4 Straight North Alternatives With Published Pricing in 2026 (From $1,500/Mo)

Straight North’s HVAC SEO page was first published in November 2017, runs about 700 to 850 words, still says “Google My Business” four years after Google renamed it, and answers the single most-searched buyer question, what does this cost, with nothing at all. That is per their site, June 2026, and I checked because I kept seeing their “Hire Your Last Agency” tagline ranking for searches that small service businesses make with a budget already in mind. If you searched “straight north alternatives,” you probably hit the same wall I did: a polished agency, real credentials, and no way to find out the price without getting on a sales call. This page is the comparison I wish existed, with verified numbers, scoped recommendations, and the pricing table their page does not have.

First, what Straight North genuinely gets right

I am going to spend most of this post on the gaps, so let me give credit properly first, because Straight North is not a content-farm operation pretending to be an agency.

They are a real full-service shop covering SEO, paid advertising, and creative under one roof, positioned around revenue growth rather than vanity metrics, per their site, June 2026. That revenue-first framing is the correct way to think about marketing, and plenty of agencies still have not caught up to it.

Their client logos include Emerson Electric, DFIN, and Teleflora, per their site, June 2026. Logos are not case studies, but landing and keeping mid-market and enterprise accounts like those takes operational maturity that most small shops do not have.

They offer an instant, free custom SEO audit, per their site, June 2026. Most agencies gate everything behind a discovery call, so an instant audit is genuinely more generous than the industry default. And their main SEO services page carries more than 40 FAQs, per their site, June 2026, which is a real effort to answer buyer questions on at least one page of the site.

So this is not a takedown. For the right buyer, and I describe that buyer honestly further down, Straight North is a defensible choice. The problem is a specific mismatch: lead-gen-focused small and mid-size service businesses keep landing on their pages, and those pages refuse to answer the questions that buyer actually has.

The gaps I verified, per their site, June 2026

Everything below is something I checked on Straight North’s own pages in June 2026. None of it is rumor, and all of it is the kind of thing that should shape your decision.

• No pricing anywhere. No packages, no starting-at figures, no budget guidance on the homepage, the SEO services page, the markets page, or the HVAC vertical page. The only paths forward are the free audit download and contact prompts. You cannot budget for this agency without entering their sales funnel.
• No published contract terms. No minimum term, no cancellation policy, no statement about who owns your website and accounts if you leave, on any page I fetched. That does not mean the terms are bad. It means you are signing-blind until the proposal stage.
• Thin, dated vertical pages. The HVAC SEO page is a roughly 700 to 850 word template first published in November 2017, still using “Google My Business” instead of Google Business Profile. If the page selling you local SEO has not kept up with Google’s own product names, ask what else has not been updated.
• No vertical-specific proof. The HVAC page carries zero HVAC case studies, testimonials, lead counts, or before-and-after rankings. The trust signals are generic Forbes and Moz publisher logos, which prove media savvy, not booked jobs for a contractor like you.
• No benchmarks and no FAQs on vertical pages. No cost-per-lead data, no timeline-to-results expectations, no keyword examples beyond two generic phrases, and not a single FAQ on the HVAC page, even though the main SEO page has 40 or more. The buyer questions exist. The vertical pages just do not answer them.
• Enterprise body language. Emerson Electric, DFIN, and Teleflora logos plus SaaS growth stats read mid-market and up. There is no founder face, no named team member, and no signal that a five-truck electrician or a single-location clinic is who they are built for.

If you run lead-gen for a local service business, every one of those gaps maps to a question you need answered before you spend money. So here are the alternatives, compared on exactly those questions.

The comparison table their page does not have

If you only read one section, read this. Every competitor figure is from the company’s own site as of June 2026, and everything marked est. is my estimate, clearly labeled.

Now the detailed entries, each scoped to who it actually fits.

1. Sprout Sage Solutions: best for small service businesses that want the price before the call

This is my agency, so apply full skepticism. Here is the factual case, and every number is verifiable.

I publish my pricing. SEO retainers start at $1,500 per month flat, websites start at $500, and landing pages start at $300, with the full rate card on my pricing page. There are no contracts. Clients stay month to month, which means I re-earn the retainer every 30 days, and if I stop performing you stop paying. And you own everything from day one: the website, the content, the Google Business Profile work, the ad accounts. Nothing is held hostage to keep you renewing.

My track record lives on a platform I do not control. On Upwork I hold Top Rated Plus status with 37 five-star reviews, a 97 percent Job Success Score, and 222 completed jobs, all public, including any critical feedback. I have done this work for 9 years, and I am the senior person on every account because I am the only person on every account. There is no sales closer who disappears after signature and no junior pod executing a template.

