How much does each tier cost, and is a website included?
Three managed tiers, every price published: Foundation $500/mo, Growth $1,000/mo, Domination $2,000/mo — the Lighthouse Rate for our first 10 clients (Standard Rate is double: $1,000 / $2,000 / $4,000). Yes, a premium website is included. Commit to any tier for 12 months and you get a 7-page premium website — a $5,000 value, at no cost — plus $0 setup at signing. The website's value is bundled into the package, not billed on top. (Already have a site that passes our audit? You get equivalent value in SEO Boost instead.) Without a 12-month commitment, that same website is $5,000 — or $2,500 with a 6-month commitment. One clarification: the optional +$5,000 premium homepage treatment is a separate creative upgrade, not the included base website.
What's the Lighthouse Rate — and how does pricing progress after?
The Lighthouse Rate is the intro pricing shown on every tier ($500 / $1,000 / $2,000 per month) — locked for our first 10 clients on this full-stack model. Here's the part most agencies won't put in writing: it's yours for the life of the relationship. No annual step-up, no slow creep toward a higher rate. As long as you stay with us, you stay at founder pricing.
Once 10 clients have signed, the Standard Rate applies to every new client after that — $1,000 / $2,000 / $4,000 per month. That's the only place pricing "progresses": it's what client #11 onward pays, and it never reaches back to a founder.
Why we do it this way: we've sold websites and Google Business Profiles for years, but this fully integrated, AI-leveraged stack — the one you're looking at on this page — is brand new. We need 10 real-world clients to prove it and build case studies, so the first 10 lock favorable pricing for good in exchange for trusting us early. After 10, we know what we're worth and price new clients accordingly.
Bonus: Lighthouse Foundation and Growth Clients get first dibs on Domination. When Domination launches, only 10 slots open at the $2,000/mo Lighthouse rate — versus the $4,000/mo Standard Rate. Existing Foundation/Growth founders get priority to claim one, and like the rest of your founder pricing, once it's yours it's locked for life.
Bottom line: your price never goes up. The only number that ever changes is the one new clients see after the first 10 fill. (Founder pricing applies to your monthly tier; add-ons are priced the same for everyone.)
Why publish your prices at all?
Most agencies in this industry quote per-prospect — they look at your business and decide what you can afford. We charge everyone the same. The only legitimate price differences are the audit verdict (your site, not your wallet) and tier commitment length. The Lighthouse Rate is a time-bound discount, not bespoke pricing — every prospect sees the same offer until it's gone.
How does payment work?
Quoted pricing is for ACH transfer, wire, or check. Credit card payments are accepted and incur a 3% processing fee covering merchant costs — same line item, fully disclosed, no surprises.
Setup fees follow a 50 / 50 milestone schedule by default:
• 50% at contract signing (Net 15) — initiates onboarding
• 50% at Day 30 (Net 15) — coincides with end of onboarding and start of execution
Monthly fees follow the same Net 15 cadence. The first monthly invoice issues on Day 30 (covering the Day-30-to-Day-60 service period). Subsequent invoices issue on the 1st of each calendar month thereafter.
This pacing means you see real work before paying the back half of the setup, and you aren't billed for "Month 1" while we're still onboarding. 12-month commitment clients get $0 setup at signing — see the 12-month commitment FAQ for that path.
Do you work with medical, legal, cannabis, or other regulated industries?
Yes — with a premium that reflects the real compliance overhead. Regulated industries come with claim-sensitivity rules, approval workflows, audit trails, and (for medical/healthcare) HIPAA-aligned data handling. We have a compliance-review layer built into our stack specifically for catching prohibited claims, routing high-risk decisions to legal review, and keeping the paper trail.
The compliance work is real labor and gets reflected in our pricing — typically a 15–30% premium over standard tier rates, set in your custom proposal rather than on the public page. Medical paid ads in particular are deferred entirely until our retained legal counsel ratifies the playbook. Organic and owned-channel work in medical/legal/cannabis is available today within our ratified compliance scope.
If you're in one of these industries, expect the conversation to start with compliance scope before pricing — that's the right order.
