Notes for owners · Business growth
The cost of a bad quote: what to compare other than the total
How to compare agency quotes when the totals look similar but the scope does not: a seven-row comparison sheet that shows who does each piece of work, and a way to put a value on your own hours.
The GullySales team · Updated 17 Oct 2026 · 5 min read
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Three quotes, three totals, and the cheapest is the one everyone on your side already likes. Put the totals aside for an hour. The real cost of a quote sits in what it leaves out: a page nobody builds, content you are expected to write, an enquiry sheet no one keeps. The way to see it is to put a rupee value on every row that says "you", then compare. Sometimes the order of the three quotes flips.
Why a total misleads
Each agency draws a different box around the work. One quote includes website changes and a landing page. Another says "digital marketing" and means posts and a boosted ad. A third is lowest because it assumes you will write the copy, take the photographs and answer the enquiries yourself.
A total compares like with like only when the scope is the same, and quotes rarely match on scope. Build the sheet first and read the totals last.
The sheet: who does each piece?
Copy this into a spreadsheet, one column per quote. An empty cell is an answer: the quote did not say.
| Piece of work | Quote A | Quote B | Quote C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Landing page or site changes | |||
| Written copy and product text | |||
| Photographs and video | |||
| An enquiry register that records the source | |||
| Someone answering new enquiries | |||
| Rounds of changes included | |||
| Result measured, and from whose records |
Write "agency", "you" or "not covered" in each cell. If a cell cannot be filled from the document, send one email asking the agency to fill it, and file the reply. For who owns the accounts and what you get on leaving, use the list in questions to ask before hiring a marketing agency. For platform charges and tools that sit outside a fee, use hidden costs in marketing.
Price your own side
Now count every "you" and "not covered" cell. Estimate the hours it asks of your people per month, and give an hour a value: what an hour of yours is worth in sales, not your salary. Add anything you must buy that the quote leaves out.
The figures below are illustrative, to show the method. Take an hour at ₹500.
| Quote A | Quote B | Quote C | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fee per month | ₹35,000 | ₹52,000 | ₹70,000 |
| Landing page and enquiry register | Not covered; buy elsewhere, ₹12,000 per month spread over the term | Included | Included |
| Copy and photographs | You | Agency | Agency |
| Your hours per month | 30 | 12 | 8 |
| Your hours at ₹500 | ₹15,000 | ₹6,000 | ₹4,000 |
| True cost per month | ₹62,000 | ₹58,000 | ₹74,000 |
On the totals, A beat B by ₹17,000. On the true cost, B is ₹4,000 cheaper and takes less of your time. Change the hourly value to suit your trade and the order may shift again. The point is that you now know which assumption decides it.
For example: an LED panel maker in Noida
This is an invented case. The owner wants dealer enquiries from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, and takes Quote A, the lowest. Two months in, the owner spends two evenings a week writing product descriptions and hunting for photographs, because the quote said "content to be supplied by client". No one is keeping a record of which dealer enquiries come from the ads.
The mistake was reading the fee line and nothing under it. The owner fills in the sheet afterwards and finds A has five "you" or "not covered" cells out of seven, and B has one. B is asked for a fresh quote with the landing page and the register named, and the ad account goes in the owner's own name from day one. A's photographer is kept for a single product shoot, a job that is one skill and easy to check. The switch is not free: two months of A's fees are already spent, and B starts from the same empty register.
Read the exclusions before the scope
The list of what is not included tells you more than the list of what is. Look for the usual gaps: copywriting, photography, landing pages, an enquiry register, and anyone answering the phone. If a quote mentions none of them either way, ask.
"Unlimited revisions" deserves as much suspicion as silence. Ask what it means in practice, and who decides when a change is a revision and when it is new work. An agency that has answered this before will answer quickly. One that cannot may be counting on you not asking.
When the lower quote is right
Sometimes the cheaper quote wins, and the sheet should say so. If you have a person in-house who can write, photograph and answer enquiries, you do not need an agency to include them. If the work is a single job with an end, ownership and exit matter less. If you already hold every account, a thin scope is fine.
The test is whether you can name, from the sheet, who does each piece. When every row has a name against it and the "you" rows are work you actually have time for, the lowest total is a fair comparison.
Bring us the quotes you cannot compare
The same sheet is fair to use on ours; the pricing page says how we quote. If you hold quotes and cannot fill the sheet from them, marketing budget optimisation is the service nearest to the problem, and you can tell us what you need and mention that you are comparing quotes.