I also publish free, no-signup tools you can use right now without surrendering an email address. Straight North’s free instant audit is better than the industry’s gated default, and I will say so, but a toolbox you can use anonymously is a different level of show-your-work.

The honest scope of my claim: I am built for single-location and small multi-truck service businesses, the electricians, chiropractors, physical therapists, and similar operators whose searches keep landing on enterprise agency pages. My electrician SEO service and chiropractor SEO service pages show exactly what the $1,500 tier buys for those verticals. If you need a 100-person agency with a paid-media department, a creative studio, and an account manager who flies to your office, I am the wrong choice, and two of the agencies below are better ones.

If you want to pressure-test the fit, book a free 30-minute call. No deck and no junior closer, just me looking at your site and your local market and telling you what I would do first, whether or not you hire me.

2. WebFX: best for mid-market buyers who want a big shop with a published floor

WebFX deserves real credit on the exact axis this post is about: they publish numbers. Their home-services industry page lists SEO starting at $3,000 per month, paid search from $650 per month, and email marketing from $300 per month, per their site, June 2026. Against Straight North’s total silence, a published floor is a meaningful trust gesture, and WebFX brings genuine scale: 750+ marketers and 25+ years in business, per their site, June 2026.

Who they fit: mid-market companies with the budget for a $3,000-and-up retainer who want one large vendor across many channels and prefer a known floor before the sales call. If that is you, WebFX belongs on your shortlist ahead of any agency that publishes nothing.

The watch-outs I verified, per their site, June 2026. The $3,000 per month SEO floor is double my $1,500 entry point, which matters at small-business budgets. Contract terms are not published anywhere I fetched. And their vertical content is blog-guide material rather than service pages: the electrician marketing guide’s case studies are Boss Mechanical, KOA, and S. Clyde Weaver, with zero named electrician clients, and no cost-per-lead benchmarks for any trade despite the data-driven positioning. Ask for proof from your vertical, in your revenue band, before you sign.

3. Blue Corona: best for established home-services companies that want a trades-only big agency

Blue Corona has been operating since 2008 and covers roughly 18 home-service verticals, electrical, HVAC, plumbing, pest control, landscaping, solar, roofing and more, per their site, June 2026. That vertical concentration is their real advantage over Straight North for a trades business: an agency that only does home services arrives already knowing your seasonality, your call patterns, and your review economics.

On pricing they are halfway transparent. There is no pricing page, but buried in the electrician page FAQ they state that marketing services run anywhere from $2,500 to over $10,000 per month, per their site, June 2026. A buried range beats silence, so credit where due, although a range that wide is an anchor for the sales call, not a rate card.

The watch-outs, verified per their site, June 2026. Contract terms are not published anywhere I fetched. There is no founder or team visibility, you are buying an account-manager relationship at a corporate agency. And the proof is thinner than the page count suggests: the same three case studies, Penguin Air, American Vintage Home, and Arctic Air, appear verbatim on both the electrician and HVAC pages, and none is a pure electrician company. If you run an established home-services business with a $2,500-plus monthly budget and you want a vertical specialist at scale, shortlist them, and ask for proof from your exact trade.

4. Service Direct: best if you want to buy calls, not marketing

Service Direct is not an agency, and that is exactly why it belongs on this list. It is a pay-per-call marketplace: you pay for valid inbound calls in your service area, with published per-lead price ranges, no contract, and no setup fees, per their site, June 2026. Their published ranges include electrician calls at $55 to $175, plumbing at $60 to $255, air conditioning at $65 to $325, and roofing at $85 to $550, per their site, June 2026, with monthly budget caps and the ability to pause campaigns.

Who they fit: an owner who needs the phone ringing this month, has no patience for a retainer, and wants to pay only when a real call arrives. As a capacity-filling tap you can turn on and off, the model is honest and the no-contract terms are published rather than promised.

The structural caveat matters more than any price: when you stop paying, you own nothing. No website improvements, no SEO equity, no Google Business Profile growth, no content. You rented calls. Also note the split transparency, per their site, June 2026: the real dollar ranges live on a separate pricing page while the vertical pages answer their own cost question with “it varies,” and the wide ranges come with no explanation of what puts a buyer at the top or bottom. Pay-per-call works best as a supplement on top of owned assets, not as the whole plan, and coverage is limited to ten home-service categories, so medical, wellness, and fitness operators are out of luck entirely.

