The $1,000 website looked like a sensible way to grow an agency. At that price, a small business could get online without a painful bill. In a 2024 interview, SmartSites co-founder Alex Melen recalled selling websites for about $1,000, expecting roughly $900 in costs. Projects took longer and cost more than planned. Staff grew frustrated. So did customers. The low price had bought nobody much happiness.
- SmartSites connects website design, search, advertising and follow-up.
- Its customers include local service firms, dealerships and online retailers.
- The lesson to borrow: define the sale, scope the work, then measure both.
The arithmetic was an education. A thin margin left little room for revisions; an expanding project consumed that room quickly. Melen describes an early attempt to win business through low prices becoming a lesson in delivery and reputation. That is a useful place to begin understanding SmartSites. An agency sells its capacity to do work. Price that capacity badly and growth can make the problem larger.
A company built between disciplines
Alex and his brother Michael founded SmartSites in 2011. Both arrived with histories of building things online. Alex had created T35 Hosting in the late 1990s and later worked on digital analytics for Walmart at Starcom MediaVest Group. Michael built websites as a child, sold an internet business at 19 and graduated from Cornell in three years.
Michael’s early projects included FunnyCities.com, a collection of amusing place names. He says it earned $9 a month from advertising. There is something pleasingly concrete about that apprenticeship: write a page, attract a visitor, earn a little money. The sums changed. The relationship between publishing, attention and revenue remained.
Today, SmartSites offers custom websites, organic search optimization, paid advertising, social media, and email and SMS marketing. Its website practice includes WordPress, Shopify, WooCommerce and Magento. Email work includes automated messages and campaigns; social services cover content and community management. The buyer can commission one discipline or combine several.
Full-service agencies are common. SmartSites’ proposition becomes more interesting at the handoffs. An advertisement creates an expectation. A landing page must honor it. A form must work. Someone must answer the inquiry. Treating those steps as unrelated purchases creates opportunities for responsibility to evaporate. Putting specialists in the same organization gives the customer somewhere to take the whole problem.
“They are always willing to help, brave enough to disagree, and fun to hang out with.”Michael Melen, on his colleagues
That description of the team has an operational point. Design, search and advertising need different expertise, and their priorities can collide. The useful version of collaboration includes disagreement about what will help the customer. SmartSites competes in the broad agency market alongside firms such as WebFX and Thrive; buyers can also assemble freelancers or hire internally. The choice concerns ownership as much as capability.
Two clients, two different jobs
Consider Hearthstopper, an online seller of fireplace tools and accessories. Its problem involved being found by people shopping for particular products while competing with familiar retail destinations. SmartSites describes updating product metadata, fixing technical issues and reorganizing content. On the advertising side, it grouped products into relevant campaigns and improved Shopping visibility.
The agency reports a 4,300% increase in conversions in its SEO results, alongside 126% more organic traffic. These are published agency case-study figures. They suggest an important question beyond visitor totals: did the site become better at turning interest into action? A retailer needs the right shopper to reach the right product with enough information to buy.
Conversions increased. Organic traffic rose 126%. Different measures, different questions.
Capital Auto Sales presents another job. The dealership needed qualified local buyers, including shoppers interested in financing. SmartSites describes inventory-based ad groups for vehicle categories, more focused keywords and advertising that emphasized selection, affordability and financing. The published results include 1,438% more leads and a 90% improvement in cost per lead.
A car inquiry and a fireplace-tool purchase are different events. Combining their percentages into one score would obscure the work. The repeatable idea is smaller and more useful: match the campaign to the customer’s actual decision, then choose a measure that reflects it. For a dealership, the next step may be a conversation. For a retailer, checkout matters.
- 01 Find
- 02 Visit
- 03 Act
- 04 Measure
The bill has more than one line
SmartSites publishes an SEO starting price of $2,600 per month for 40 hours at $65 an hour, with free setup. Hours can move between writing, link building and development. Its Chicago service page lists PPC management starting at $750 monthly or 15% of advertising spend, whichever is greater. Media spending is additional.
That distinction changes the budgeting conversation. At $10,000 in monthly ad spend, the stated percentage produces a $1,500 management fee: $11,500 combined before other services. This is arithmetic using the published formula, rather than a client invoice. A proposal still needs to specify scope, responsibilities and the outcome the business can afford to acquire.
The constraints are ordinary business constraints. Thin margins, a weak offer, slow sales follow-up or insufficient testing money can undermine an otherwise competent campaign. A business seeking immediate certainty from organic search is buying against the grain of the service: SmartSites’ timing guidance describes months for meaningful SEO progress. Marketing needs a workable product and an organization ready to handle demand.
Ten years of growth, one practical test
Inc. records ten consecutive SmartSites appearances on its Inc. 5000 list, from 2017 through 2026. The latest rank is 4,010, with 60% three-year revenue growth. That measures the agency’s growth over a defined period. A customer must still evaluate the economics of their own account.
The practical test is portable. Ask what a customer is worth, what it costs to win one, and who owns each step between discovery and payment. SmartSites’ story starts with a price that failed to cover the work. Its more useful offer today is the work considered together.