Cohenta vs. agency
What changes when the agency is software.
Good agencies earn their keep. The honest comparison: what a retainer buys versus a pipeline your team directs.
Retainers run $1,000–$20,000 a month in WebFX’s pricing survey; HawkSEM’s rate guide puts the average at $3,500–$10,000.
Priced as software. Flat published tiers — the price shown is the price billed.
30–60 days to active execution (Stackmatix); roughly 90 to full optimization (ATTN Agency). First creative tests land in weeks two to four.
Install the Runner. Mention @Cohenta with the brief. One run returns the whole campaign — plan, assets, distribution.
Two consolidated feedback rounds per deliverable is the scope-of-work standard (Rock.so). A new creative direction beyond that is billable.
Gates flag and annotate, never block. A revision is the Request changes button in the thread — not a billable round.
Ad spend bills separately; video, stock licensing, and community management sit outside scope unless listed (Rock.so; AgencyAnalytics).
Every asset in the plan from the start — posts, articles, visuals, video, decks, landing pages — cut per channel, published through your own accounts.
Management fees take 10–20% of monthly ad spend (AgencyAnalytics) — the spend itself goes to the platforms on top.
Ad creative lands paused, every time. Nothing spends until someone on your team switches it on.
47% of 251 agency leaders call client reporting critical to retention (AgencyAnalytics, 2024).
Every plan carries a P10–P90 Monte-Carlo forecast — the range of likely outcomes, attached before approval.
Side by side
The engagement, line by line.
Agency figures cite published surveys, named in each cell. The Cohenta column states how the system works.
The retainer math
What a month really costs.
WebFX’s survey of 250-plus US marketing and sales professionals puts retainers at $1,000–$20,000 a month. Each service has its own band, charted here on its published range.
Most engagements sit low in those bands. Credo’s pre-2020 survey found about half of agencies set minimums at $2,000 or less; Ahrefs’ 2024 poll of 439 SEO providers found $501–$1,000 the most common monthly figure.
Cohenta doesn’t map onto these line items. One run produces the article, the cuts, the emails, and the landing page — one license covers the pipeline, and the pricing page carries the current numbers.
Onboarding, measured
Ninety days before full speed.
ATTN Agency’s 30-60-90 guide maps kickoff to optimization. Four phases, each with its own calendar.
Access and audit
Handover, access, audit — requests sent within 48 hours (Stackmatix).
Strategy framework
The audit becomes a strategy, approved before production starts.
Implementation
Restructuring plus first creative — live work is the 30-day benchmark.
Scaling
Budgets follow performance; day 60 targets 10–20% over baseline.
Cohenta has no calendar to work through — and no account handover. The Runner runs on your machine or your cloud; point it at the material every claim will trace back to — facts, brand rules, KPIs — and @Cohenta takes the brief from there, holding the first campaign for your approval. Credentials stay in your keychain; Cohenta never receives or stores them.
Credit where due
Agencies aren’t the problem.
Client–agency relationships are healthier than in decades: the 4As and ANA put average agency-of-record tenure at about seven years in 2025 — more than double 2016’s 3.2. If yours is one of those, keep it; strategy and institutional memory compound. Cohenta changes the machinery underneath: retainer hours, feedback rounds, and handoffs become a run your own people steer.
Asked directly
The switching questions.
Is an AI marketing agency cheaper than a traditional agency?
Can Cohenta replace my marketing agency?
How long does switching from an agency take?
Do I lose approval control without an account team?
What happens to revisions and scope creep?
See it run
Bring a real brief.
Watch a brief become a plan, read what the gates surface, and decide with the mechanics in front of you.