If you go looking for a website audit, you will find three very different things for sale, at three very different prices. The marketing language for all three uses the same word, “audit,” which is the source of most of the confusion.
Here is what each tier actually is, what it costs, and which type of business it is built for.
Tier 1: Free automated scans ($0)
Run your URL through any free site-grader online. Thirty seconds later you get a dashboard with scores, icons, and a list of “issues.” This is what most small business owners think an audit is, because it is what they have always seen.
What you get: a score, a checklist of measurable signals, and a sales pitch for the company that runs the scanner.
What you don’t get: judgment. The scanner cannot tell which findings actually matter for your business. It will flag a missing alt tag on a decorative spacer image with the same urgency as a broken contact form on mobile. It treats every signal as equal weight, because it has no way to know better.
Right tier for: a quick gut-check on whether your site is wildly broken. Useful as a first look. Not useful as a basis for decisions.
Tier 2: Human-reviewed audits ($300 to $500)
Our Pro Diagnosis + Remedy Package sits here, at $350. A person opens a real browser, walks through your live site, and runs fifty checks: twenty-eight standard assessments that apply to every business website, plus up to twenty-two additional diagnostics that get added when the site has features the standard set doesn’t cover (a booking flow, e-commerce, a blog, embedded video, multilingual content).
Every finding is categorized as Critical, High Value, Pass, or Nice-to-Have. Every Critical and every High Value finding gets a step-by-step remedy written for a non-developer to follow, with ready-to-copy code where applicable. The deliverable is a single PDF: cover page, executive summary, Priority Action List, Remedy Package, and a complete record of all fifty findings.
Right tier for: a small business owner who wants to know what to actually fix, in what order, and have a written plan they can either implement themselves or hand to a developer.
Tier 3: Full agency audits ($2,500 to $10,000+)
The top of the market. Often part of a larger discovery or strategy engagement. You get the same kind of structural review, plus competitive analysis, customer journey mapping, content strategy, and a slide deck presented to your team over a two-hour call.
What you get for the money: depth across business strategy, not just website mechanics. A team of three to six people involved. Multiple rounds of review.
What you usually don’t need (if you’re a small business): three to six people. The findings on a five-page small business website are not so different from one site to the next. The high-priced version of the work is the same work, packaged with consulting hours.
Right tier for: a company with twenty-plus employees, a marketing budget, and a website that is the primary revenue driver. Overkill for most local businesses.
How to know which tier you actually need
Three honest questions:
- Is the website the front door of the business? (Most leads come through it.) If yes, you’re past the free-scan tier.
- Do you have a person in-house who already knows web technology well? If yes, the free scan plus their judgment may be enough.
- Are you spending more than $200 a month on advertising that points to the site? If yes, an audit pays for itself the first time it surfaces a conversion-path issue.
Most small business owners we work with land in tier two. That is the gap we built the Pro Diagnosis + Remedy Package to fill: cheaper than an agency, better than a scanner, written for someone who isn’t going to read it with a developer in the room.
If you have been bouncing between the free-tool tier and the full-agency tier and neither one felt right, tier two is probably where you belong.