delivered within 24 hours, no subscription.
If you need someone to implement changes across templates, migrations and content, a retainer buys labour you do not have. A fixed report does not replace that. It replaces the discovery phase that usually comes before it.
If you already know what to look for, a crawler export is more data for less money. The gap is not the data — it is the ranking, the cost estimate and the snippet to paste.
Ten issues, each with the page we fetched, what it costs you, and the exact markup or copy to apply. A full sample is published at seoscanaudit.com/sample-59, and the benchmark behind it is at seoscanaudit.com/benchmark.
We do not take over your store, your theme or your admin. You apply the changes; we re-check the result seven days later if you want the verification.