Do you build brand identity (logo, colors, brand voice)?
Yes — through our
Complete Brand Identity Development System. Three productized tiers are public:
Essential $5,000 · Complete $7,500 · Premium $10,000. Each covers logo system, voice guide, brand book, and source files.
You own everything on delivery — no license restrictions, no buy-out fees, no modification gates.
Already have a brand? Bringing your own can be more cost-effective.
Contact us for partial work — logo refresh, voice update, asset library expansion — quoted to your needs.
Multi-brand families: parent-DBA structures and businesses launching multiple brands at once get bundled pricing through the
custom-proposal path.
What if I already have a working website?
Your audit will confirm the verdict (Marketing Ready / Revisions Needed / Fresh Start Needed). If your site is Marketing Ready, you don't need a fresh build — and with a 12-month commitment, you get SEO Boost Pro included for the first 12 months ($6,000 value) instead. That's our equivalent-value trade for clients who already invested in a good site.
What if my site can't be optimized?
You get a Fresh Start Needed verdict, and we walk you through your options:
(a) We build you a new site. 7-page top-tier site — $5,000 month-to-month / $2,500 with a 6-month commitment / included with the 12-month commitment.
(b) The timing doesn't work today. That's fine — we'll stay in touch. When you're ready for the fresh start, we'll be ready too. We won't take payment for marketing that the site can't carry, because neither of us wins that way.
Why is Domination "Coming Soon"? When does it launch?
Domination is the full AI marketing operation — our most hands-on tier — and we're rolling it out deliberately. We're onboarding our first Foundation and Growth clients and dialing in delivery before we open Domination to a limited group — we'd rather hold the line than overcommit and disappoint. Only 10 Domination slots will exist at the Lighthouse Rate before MSRP applies. Foundation and Growth Lighthouse Clients get priority access to claim one of those slots — see the
Lighthouse Rate FAQ above for the full upgrade-priority details. Anyone else can join the public Domination waitlist.
Foundation and Growth are shipping today and scale freely. Why are some add-ons marked "Limited Beta" or "Coming Soon"? And what's the Roadmap?
Three levels of "not yet fully shipped":
Limited Beta means we can deliver it for early clients with manual QA per delivery — the product works but isn't fully automated yet.
Coming Soon means we're launching it within 60 days; pricing is published so you know what to expect.
Roadmap means it's in development further out. We publish pricing for Roadmap items so the math is transparent — but we won't sell them until they clear our quality bar.
We're building this new full-stack model in public. We'd rather miss a sale than ship something we're not proud of.
How does the 12-month commitment benefit work exactly?
Sign a 12-month commitment and three things happen:
1. $0 setup at signing — we absorb the setup labor ($2,000 / $3,500 / $5,000 depending on tier) in exchange for your commitment
2. Verdict-aligned bundle: Marketing Ready sites get SEO Boost Pro included for 12 months ($6,000 value); Revisions Needed gets $3,000 in revisions + SEO Boost Basic for 12 months ($6,000 combined — with optional half-off Pro upgrade adding $3,000 more); Fresh Start Needed gets a 7-page top-tier website included ($5,000 value)
3. Tier rate locked for the full 12 months
What happens after the 12-month term?
You're month-to-month at the agreed tier rate. If you had an SEO Boost included, it continues at the standard rate ($500/mo Pro or $250/mo Basic) unless you tell us to drop it. Most clients keep it because the ranking momentum is too valuable to lose. We don't auto-charge anything surprising — everything is documented in the original agreement.
Do you have a guarantee?
No — and run from anyone who does. Specific revenue or ranking guarantees in marketing are misleading because results depend on your offer, your team, your market, and a hundred factors we don't control. Instead of empty promises, we focus on what we can commit to: clear communication, honest reporting, showing up for the term we agreed on, and being picky about who we onboard.
What counts as "a page"?
