Pricing, published
A $500 flat audit, builds at $3,750, $7,500 and $12,500, and retainers from $800 a month. Scoping calls end with a fixed price, not another meeting.
No starting-from tricks. 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.
It puts the scope risk on us. If a build runs past our estimate, that is our problem rather than a change order on your invoice. If you would rather buy hourly, we bill that way on request at $100 an hour.
The $500 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, $500Hours roll over one month, so you get what you paid for. Switch tiers at any renewal. Cancel from your own Stripe portal with no fee and no retention conversation.
$500 flat, not $500 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, macro 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.
Larger or multi-instance setups get quoted on the call, typically $1,500 to $3,500. The same credit mechanic applies at every tier.
Three tiers, set by counted scope rather than by the size of your team. No hourly trap, no surprise change orders, no it-grew-mid-project conversation that only happens when the scope was vague to begin with.
$3,750
One platform configured from the ground up. Ticket routing, macros, SLAs, one channel set, reporting starter, one brand. 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
$7,500
Multi-channel across 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, and custom dashboards.
Buy now, $7,500
$12,500
Up to two platforms and three brands. AI running multi-step work, custom API integrations, dependency mapping, advanced reporting, and custom objects work. Plus the edge cases that always surface on day fourteen.
Buy now, $12,500Billing is 50% on signing and 50% on completion, with milestone billing available on larger scopes. Work booked through an outside contracting platform costs 10% more, because their fee is real and we would rather show it than bury it.
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.
$800/mo
Monthly tune-up, small fixes, day-to-day admin help. Our most common retainer.
Subscribe, $800 a month
$1,800/mo
Active optimization, ongoing AI tuning, regular workflow changes.
Subscribe, $1,800 a month
$3,400/mo
Fractional admin, multi-project queue, full operational backing.
Subscribe, $3,400 a monthMore hours, lower rate. That is a volume discount rather than a commitment discount, because you can cancel before any renewal. Retainer clients get priority response, a direct Slack channel, and quarterly health checks on the stack we built.
Hours roll over one month. Switch tiers at any 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 $1,800 a month is $21,600 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.
Where a full-time hire genuinely wins: support is core to the product, the work is permanent and daily, and you want someone in the standup. We will say so on the call if that is your situation.
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.
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.
$100 an hour for helpdesk, AI and admin work. Web development is quoted per project rather than by the hour, because no two builds are alike. Work booked through an outside contracting platform costs 10% more.
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.
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 $12,500 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, 21 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 $500 audit exists partly so you can find that out for $500 instead of $12,500.
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 $1,250 per integration, $2,500 per brand, $3,750 per platform. Beyond two platforms, four brands or a regulated environment it is Enterprise from $25,000. You can work out your own number before you speak to anyone.
No. Tiers are set by counted scope: platforms, brands, channels, integrations, migration volume and compliance. Agent counts appear only as guidance, because a twelve-agent brand running three storefronts and five integrations 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.
That is our problem, not a change order. Fixed price means the scope risk sits with us. If the scope itself changes, the add-on prices above are what it costs, and you see them before you approve anything.
Their fee is real, so work booked through an outside contracting platform costs 10% more. We would rather show that than quietly build it into every price.
Thirty minutes, 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.
Smart Instinct helps provide various services to optimize your help desk or contact center.
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