# What marketing and sales really cost a Quebec SMB in 2026: agency, in-house team or software

> Agency, in-house team or software: a costing method, cost lines, payroll taxes and labelled 2026 estimates for Quebec service businesses. Run your own numbers.

Updated on October 15, 2026 · https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/marketing-and-sales-cost-smb

According to Pilotiko's estimate (2026 pricing study), a full marketing and sales capacity costs $16,688 to $55,023 a month through agencies and tools, about $83,795 a month with an in-house team during office hours, and $157,337 a month for 24/7 coverage. Your figure depends on your hours and mandates.

## In short
- Add up four cost families: people, outside suppliers, tools and the owner's coordination time.
- A full-time employee works about 1,921 hours a year, not 2,080. Every hourly comparison starts there.
- Staffing one position 24/7 takes about 4.56 full-time people (Pilotiko estimate).
- Compare equivalent capacity (same tasks, same hours), never a subscription price against a salary.
- Software does not cover everything: at Pilotiko, advertising, prospecting, phone reception and email marketing are still marked Coming soon.

## Why are marketing and sales costs so hard to compare?

Because the three options sell different things: an agency bills for deliverables, an in-house team costs hours, and software charges a subscription. To compare them, convert everything to one unit: the work capacity covered each month.

Most owners of service businesses put one visible number next to another: an agency quote, a posted salary, a subscription price. Those numbers do not measure the same thing. A $3,000 monthly agency retainer might cover four posts and a report. A marketing coordinator's salary buys roughly 37 hours of work a week, but nothing at night or on weekends. A software subscription covers some tasks around the clock and others not at all.

This guide offers a plain method: list the marketing and sales tasks your business needs, estimate the hours they take, then price each way of covering them. Benchmark figures come from Pilotiko's 2026 pricing study and are labelled as estimates. The assumptions are laid out in the [study on the cost of a marketing team in Quebec](https://app.pilotiko.com).

This page anchors a series. To read an agency quote line by line, see [what a marketing agency costs in Quebec](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/marketing-agency-cost-quebec). To judge a software purchase, see [how to calculate software ROI](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/calculate-software-roi).

## Which tasks count as marketing and sales in a service business?

Name the work before you price it. In a service business (plumbing, landscaping, a clinic, an accounting firm, renovation), marketing and sales go well beyond advertising. They include your online presence, answering enquiries, following up on quotes and bringing past customers back.

- **Getting found**: website, ranking in Google and in AI answers, Google Business Profile, reviews. See the [guide to Google and AI visibility](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/google-and-ai-visibility).
- **Producing content**: posts, articles, job-site photos, newsletter, editorial calendar.
- **Paid reach**: Google Ads or Meta campaigns, media budget and campaign management.
- **Answering**: calls, emails, web forms and messages, often outside office hours.
- **Converting**: quotes, follow-ups, booking and confirmations.
- **Retaining**: maintenance reminders, review requests, offers to existing customers, all within CASL rules.
- **Steering**: reports, tracking where leads come from, budget decisions.

## Which cost lines should you add up?

Four families: people (wages and payroll costs), outside suppliers (agencies, freelancers), tools (software and subscriptions) and internal coordination time. The last one is almost always left out.

| Family | What you pay for | How to measure it | Often forgotten |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house staff | Wages, employer contributions, vacation, statutory holidays, training | Cost per hour actually worked | Paid hours that are not worked |
| Agencies and freelancers | Fees, retainers, onboarding charges, overtime | Cost per deliverable and per month | Revisions and out-of-scope charges |
| Media budget | Ad spend paid to Google, Meta or others | Cost per enquiry obtained | Media spend comes on top of management fees |
| Tools | Website, CRM, booking, newsletter, phone system, reporting | Monthly cost per user or per volume | Volume overages and integrations |
| Internal coordination | Owner or staff time spent briefing, approving, correcting | Hours per week × hourly cost | Rarely counted, often the heaviest |

Pilotiko classification grid, no amounts: amounts depend on your situation.

## How do you calculate the true cost of an in-house employee?

Start from gross pay, add the employer's contributions, then divide by the hours actually worked in a year. That loaded hourly cost is what you compare with the other options.

In Quebec, employers pay several contributions on top of wages: the Québec Pension Plan, the Québec Parental Insurance Plan, Employment Insurance, the Health Services Fund, the labour standards contribution and CNESST premiums. Rates change every year; the 2026 details are in the [study on the cost of an employee in Quebec in 2026](https://app.pilotiko.com), and you can run the numbers with the [employee cost calculator](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/tools/employee-cost-quebec).

One worked figure here, to show the method: Employment Insurance. In Quebec for 2026, the employee rate is 1.30% up to maximum insurable earnings of $68,900, and the employer pays 1.4 times the employee premium, up to $1,253.98 per employee [3]. The other contributions stack the same way.