Halfway checkpoint. If you already have a Straight North proposal, or one from anybody on this page, send it to me through my free consultation page and I will tell you what I would push back on, line by line. Free, no strings, and yes, sometimes the honest answer is “this is a fair deal, take it.”

When Straight North IS the right call

An alternatives page that pretends the incumbent is never the answer is just an ad. Here is when I would genuinely point you at Straight North.

• You are mid-market or enterprise. Their logo wall, Emerson Electric, DFIN, Teleflora, per their site, June 2026, is the buyer they are built around. If your company looks like those companies, you are their ICP, not mine.
• You need SEO, paid media, and creative under one roof. A founder-led specialist cannot match a full-service bench. If consolidating three vendors into one is the goal, a shop their size is the right shape.
• You are comfortable with quote-based pricing. Some buyers prefer a scoped custom proposal over a rate card, and procurement teams often expect it. If that is your process, their funnel will not bother you.
• You value their instant audit. Their free, instantly delivered custom SEO audit, per their site, June 2026, is a fast and low-commitment way to see how they think before any human contact. Use it even if you hire someone else.

If you fall into those categories, get their proposal, then run it through the decision framework below, because the questions still apply at every budget level.

What lead-gen marketing actually costs in 2026: the benchmarks their page skips

Straight North’s HVAC page contains no budget guidance of any kind, per their site, June 2026. So here is the table I would want as a buyer. Published figures are cited to the company’s own site, and everything else carries an est. prefix because it is my estimate from 9 years of doing this work, not a verified universal truth.

Two ways to use this table. First, any quote you receive now has context: a $4,000 per month proposal for a single-location service business is not automatically wrong, but the agency should be able to explain what it buys that a $1,500 scope does not. Second, the timelines protect you from fantasy promises in both directions, from agencies promising page one in 30 days and from agencies using “SEO takes a year” to excuse six months of nothing. I keep a deeper cost breakdown by trade in my electrician marketing cost guide if you want the per-channel math.

How to decide: a five-question framework

This is the part every agency ranking page skips, including Straight North’s, because a real framework sometimes routes the reader away from the author. Run every candidate, me included, through these five questions.

1. Can you find the price without a sales call? If not, you will negotiate from inside their funnel, anchored by their closer. That alone should not disqualify an agency, but it should cost them points, and you should gather two published-price quotes first so you walk in calibrated. My agency cost-by-tier breakdown shows what each budget level should actually buy.
2. What happens on the day you leave? Ask in writing: who owns the website, the content, the GBP, and the ad accounts, and what does cancellation cost. “You own everything from day one, cancel anytime” is the answer you want. Silence on the website, which is what Straight North’s pages give you as of June 2026, means you must get it into the contract yourself.
3. Who personally does the work? Names, not departments. Ask how many accounts that person carries. A senior strategist on the sales call means nothing if a rotating junior pod runs month three. Founder-led shops answer this question in one word. Big shops should still be able to answer it in one sentence.
4. Is the proof from your vertical and your size? Emerson Electric is not proof for a five-truck electrician, and a plumbing case study is not proof for a chiropractor. Ask for a reference client in your trade, in a market like yours, that you can actually call.
5. Are you buying an asset or renting a result? Retainer SEO builds equity you keep. Pay-per-call and ads stop when the spend stops. Both are legitimate, but they are different purchases, so judge each on cost per booked job over twelve months, not on this month’s invoice.

Score your shortlist honestly against those five and the decision usually makes itself. When two agencies tie, pick the one whose answers were in writing before you asked.

The bottom line

Straight North is a credible full-service agency for mid-market and enterprise buyers who are comfortable getting the price at proposal stage. If that is you, take their instant audit, ask the five questions above, and negotiate the ownership terms into the contract.

If you run a small or single-location service business, the picture changes. As of June 2026, per their site, you cannot learn their price, their contract terms, or who would own your website, and the vertical page meant to win your trade is a 2017 template with no proof and no FAQs. Buyers like you have better-fitting options: WebFX if you want a big shop with a published $3,000 floor, Blue Corona if you are an established home-services company with a $2,500-plus budget, Service Direct if you just want to buy calls with no retainer, and my agency if you want a senior operator at $1,500 per month flat, no contract, with every asset yours from day one and free tools you can test before we ever speak.

FAQ

On the call I will look at your site, your local rankings, and your competitors live, and tell you exactly what I would do first, even if the honest answer is that you should take the Straight North proposal sitting in your inbox. Thirty minutes, no pitch deck, and you leave with a plan either way. Grab a slot on my free consultation page and let us figure out what your business actually needs.