Pricing, published
A $750 flat audit, builds at $3,750, $10,500 and $17,500, and retainers at $1,000, $2,400 or $4,600 a month. Our calls end with a fixed price, not another meeting.
Fixed prices, agreed before we start. No hourly trap. No Premium Custom Enterprise tier where the number turns out to be whatever your website implies you can afford. Every figure on this page is the same figure on every other page of this site.
Every build includes an hours ceiling: 33, 90 or 150, good for 90 days from kickoff. If your agreed scope needs more, we tell you before we reach it, and you choose: extra hours at $110, or we trim to fit. Nothing is billed without your OK. If you would rather buy hourly, we bill that way on request at $110 an hour, up to 6 hours a month.
The $750 is credited toward any project booked within 30 days. If we are a fit, the audit is effectively free. If we are not, you keep the fix list and your team runs it.
Buy the audit now, $750Retainer hours are use it or lose it: each month's hours are for that month and do not roll over. If you keep coming in under, we move you down a tier at renewal. In your own Stripe portal, move up a tier anytime, with the difference billed right away, and move down or cancel at renewal. No fee and no retention conversation.
$750 flat, not $750 starting. One helpdesk instance, one to two weeks, credited toward any project booked within 30 days.
We go through the whole configuration: routing logic, SLA performance, saved reply hygiene, AI guardrails, triggers, reporting and integrations, down to whether your subscription tier is the right one and the toggles someone flipped on years ago that nobody has had time to revisit. You get a written report, a prioritized fix list, and a 30-minute walkthrough.
Multi-instance audits are quoted on the call before we start, usually $1,500 to $3,500. The same credit mechanic applies at every tier.
Three tiers, set by build hours rather than by the size of your team. No hourly trap and no surprise change orders. If a build needs more than its included hours, you hear it from us first and you decide.
$3,750
One platform configured from the ground up, with every channel your customers already use connected: email, chat, social, SMS. Ticket routing, saved replies, SLAs, a reporting starter, one brand, and your key tools connected. AI answers the easy questions and escalates the rest. The hard part is not switching AI on, it is tuning it so it does not embarrass you. Our most common tier.
Buy now, $3,750
$10,500
Every channel your customers use, connected and routed: email, chat, voice, social and messaging. Routing that sends each ticket to the right team, AI that takes actions rather than just answering, up to two brands, your tool stack connected, and custom dashboards.
Buy now, $10,500
$17,500
Up to two platforms and three brands, with every channel your customers use included. AI running multi-step work, full stack connected, dependency mapping, advanced reporting, and custom objects work. Plus the edge cases that always surface on day fourteen.
Buy now, $17,500Billing is 50% on signing and 50% on completion, with milestone billing available on larger scopes.
Optional, for teams who want us on call after launch. A senior helpdesk admin who does not take vacations, get head-hunted, or go quiet when something breaks at 7pm on a Friday.
$1,000/mo
Monthly tune-up, small fixes, day-to-day admin help. Our most common retainer.
Subscribe, $1,000 a month
$2,400/mo
Active optimization, ongoing AI tuning, regular workflow changes.
Subscribe, $2,400 a month
$4,600/mo
Fractional admin, multi-project queue, full operational backing.
Subscribe, $4,600 a monthRetainer clients get priority response, a direct Slack channel, and quarterly health checks on the stack we built.
Retainer hours are use it or lose it: each month's hours are for that month and do not roll over. If you keep coming in under, we move you down a tier at renewal. In your own Stripe portal, move up a tier anytime, with the difference billed right away, and move down or cancel at renewal. Retainers are paid upfront, and hours already inside the current month are not refunded, so most people cancel at the next renewal rather than mid-month.
A loaded in-house senior helpdesk admin in the US runs $90,000 to $175,000 a year before benefits, equipment, vacation coverage and ramp time.
The Professional retainer at $2,400 a month is $28,800 a year for 20 hours a month of specialist time, across every certification on the team, with no vacation gap and no learning curve. Both numbers are real. We will let them sit next to each other rather than rounding it into a claim.
The retainer also means we work as your admin as needed: the daily changes, the new workflow, the trigger that stopped firing. And it fits the work that comes in spikes: a migration, a deadline, an AI agent that needs building once and tuning quarterly, or a configuration nobody has revisited in three years.
