AI content system vs. a VA vs. a marketing agency: what does each cost?
Rough 2026 numbers for a solo or small practice, and an honest case against the thing I sell.
| Option | Setup | Ongoing | What you get |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketing agency | $1,000–3,000 | $1,500–5,000/mo | Strategy, execution, reporting. Content usually written by a junior who has never treated anyone. |
| Virtual assistant | — | $800–2,500/mo | A person who schedules and repurposes. Quality depends entirely on the individual. Leaves eventually. |
| AI system (built for you) | $3,000 | $400/mo | A system trained on your voice and clinical material, drafting on a schedule. You approve everything. |
| Build it yourself | Your time | ~$50–100/mo | Full control, and a real learning curve. |
Agency and virtual-assistant ranges were checked against published pricing pages in August 2026. Finally. rates are founding rates, listed in full on the done-for-you and cohort pages. Prices in this category move; this page is re-verified quarterly.
Why is the agency number so high for what you get?
Because you're paying for a team, and most of that team isn't working on you.
The structural problem for practitioners specifically: agencies can't write your clinical content. They'll interview you, produce something adjacent to what you meant, and you'll spend an hour a week correcting it. Or you'll stop correcting it, which is worse, because then it publishes.
Agencies are genuinely good at things practices rarely need first: paid acquisition at volume, brand systems, campaigns with a budget behind them. If you're running ads at meaningful spend, hire one.
What's actually wrong with a VA?
Nothing. A good VA is excellent, and if you have one, keep them. The limitations are structural rather than personal. They can schedule, repurpose, and manage, but they can't originate clinical content, so you're still the bottleneck for the part that's hard. And when they leave, everything they knew about how you work leaves too.
The honest case against what I sell
Three real ones.
It doesn't remove you. You still approve every piece, and you're still the source of the clinical material. If your fantasy is a system that markets your practice while you ignore it, this isn't that, and neither is anything else that's honest.
The setup is real work. The voice specification and source material require several hours of your attention up front. Practices that skip that part get generic output and conclude the tool doesn't work.
If you're not marketing at all yet, start simpler. Write ten posts by hand first. You'll learn what you actually sound like and what your patients respond to, and that makes the system dramatically better later. Automating something you haven't figured out just makes more of the wrong thing, faster.
So which one?
- No marketing at all yet: do it by hand for a couple of months. Come back after.
- You know what to say, no time to say it: this. It's the exact gap it fills.
- Consistent content, ready to scale acquisition: an agency, for ads.
- Drowning in admin more than content: hire a VA first. Different problem.
Two ways to get this
Done-for-you: I build and run the system on your practice. $3,000 build plus $400 a month at the founding rate.
The cohort: six weeks, small group, you build your own with me guiding. $1,500 founding rate.
Not ready for either? The free guide walks through the whole method.