A page is a distinct, indexable URL — its own route, header, title and meta, content, schema, and internal links — built to rank on its own. It is not a section on an existing page. Primary pages are the ones in your main nav — Home, Services, About, Contact, FAQ. Per-city service-area pages and blog posts do not count against your primary-page limit (they're unlimited at Growth+). Each additional primary page beyond the 7 included is +$250.
What's the difference between SEO Boost Basic, Pro, and Authority?
All three are ongoing SEO layers for an audit-clear site, with no ranking or ROI promises. Basic ($250/mo member rate, $500/mo month-to-month) is Maintain & AI-Ready: AEO-structured service pages, quarterly on-page refreshes, Core Web Vitals proof, GEO baseline, rankings tracking, and citation consistency. Pro ($500/mo member rate, $1,000/mo month-to-month) is Grow & Outrank: everything in Basic, plus competitor- and keyword-driven pages, one topical-authority blog post a month, active GEO, deeper schema, internal-linking optimization, and active citation building. Authority ($1,000/mo member rate, $2,000/mo month-to-month) is the full AI-visibility arsenal: everything in Pro, plus monthly buyer-prompt monitoring across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews, off-site authority building, Ask Maps readiness, and a recurring proof audit — sold as readiness and monitoring, never guaranteed AI placement. The member rate applies with a managed tier, a Shockwave website, or a 12-month commitment; month-to-month pays the rack rate.
Do you need all of my passwords?
No. For the major platforms — Google Business Profile, Facebook, Apple, Bing, Yelp — we prefer manager or admin access wherever the platform supports it, so you keep ownership and just add us as a representative. For general directory listings we usually only need your approved business information and your authorization to correct or create listings on your behalf. If a particular site requires owner verification, we walk you through that one-time step.
Who owns my business listings?
You do. Shockwave builds, manages, and corrects your listings as your authorized representative — but your business stays the owner of every core profile wherever ownership controls exist. Unlike rented 'listings subscriptions' that vanish when you stop paying, the citations we build are yours to keep.
What if there are more than 20 listings to fix or build?
Your managed tier sets up to 20 core listings right at onboarding — we prioritize the highest-impact ones first. If you want the full footprint (up to ~60 listings across the core directories and data aggregators), that's the one-time Citation Foundation ($300) — included free with a 12-month SEO Boost Pro or Authority commitment. Ongoing citation building and monitoring live in SEO Boost.
What's the GoHighLevel Client Dashboard?
Every Shockwave client gets a custom dashboard built on GoHighLevel — the same CRM platform agencies typically charge $97–$497/mo to access. Foundation: read-only — see your leads, GBP performance, and social results (plus billboard stats if you run billboards). Growth: working tools — manage leads, view campaigns, basic automations. Domination: fully branded throughout to your business, multi-user access, full automation control. The dashboard is bundled in every tier — not an add-on.
Can I bring my own CRM?
Yes — we integrate. Setup fee depends on platform: $500 for standard platforms (HubSpot, Salesforce, Zoho, etc.), $750 for industry-specific service CRMs (ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber, Mindbody), $1,500+ for custom systems. Setup includes 30 days of post-go-live support. After that you choose: pay-as-needed at $125/hour (no monthly), Retainer Lite at $50/mo (monitoring + monthly health report, labor billed hourly), OR Retainer Plus at $150/mo (everything in Lite + 2 hrs labor included, with additional labor at a discounted $75/hr beyond the bundled 2 hours). Switch between options at any month boundary.
What if I break the 12-month commitment early?
You owe the remaining months at the agreed tier rate as an early-termination fee. Your website + portal are hosted on Shockwave infrastructure during the term; if early-termination fee isn't paid within 30 days of breach, your website is taken offline. Source code transfers to you when you complete your 12-month term. This clause is a backstop, not a goal — we'd rather earn your renewal.
What does "billboard-network exclusivity" actually mean?
If you run billboards with us, you can request that no competing business's ad runs on our screens alongside yours. That's exclusivity on the screens themselves. It does NOT mean we won't take other clients in your industry as Shockwave clients — that kind of full-industry lockout makes the math impossible. Just our screens. Pricing starts at 2x your billboard rate; final price depends on geographic and industry scope.