Custom quoted, priced by source ticket volume. Anyone quoting a flat migration fee either has not looked at your data or is about to ship a data dump and call it a migration.
The floor is a migration tool licence passed through at cost, roughly $300 to $500, plus about 30 hours: an approved written plan, a sandbox test you sign off on, then a planned after-hours cutover with a rollback. Quoted hours are good for 90 days from kickoff; work after that is quoted.
Legacy Zendesk custom objects are a separate line with their own hour count. The legacy framework stopped working on July 27, 2026, and there was never an automated migration path.
Priced up from Premium by platform count, instance count and compliance scope. This is an additional cost above Premium rather than a larger Premium.
Triggered by anything beyond the Premium scope limits, multi-instance setups, regulated environments such as HIPAA, SOC 2 or ISO 27001, white-label agency partnerships, or scoping that does not fit a standard tier.
Rush work is time and a half, one rate whether it is a compressed timeline, after-hours or a weekend cutover. Always quoted before you approve it.
$110 an hour for helpdesk, AI and admin work, up to 6 hours a month. Past that it is a retainer, because a standing block reserves capacity and buys you priority. Web development is quoted per project rather than by the hour, because no two builds are alike.
Best for one-off jobs that do not fit a project or a retainer. We list it last deliberately: it is the least predictable way to buy, for you as much as for us.
Need it done this week? Rush work is available, billed at time and a half for the hours the job actually takes, and we will tell you on the call whether your deadline is realistic. The one clock we cannot speed up is a carrier's: number porting runs on the carrier's timeline, rush or not.
We are one of them, not the answer to every version of the question. Alternatives described as categories, because the right choice depends on your situation rather than on who is selling.
| Smart Instinct | In-house hire | Generalist agency | Solo freelancer | Keep it in-house | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost | $3,750 to $17,500 fixed | $90,000 to $175,000 loaded, per year | Often $25,000 and up, scoped hourly | $40 to $150 per hour, variable | Salary you already pay |
| Time to running | 2 to 6 weeks | Hiring cycle, then ramp | Discovery phase, then build | Depends on availability | Whenever the fires stop |
| Depth in helpdesk | One specialty, 23+ platforms | Depends entirely on the hire | Broad, rarely deep here | Varies widely | Whatever your team already knows |
| Who owns it after | You, documented | The employee, while employed | Often the agency retainer | They fix it, if reachable | You, undocumented |
| Best when | You want it fixed once, at a known price | Support is core and permanent | The work spans well past support | The job is small and well defined | You already know what is broken |
If the honest answer is one of the other four, we will say so on the call. The $750 audit exists partly so you can find that out for $750 instead of $17,500.
Because hiding it wastes both our time. You can decide whether we are in your range before a call, and we stop having discovery conversations that were never going to end in a project.
Then it is add-ons or Enterprise, and both are published. Past a tier limit it is $3,000 per brand, $4,500 per platform, or extra hours at $110, agreed before we start. Beyond two platforms, three brands or a regulated environment it is Enterprise, which starts at $25,000, fixed before we start. You can work out your own number before you speak to anyone.
No. Tiers are set by build hours, platforms and brands. Channels are included on every tier. Agent counts appear only as guidance, because a twelve-agent brand running three storefronts and a full tool stack is more work than a sixty-agent single queue.
No. Projects are 50/50 on signing and completion. Retainers are month to month and you cancel from your own Stripe billing portal, no fee and no retention call. What is genuinely ours is that mechanism, not just the absence of a term.
You hear about it before it happens. Each build includes an hours ceiling: 33, 90 or 150, good for 90 days from kickoff. If your agreed scope needs more, we tell you before we reach it, and you choose: extra hours at $110, or we trim to fit. Nothing is billed without your OK. If the scope itself changes, the add-on prices above are what it costs, and you see them before you approve anything.
No. Upwork and direct clients pay the same $110 rate.
The cost has been remarkably small when compared to the long-term value it has created. We have reduced the need for seasonal hiring, saved money, and improved consistency. They never made us feel as though we were doing it wrong.
Marie Grace, The San Francisco Marathon. Client since 2022.
No charge, and you leave with a fixed number rather than a proposal cycle. If the honest answer is that you do not need us yet, we will say that instead.
Helpdesk implementation and AI agent setup across 23+ platforms. Every price published.
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