If you search for what a SaaS marketing agency costs, most of what comes back is written for a company much further along than yours, usually in US dollars. If you're a Seed-stage founder in Vancouver, Toronto or Montreal with one product, a handful of paying customers and a runway you check every Monday, those numbers don't help you decide anything.
So this is the Canadian-dollar version, written for a startup at your stage, with my own prices in it. A cost article that hides its author's prices isn't really answering the question.
The four ways agencies charge
Before you compare numbers, compare shapes. Almost every quote you'll get is one of these, or a blend of two:
Monthly retainer. A fixed fee for an agreed scope, every month. It rewards continuity because the same people learn your product over time. The risk is that you end up paying for a slot on someone's calendar rather than for things that ship.
Project fee. A fixed price for a defined piece of work: a positioning sprint, a site rebuild, a launch. It rewards clarity. The risk is that nothing compounds once the project is handed over.
Fractional. A senior person for a set number of hours or days a month. It rewards judgment. The risk is a strategy without hands (unless you agree upon execution as well), a plan you then have to staff yourself.
Percentage of ad spend. Common for paid media management. It rewards spend going up, which isn't always the same as your pipeline going up.
None of these is wrong. What matters is whether the shape matches the problem you actually have this quarter.
What each one buys at Seed versus Series A
At Seed, the problem is rarely volume. It's usually which message lands, which channel deserves the first real budget, and whether the site explains the product to someone who isn't an engineer. Paying for volume before the message is right is the most expensive way to learn it isn't.
By Series A, you normally have some signal, and the problem turns into throughput: a steady content cadence, paid acquisition managed against pipeline rather than clicks, and launches that don't stall the product team. That's when a larger retainer starts to earn its keep.
The shape of the engagement should follow the stage of the company, not the other way round. If you're still deciding among an agency, a fractional lead and a first hire, I've broken down what each option costs separately.
Why a fixed-scope diagnosis first lowers the risk
The hardest thing to judge from a sales call is whether a partner can actually see what you see. A small, fixed-scope piece of work answers that before you commit to months of fees: they get read access to your analytics, Search Console, CRM and codebase or CMS, and they hand back a written diagnosis and a plan you can keep, whether or not you hire them.
That's the reasoning behind the Diagnostic I offer: $1,500, one-time, fixed scope, and if you start a retainer within 30 days, the whole $1,500 comes off month one. You never pay twice to find out whether working together makes sense.
My prices, in plain numbers
Here is what's published on my pricing page, all in Canadian dollars and before tax:
The Diagnostic, $1,500 one time. Not a monthly fee. Read access to your stack, a written diagnosis, a sequenced 90-day plan and one 60-minute call, with the full $1,500 credited against month one of a retainer started within 30 days.
Operator, $2,500 a month. Positioning and messaging kept current as the product changes, two researched articles a month, and technical SEO alongside the content engine.
Embedded, $4,500 a month. Everything in Operator, plus fractional product marketing with a standing weekly call, managed paid acquisition on LinkedIn and Google, judged on pipeline, and one end-to-end product launch a quarter. Ad spend is billed separately, straight to your own accounts.
Founding Marketer. For pre-seed companies incorporated in Canada, paid in equity rather than cash, six months minimum, with limited places.
The retainers are month-to-month, with no annual contract and two months' notice to stop. I'm not trying to be the cheapest quote you get. I'd rather be the one where you can see exactly what the money buys.
How to compare quotes without guessing
Put every quote you receive through the same five questions:
What ships each month? Convert every proposal into the same unit: articles, pages, email flows, campaigns, reports. A lower fee that ships less isn't cheaper.
Who does the work? The person on the sales call, or someone you haven't met yet?
Is the fee separate from the spend? Ad budget should be billed to your own account, so you can see it and keep it if you leave.
How do you leave? Read the notice period and check who owns the accounts, content, and data on the way out.
What gets measured, and when? Paid search, SEO and content each run on their own clock, so a good proposal says what you should see by when, and admits what it can't promise.
Once you have the answers side by side, what a software company's retainer should actually include is a useful checklist to hold them against.
The question underneath the price
The fee is the easy part to compare. The harder part is being clear about what you're paying to find out this quarter: whether the message lands, whether search can become a channel, and whether paid acquisition can pay for itself. Get that sentence written down first, and three quotes that looked impossible to compare usually sort themselves out.
So before you line them up, what's the one question you need your marketing spend to answer by the end of this quarter?