Short version. SmartSites is a 250 to 999 person agency in Paramus, New Jersey that serves ten industry categories and does not publish what it charges. BRD Media is a small senior team in Chicagoland that works in four, dental, law, medical and med spa, and every price is on the site. If you run one to ten locations and you want the people who sold you the work to be the people doing it, that difference is the whole decision.
We publish numbers we can reconcile. One multi dealership programmatic audio campaign we ran between November 17, 2024 and February 17, 2025 produced 921,234 impressions, 2,263 clicks and 1,535 unique conversions, every figure recomputed from the raw 37,010 row platform export rather than pulled off a slide.
Search the vendor name and page one is almost entirely aggregate star scores. Here is what those scores were when we pulled them on September 7, 2026, with the platform named next to each, because the platform is the part that changes the meaning.
Clutch also publishes the two numbers most buyers scroll past: a minimum project size of $1,000 and up, and an average hourly rate of $100 to $149. Those are the only pricing figures anywhere in public. The SmartSites SEO services page, checked the same day, states no retainer, no monthly minimum and no contract term.
Read the platforms together rather than one at a time. The praise concentrates on paid media responsiveness. The recurring criticism concentrates on SEO pace. That pattern is consistent enough across platforms to plan around, and it is far more useful than any composite score. If you want the general version of this skill first, we wrote how to read agency review scores.
Nobody types an agency name into Google to admire it. They type it because they are about to spend money and want to know whether it is the right call. The comparison that actually gets made is not SmartSites against BRD Media in the abstract. It is this: do I hand this to a large national agency with a deep bench and a broad client list, or to a small senior team that works only in my vertical and my market.
Both are legitimate answers. They are answers to different situations, and the honest way to choose is to decide which situation you are in before you take either sales call. We ran the same exercise against a larger shop in the WebFX comparison.
From SmartSites, at a one to three location practice, do not expect the founders on your account, and do not expect a published price before a sales call. Neither is a criticism. It is what an agency of that size and breadth is built to do, and the model works well for the clients it is built for.
From us, do not expect a 500 person bench. We do not staff round the clock pods, we do not cover ten industries, and we decline work outside dental, law, medical and med spa. We do not run enterprise ecommerce. We will not promise a national head term on a local budget, and the guarantee we sign is scoped to the market you actually compete in. If you need breadth across six unrelated business units, we are the wrong call, and we will say so on the first call rather than in the fourth month.
Every engagement opens with an audit whose priority fixes get implemented, not just listed. The site build or reskin is included rather than quoted separately. Then the recurring work: pages optimized, new service pages built, blog posts, Google Business Profile and citations, schema for Google and AI search, quality first link building, and CRM and revenue tracking installed in accounts you own.
The two channels most clients buy are Chicago SEO services and Google Ads management, usually together, because the tracking only tells the truth when both run through the same dashboard. Every plan carries the same written guarantee: reach the agreed ranking milestone within 90 days, or the remaining months of the term are free until we do.
| What you are deciding | SmartSites | BRD Media |
|---|---|---|
| Size and base | 250 to 999 people, Paramus, New Jersey, founded 2011 | Small senior team, Chicagoland |
| Verticals served | Ten published industry categories, retail through nonprofit | Four: dental, law, medical, med spa |
| Pricing in public | No retainer published. Clutch lists a $1,000 and up minimum project size and a $100 to $149 hourly rate | Three plans published on the site: $2,500, $4,000 and $6,500 a month |
| Contract term | Not published. Ask for it in writing before the second call | Six months, stated on the pricing page |
| Written guarantee | None published | Agreed ranking milestone in 90 days, or the remaining months are free until we hit it |
| Who runs the account | Ask who does the work and who you speak to monthly, then get both names | The people on your first call stay on the account |
| Website work | Sold as a service line, 900 plus sites launched | Build or reskin included in every plan |
| Best fit | Ecommerce and multi industry businesses that want breadth and a large paid media bench | One to ten location practices that want senior attention in one vertical |
Ours are published, so here they are. Wingspan at $2,500 a month, Blackwing at $4,000 a month and The Hunt at $6,500 a month, each on a six month term, with no setup fee and the website build or reskin included. The full inclusion list for each plan is on our pricing page.
SmartSites does not publish retainers. The only public figures are the Clutch listing of a $1,000 and up minimum project size and a $100 to $149 hourly rate, both as shown on September 7, 2026. That is not a knock, plenty of good agencies quote per engagement. It does mean the only comparison you can make before a sales call is a published number against an unpublished one, so ask for theirs in writing early.
Genuinely, a lot of businesses should. If you run ecommerce at volume, if you need paid media across Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn and Amazon at once, if you operate in an industry we do not serve, or if you want a large partner with award coverage and a bench deep enough to absorb staff turnover, SmartSites is a strong fit. They are a Google Premier Partner with more than a decade of history and 900 plus websites launched, and their own published claim is that most of their SEO campaigns double traffic within six months. Ask them to show you that for a client in your vertical at your budget. If they can, take it seriously.
BRD Media is a Chicagoland team working in dental, law, medical and med spa. We rank ourselves for the terms we sell, which is the one proof in this industry that cannot be bought, and our case studies carry client numbers with the campaign windows attached rather than percentages without a denominator. The people on your first call are the people who stay on the account.
Mostly yes, and the platform matters more than the number. On September 7, 2026 SmartSites held 4.9 out of 5 across 366 Clutch reviews and 4.7 across 1,111 on Birdeye, while the Glassdoor 4.1 across 89 reviews is employees rather than clients. The praise concentrates on paid media responsiveness and the criticism on SEO pace. Read the three star reviews first, they are the honest ones.
Not on its own site. As of September 7, 2026 the only public figures are on the Clutch profile: a minimum project size of $1,000 and up and an average hourly rate of $100 to $149. No retainer and no contract term is published anywhere we could find. Ours are published in full, three plans at $2,500, $4,000 and $6,500 a month on a six month term.
It depends on what you want from the relationship. At 250 to 999 people across ten industry categories, SmartSites is built for breadth. If you run one to ten locations in dental, law, medical or med spa and you want the senior people on the account rather than a coordinator between you and them, that is the case for a small team instead.
Four things, in writing: the contract term, who does the work day to day, whether the ad accounts, analytics and website are in your name, and what happens at month four if nothing has moved. Ask both of us the same four questions and compare those answers, not the star ratings.
All figures pulled September 7, 2026. SmartSites review scores and counts come from the public Clutch, Birdeye, Glassdoor and Yelp profiles. The minimum project size, hourly rate range, headcount band, founding year and location come from the Clutch profile listing. Service lines, industry categories, the 900 plus websites figure and the traffic claim come from SmartSites own published services pages. BRD Media pricing, terms and guarantee come from our own pricing page. The audio campaign figures are recomputed from the raw 37,010 row platform export covering November 17, 2024 to February 17, 2025.
We do not link to competitor or review platform pages. Every figure above is checkable by searching the platform name alongside the agency name.
We will look at your market, your competitors and what you are paying now, then tell you plainly whether a large national agency or a senior local team is the better spend for you. If it is not us, we will say so on the call.
Related reading: BRD Media vs Hibu and BRD Media vs LocaliQ.
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