**Example assumption: floor hourly cost of a marketing coordinator**

- Gross annual salary (example assumption, not a market wage) : $60,000
- + Employer EI share: $60,000 × 1.30% × 1.4 : $1,092
- = Annual cost before other contributions : $61,092
- ÷ Hours actually worked per year (see next section) : 1,921 h
- **= About $31.80 per hour worked, before QPP, QPIP, HSF, labour standards and CNESST**

## How many hours does a full-time employee really work in a year?

About 1,921 hours, using the assumption in Pilotiko's pricing study: 2,080 paid hours, minus two weeks of vacation, eight statutory holidays and roughly 15 hours of other absences.

Quebec's Act respecting labour standards sets the regular work week at 40 hours for overtime purposes [1]. It lists seven statutory holidays: January 1, Good Friday or Easter Monday, the Monday before May 25, July 1, Labour Day, Thanksgiving and December 25 [1]. Quebec's National Holiday Act adds June 24 [2]. That makes eight days.

For vacation, the Act provides at least two continuous weeks after one year of uninterrupted service and three weeks after three years, with vacation pay of 4% or 6% of gross wages [1]. Someone with more than three years of service works even fewer hours than our calculation shows.

**Pilotiko estimate, 2026 pricing study: available hours per person**

- Paid hours: 40 h × 52 weeks : 2,080 h
- − Vacation: 2 weeks × 40 h : − 80 h
- − Statutory holidays: 8 days × 8 h : − 64 h
- − Other absences (sickness, training), assumption : − 15 h
- **= 1,921 hours actually worked per year**

## Why does staffing one position 24/7 take 4.56 people?

Because a year has 8,760 hours and one person works about 1,921 of them. Divide 8,760 by 1,921 and you get 4.56 full-time people for a single position.

The quick calculation, 168 ÷ 40 = 4.2, underestimates the need. It assumes everyone works 52 weeks with no vacation, holidays or absences. Yet evenings, nights and weekends are exactly when service businesses get emergency calls and quote requests.

That figure explains why so few small businesses answer around the clock: one 24/7 seat costs more than four salaries, before any evening or night premiums. Test your own assumptions (opening hours, vacation weeks) with the [24/7 staffing calculator](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/tools/staff-a-position-24-7), or read the [study on covering a position 24/7](https://app.pilotiko.com).

**Pilotiko estimate, 2026 pricing study: people per 24/7 position**

- Hours to cover: 24 h × 365 days : 8,760 h
- ÷ Available hours per person : 1,921 h
- **= 4.56 full-time people for one always-open position**

## What does an in-house marketing and sales team cost during office hours?

About $83,795 a month according to Pilotiko's estimate (2026 pricing study), wages and payroll costs included, for a team covering marketing and sales functions during regular office hours.

That amount describes a complete team: content, online presence, advertising, answering enquiries, sales follow-up and reporting. Few service businesses hire all of it. Most combine one or two staff, an agency and a few tools. The figure is a benchmark for full capacity, not a likely invoice.

The in-house advantage is real: your people know your customers, your services and your territory. So are the limits: they stop at 5 p.m., take vacations, and must be recruited, trained and replaced when they leave. Turnover costs are not in the monthly figure.

## What does the same capacity cost when bought from agencies and tools?

From $16,688 to $55,023 a month according to Pilotiko's estimate (2026 pricing study), with a mid-range scenario of $28,426. The spread comes from the number of mandates, agency size and the ad management load.

This figure adds up separate mandates (search, content, ads, social media, sometimes an answering service) plus the tool subscriptions they need. It excludes the media budget paid to Google or Meta, which comes on top of management fees.

We do not publish specific agency rates: they vary with every mandate and there is no official schedule to cite. The sound practice is to get at least two detailed quotes and compare them line by line. The guide on [marketing agency costs](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/marketing-agency-cost-quebec) gives you a list of questions for doing exactly that.

## How do you compare an agency, an in-house team and software side by side?

Put the options in one table with the same columns: monthly cost, hours covered, included tasks and limits. A comparison only makes sense at equivalent capacity.

| Option | Monthly cost (benchmark) | Hours covered | What is included | Main limits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agencies and tools bought separately | $16,688 to $55,023 (mid-range $28,426) | Per contract | Specialized mandates, outside expertise | Coordinating suppliers, media budget extra |
| In-house team | $83,795 | Office hours | Deep knowledge of the business | Hiring, absences, nothing overnight |
| In-house team covered 24/7 (hybrid scenario) | $157,337 | 168 h a week | Round-the-clock response | High cost, 4.56 people per position |
| Pilotiko | From $4,900 | Agents prepare work continuously; a person approves | Website, Google and AI visibility, content, booking, assignment, reports | Advertising, prospecting, reception, email marketing: Coming soon |

First three rows: Pilotiko estimate, 2026 pricing study. Pilotiko: starting price before taxes, setup fees extra; see pricing at the end of this page.

