Chantry vs hiring an SEO agency
An SEO agency typically charges $2,000+ a month, takes weeks to onboard, and asks you to sit on calls. Chantry is an AI agent that does the same core work - getting you found on Google and AI assistants, replying to leads, and keeping reviews strong - for $49–$199 a month, set up in about ten minutes, with no meetings. Here’s the honest side-by-side.
Side by side
| SEO agency | Chantry | |
|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | $2,000+ / month | $49–$199 / month |
| Setup time | Weeks of onboarding | ~10 minutes |
| Meetings & calls | Regular | None |
| AI visibility (AEO) | Rarely covered | Core focus |
| Replies to your leads | No | Instantly, in your name |
| Review building & replies | Sometimes, extra cost | Included |
| Transparency | Monthly report | Plain-English summary every run |
| Contract | Often 6–12 months | Cancel any time |
Where an agency still wins
To be fair: a good agency brings things software can't. If you need bespoke content strategy, PR, link-building campaigns, a custom website rebuild, or a human to think strategically about a complex brand, an experienced agency earns its fee. Larger businesses with budget and a marketing lead to manage the relationship often get real value.
Where Chantry wins
For a local business - a trade, a restaurant, a salon, a clinic - that just needs to be found and chosen, most of what an agency does monthly is a repeatable checklist: fix the profile, fix the schema, keep content fresh, chase reviews, reply fast. That's exactly what an agent automates well. You get the outcome without the retainer, the onboarding, or the meetings - and you get AI visibility (AEO), which most agencies still don't offer.
The simplest way to decide: if you'd happily pay someone $2,000 a month to manage a strategic marketing program, hire a great agency. If you just want to stop being invisible to Google and AI - and win the leads you're already missing - start with Chantry and keep your money.
What you actually get with Chantry
Two plans, both starting with a 7-day free trial: Insights ($49/mo) shows you everything - AI visibility tracking across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google, how AI describes you, a competitor command center, the Question Radar mapping every buyer question and the gaps you're missing, a lost-searches estimate, deeper analytics and weekly summaries with alerts. Autopilot ($199/mo) adds the AI agent that fixes it all - it writes and publishes answer pages for your gaps, fixes your website (schema, titles and FAQs), posts to your Google profile, drafts your review replies and closes the gaps the Radar finds. Run a free scan to see your score before you decide.