Key Takeaways
- Know which half of the problem you are buying. A monitoring tool measures. A done-for-you service changes what gets measured. Paying for the first and expecting the second is the most common mistake here.
- Start with the free version before you buy either. Asking twenty-five questions by hand costs an afternoon and tells you whether you have a problem worth solving. Do that before any subscription.
- Buy a tool if you already publish well. If you have a marketing habit and just need to know when the picture moves, monitoring is enough and a service is overkill.
- Buy done-for-you if the work will not otherwise happen. The gap is rarely knowledge. It is that nobody writes and publishes the pages, month after month, while running the actual business.
- Neither one can invent proof you do not have. If you have no clients, no reviews, and no track record yet, both are premature. Go and earn the evidence first, and we will tell you that for free.
There are now two kinds of company selling you AI visibility. One sells you a measurement. The other sells you the work.
They are frequently described in the same language, priced against each other, and compared as though they were alternatives. They are not alternatives. They cover different parts of the same job.
This is the honest read on both, including the cases where the correct answer is to buy neither.
What's the difference between a monitoring tool and a done-for-you service?
A monitoring tool tells you what AI assistants say about you. A done-for-you service changes what they say by writing and publishing the evidence. One is measurement, the other is the work.
The confusion is understandable, because both are sold on the same opening line: you are invisible in AI answers and your competitors are not. That part is usually true. What differs is what arrives after you pay.
A useful test before any purchase: ask what will be different in ninety days. With monitoring, you will know more. With done-for-you, something will have been published that was not there before. Both are legitimate purchases. They are not the same purchase.
What a monitoring tool actually does
It asks questions on a schedule and reports what came back. That is genuinely useful, and it is the whole of what most tools promise once you read past the front page.
A good one runs a set of questions across several assistants, records who gets named, tracks the pattern over weeks, and tells you when it shifts. Some also suggest what to do about it, and the quality of those suggestions varies more than any other feature. None of them publish anything on your behalf, because publishing requires facts about your business that no software has.
The honest case for buying one is discipline. Measuring by hand is free and most people stop after twice, which is exactly the point covered in how often you should be checking. If a subscription is what makes the checking happen, the subscription is doing its job.
The honest case against is the same as for any measurement product. A scale does not make you lighter, and there is a version of this purchase where you spend a year watching a number you never act on.
What done-for-you covers, and where each option stops
Six jobs sit between not knowing and being named. Every approach covers the first job. They part company after that, and where they stop is the whole comparison.
- See who gets named today
- Re-measure over time
- Explain why they win
- Decide what to fix first
- Write and publish the fix
- Prove the picture moved
In text, so nothing lives only in the figure. Doing it yourself covers the first two jobs: you can see who gets named today and you can re-measure later. A monitoring tool covers those two and part of the third, because it can show you which sources the assistants used.
Done-for-you is the only one that reaches the fifth job, which is the expensive one: writing and publishing the material that changes the answer. That is a writing and evidence job rather than a software job, which is why it is priced like labour, because it is labour. The Princeton GEO study found that the changes which moved source visibility on its benchmark were all content changes: quotations, cited statistics, and references added to the page itself.
The three options compared
Including the one nobody sells you, which is doing it yourself for nothing. We are not quoting other providers' prices, because they move faster than a blog post can keep up with, and a wrong price is worse than no price.
| Approach | What you get | What it does not do | Effort from you | What it costs | Who it suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | A real picture of who is named today, in your own notes | Nothing is explained, ranked, or published for you | An afternoon each time, and the discipline to repeat it | $0 | Anyone finding out whether they have a problem at all |
| Monitoring software | Scheduled checks across assistants and an alert when the picture moves | Writes nothing, publishes nothing, earns no mentions | Reading the reports and acting on them yourself | A recurring subscription, varies by provider | Businesses already publishing well that need to watch |
| Measured and specified for you | The measurement, the plan, and the page specified line by line | Cannot invent proof you have not earned yet, and does not publish for you by default | Answering questions, then publishing the page | $0 check, $500 audit, then $399/mo to keep watching. Publishing done for you is quoted on request | Established businesses with real proof and no time |
One row of that table is free and most people should start there. That is not modesty. A business that has never checked does not yet know whether it is in the small group who are already named, and buying anything before that is buying blind.
Worth saying plainly: all three approaches are downstream of assistants being able to read you at all. If your site turns crawlers away, which OpenAI documents for its own, or if Google's AI features guidance describes settings you have switched off, then no tool and no service will move anything until that is cleared.
How to choose, honestly
Answer two questions. Do you know your current position, and will the writing actually happen if nobody is paid to do it?
If you do not know your position, buy nothing yet. Run the free test, write down the date and the result, and make the decision with a number in front of you. Plenty of businesses discover they are already named for their main question and can stop reading.
If you know your position and you have a working marketing habit, a monitoring subscription is the cheaper correct answer. You do not need anyone to write for you. You need to know when the picture changes so you can respond.
If you know your position, the gap is real, and the pages will not get written because you are busy running the business, that is when having someone else do it earns its price. We quote that per engagement rather than list it, because it is done by hand and how much of it you need varies. What we will not do, at any price, is promise you a citation by a date. Nobody controls what an assistant says next, and be wary of anyone in this category who tells you otherwise.
And if you are new, with no clients or reviews yet, none of this is your next move. We will tell you that in the fit-check reply rather than take the money, which is the same conclusion reached in do you actually need help with AI visibility. The third option, a one-time diagnosis with no monthly commitment attached, is compared across providers in who offers a one-off audit rather than a retainer.
The free check is the cheapest first step in every case: twenty-five questions, $0, a plain-English readout within the hour. It runs as soon as you ask for it.
Questions we hear the most
What's the difference between an AI visibility monitoring tool and a done-for-you service?
A monitoring tool tells you what AI assistants say about you. A done-for-you service changes what they say by writing and publishing the evidence. One is measurement, the other is the work, and buying the first will not deliver the second.
Do I need a monitoring tool at all?
Not to get started. You can ask the questions yourself for nothing, and a tool earns its subscription once you are checking often enough that doing it by hand has become a chore you keep skipping.
Can I do all of this myself for free?
Yes, and some people should. The measuring is genuinely free, and the fixes are writing tasks rather than technical ones, so the real question is whether the hours exist in your week.
Why do these tools not just fix the problem for me?
Because fixing it means publishing new material about your business, and no tool can write your client results, earn a third-party mention, or update your listings. Measurement software stops where the writing starts.
How much does a done-for-you service cost?
Ours is $0 for the free check and $500 for the full audit. If you want to keep watching afterwards it is $399 a month. Having us do the publishing is quoted per engagement rather than listed, because how much of it a business needs varies enormously. We do not quote other providers here, because prices in this market change faster than a blog post can keep up with.
What if the audit shows I am already winning?
We refund the $500 before you ask. If your audit shows you out-place every competitor we tested, there is nothing worth selling you, and telling you so is the honest end of the engagement.
What does the AnswerHalo audit include that the free check does not?
The free check runs 25 questions on ChatGPT. The $500 audit runs all 125 checks across five AI tools, specifies the page that wins the question you lose most, section by section, and lands in your inbox by this time tomorrow.
What does the AnswerHalo free check include?
It costs $0. We ask ChatGPT 25 real buyer questions from your niche, then email a plain-English readout within the hour: how many answers named you, who was named instead, and the first fix. It runs as soon as you ask for it.
Your buyers are already asking. Find out what AI tells them.
The free check asks ChatGPT 25 real buyer questions about your niche and sends you the report within the hour, at $0. If it shows you are already getting named everywhere, we will say so in plain words.
Get my free check →