What this costs

Start where you are

Three ways in before any of the plans below. One costs nothing, one you can act on entirely without us, and one does the single thing that moves an AI assistant fastest.

The plans

Each one includes everything in the one before it. Setup is charged once, at the start, and pays for work that happens up front.

Pay a year in full and two months are free — ten months’ payment for twelve. On Gold and Platinum that is arranged directly rather than through the checkout, so ask and we will invoice it. There is no minimum term on any plan: you may stop at the end of any month you have paid for.

What the services mean

The website

Hand-written HTML. No page builder, no template, no plugins. It loads in under a second and every word is readable by a crawler that does not run JavaScript — this site is built the same way, so you can check both claims on this page before deciding anything.

It comes with the machine-readable details search engines and AI assistants actually read: your name, address, phone, hours and services, published in the format they expect and matching what the pages say.

Google Business Profile

Created if you have none, corrected if it is wrong, and posted to every week. Category, hours, services, description and photographs — the parts that decide which searches you can appear for at all.

Reviews

Your customers are asked, automatically, after the work is done. Replies are drafted for you and posted. We do not write reviews, buy them, invent them or offer anything in exchange for them, which is against Google’s rules and the fastest way to lose a listing.

The maps and directories

Yelp, Bing Places, Bing Maps, Apple Business and Apple Maps claimed in your name, with the same details everywhere. AI assistants cross-check these against each other, and a detail that disagrees is a reason not to recommend you.

The services you choose from

An AI receptionist answers when you cannot. Instant text-back sends a message the moment a call is missed. Automated quotes get a price to someone while they are still deciding. Automated social posting keeps your profiles alive without you writing anything.

Those three that answer or message carry a real cost for every call and text, so they come with a fair-use allowance set out in your order rather than an unlimited promise we would have to walk back.

Gold and Platinum

Gmail optimization, calendar management and past-customer reactivation are the Gold additions: your inbox made to work, your diary kept, and the customers you already had given a reason to come back. Platinum adds appointment setting and quotes, includes all four of the chosen services rather than one, and is set up around how your business actually runs.

Your website, and who owns it

A website you pay for monthly is not the same as one bought outright, so here is the whole rule and you can do the arithmetic yourself.

• Each month you pay credits one 18th — $163.89 — against it.
• After 18 paid months the balance is nothing and the code is yours: the files and the generator that builds them, in a repository in your name. They do not have to be consecutive, and a month we failed to invoice you for still counts — our clerical error is not your problem.
• Where a plan costs less each month than that credit — the website tier at $97 — the month credits what you actually pay. Ownership takes longer rather than costing more: about 30 paid months at $97, 18 at $197.
• Before that, buy it out for whatever is left. Ask and we will tell you the figure to the cent.

If you leave before it is paid off, nothing is switched off while you decide, and you keep your domain, your Google profile, your words and your pictures either way. The terms set out the sequence in full.

The Playbook and the free guide are not the same thing

Worth saying plainly, because one is free and one is $79.

How customers find you is free, it stays free, and it always will be. It explains what changed in search, why AI assistants are stricter than Google ever was, and which of it is worth your money. If you were handed one of our reports, that guide is the one it points you to.

The DIY AEO Playbook is the other half: not what changed, but exactly what to do about it. Every task with the screens you will see, the links you will need, how long it takes, what to type into a reply, and a checklist to work through. It is the document we would follow ourselves.

If the free guide is all you need, take it and go. That is a perfectly good outcome and always has been.

How you pay

• A setup fee at the start, charged once, for the work done up front.
• Then monthly, in advance, on the same day each month until you stop.
• Pay a year in full and two months are free — ten months’ payment for twelve.
• Your rate is held for twelve months, and price changes carry at least thirty days’ notice before your anniversary.
• Cancel by email, whenever you like. The month you paid for runs to its end and prepaid time beyond it comes back pro rata. Setup fees do not come back once the work has started.
• The Playbook is not refundable once sent, because reading it is what you bought. Read the free guide first and see whether it is for you.
• Payments are processed by Autobooks, through our credit union. Mail Beacon LLC is the merchant of record, so you are buying from us rather than through a marketplace. We never see your card. The charge will show as “Autobooks” on your statement, not as Insight Beacon — they are the payment service our credit union provides. Worth knowing before you see it and wonder.

The refund policy and the terms say all of that in full, at their own addresses, before you buy rather than after.

Where most people start

With the free report, because it costs nothing and it tells you which of these you actually need. Half the businesses we look at need less than they expected.

Then the website at $194 and $97 a month, because it is the thing that exists on day one and the thing every other service points back at. Add the listings for $100 a month when you want to be found as well as read.

Not ready for either? The free guide is the whole method, and the Playbook is the instructions. Neither needs us.