Side-by-side feature comparison.
The questions that actually matter when you're choosing how to grow your pipeline.
| Feature | FastTrack Ops | Pay-Per-Lead | Agency Retainer | DIY Tools | In-House Hire |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly price | |||||
| No per-lead fees | |||||
| Live in under 3 weeks | |||||
| You own all assets | |||||
| Done-for-you management | |||||
| No long-term contract | |||||
| All tools integrated | |||||
| Industry expertise included | |||||
| Pipeline survives if you leave |
Want the detailed breakdown? Book a 30-min call and we'll walk through your specific situation.
The real trade-offs, alternative by alternative.
When each option makes sense, and when it doesn't.
- Leads show up immediately
- No upfront build time
- Lead shared with 3 to 5 other businesses
- You own nothing: stop paying, pipeline stops
- Prices rise year over year (auction model)
- Directory loyalty, not brand loyalty; customers return to the directory
- Lead quality degrades as platforms grow
Works as a short-term fix. Becomes a trap over time. Every dollar spent builds the platform's equity, not yours.
- Dedicated team
- Can scale fast with ad spend
- 6 to 12 month contracts typical
- Results take 6 to 9 months to materialize
- Often own nothing if you cancel (they keep the strategy, sometimes the accounts)
- High minimums lock out smaller businesses
- Account managers change, institutional knowledge walks out the door
Right for funded companies with time and budget. For a local operator who needs results in weeks, the math rarely works.
- You control every detail
- Tools are affordable individually
- Nothing talks to each other without custom setup
- 10 to 20 hours/month to set up, maintain, and fix
- Every platform update can break your stack
- You're the IT team, marketer, and operator, all at once
- Most setups are 60% built and never finished
Works for the rare operator who is also a systems-builder. For most, it creates a second job that competes with running the actual business.
- Dedicated resource
- Builds internal institutional knowledge
- 3 to 6 month ramp time before they're productive
- Still needs tools and platforms ($600 to $2,000/year)
- One person rarely covers SEO + automation + content + paid + design
- Turnover: average marketing coordinator tenure is 18 to 24 months
- You're managing a person, not just a system
Right for companies doing $3M+ in revenue who need full-time marketing leadership. Too heavy for most local operators.
When FastTrack Ops isn't the right fit.
If you're doing $5M+ and need a full in-house marketing team with dedicated paid media buyers and brand strategy, that's a different engagement than what we do.
We're built for local market dominance. If you need Super Bowl ads or national PR, that's not us.
We're not the cheapest option and we're not free. If you're not ready to commit to a 2 to 3 week build with a setup fee, the timing isn't right.
We build and run the stack. If you want to be hands-on in every platform every day, you'll clash with how we work.
Still deciding? Let us make it easy.
30 minutes. We'll audit your current setup, tell you honestly what's leaking, and show you what the best-fit option actually looks like for your business, whether that's us or not.