## What does this calculation look like for an actual service business?

Two things stand out. First, more than a fifth of the total is internal time, the line people forget when they compare a quote with a subscription. Second, nothing covers enquiries on evenings and weekends. If quote requests mostly arrive then, real capacity is lower than the budget suggests.

**Example: a 12-employee landscaping company (hypothetical amounts)**

The company hires an agency for search and two posts a week, pays for a few tools and asks its office administrator to spend ten hours a week on marketing. The amounts below are example assumptions, not market rates.

- Agency retainer, search and content (assumption) : $3,000
- Tools: CRM, booking, newsletter (assumption) : $450
- Internal coordination: 10 h × $31.80 × 52 ÷ 12 : $1,378
- Google Ads media budget (assumption) : $1,500
- **= $6,328 a month, including $1,378 of internal time that appears on no invoice**

## Which hidden costs are most often overlooked?

- **The owner's time.** Briefing, reviewing, approving and correcting takes hours every week. Count them at the loaded hourly cost.
- **Setup.** Agency onboarding fees, website migration, tool configuration, training.
- **Turnover.** A departure means recruiting, training and weeks of reduced capacity.
- **Lost enquiries.** An unanswered call on Saturday costs nothing on paper, but it can cost a contract.
- **Low-value content.** Google defines scaled content abuse as generating many pages mainly to manipulate rankings, including with generative AI tools, without adding value for people [8]. Paying for that kind of content can hurt rather than help.
- **Compliance.** Following CASL and Quebec's Law 25 takes time and tooling (consent records, unsubscribes, an incident register).

## Which rules govern marketing and sales in Quebec?

Two laws hit the budget directly: Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) for commercial emails and texts, and Quebec's Law 25 for personal information. Both require processes, which means time or tools.

CASL prohibits sending a commercial electronic message without the recipient's express or implied consent. Every message must identify the sender, give contact information and include an unsubscribe mechanism [5]. The administrative penalty can reach $1,000,000 for an individual and $10,000,000 for a business [6]. A cheap newsletter that ignores these rules ends up being expensive.

Law 25 governs how you collect and use customers' personal information, including in your marketing tools. The guide [Law 25 for service businesses](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/quebec-law-25-for-service-businesses) sums up the practical obligations.

## What can software do today, and what can it not do yet?

Software handles repetitive, continuous work well: website, content, booking, assignment, reports. It does not replace judgment: at Pilotiko, anything touching a customer, money or a send waits for a person's approval.

According to Statistics Canada, 25.2% of businesses in Canada planned, in the third quarter of 2026, to use AI to produce goods or deliver services over the following 12 months, up from 14.5% a year earlier [4]. Among businesses with 20 to 99 employees, the share rose from 15.0% to 32.8% [4]. AI is entering many small business budgets; the real question is which tasks to hand it.

Today, Pilotiko builds and hosts your website, generates structured data, the sitemap and the llms.txt file, audits your current site, drafts content you approve, runs online booking from real open slots and proposes assignments based on calendars and workload. The AI agents prepare the work; a person approves it. Email and SMS confirmations and reminders are being commissioned: the code is ready, but nothing is sent yet.

> Coming soon at Pilotiko, so not part of an honest comparison yet: [ad management](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/product/advertising) for Google Ads and Meta Ads, new-customer prospecting, the AI phone receptionist, email marketing and sequences, and commission-based billing.

## Why talk about equivalent capacity instead of savings?

Because savings assume two options produce exactly the same result, which is rarely true. An agency brings deep advertising expertise; an in-house team knows your customers; software brings orchestration, speed, continuity and parallel work. No option wins on every count.

So we compare equivalent capacity: for a given set of tasks and hours, what does each way of covering them cost? The answer depends on your numbers. The [agency vs in-house vs software calculator](https://app.pilotiko.com) lets you swap every assumption for your own.

To judge whether a spend is worth it, use the return on investment formula: net profit divided by total capital invested, times 100 [7]. The guide on [calculating software ROI](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/calculate-software-roi) applies it step by step.

## Where should you start to build your own budget?

This takes half a day. It produces a budget you can defend to a partner, a banker or an accountant, and it stops you from comparing an agency quote with a salary without accounting for hours. To widen the lens to the whole business, read the guide to [automating a service business](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/guides/automate-a-service-business).

Pilotiko's prices, including setup fees, are on the [pricing page](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/pricing).

1. **List the tasks** — Go through the seven task families and tick the ones you need. Note the hours when enquiries actually come in.
2. **Estimate the hours** — For each task, estimate the hours per week. Separate office hours from evenings and weekends.
3. **Work out your loaded hourly cost** — Wages plus employer contributions, divided by about 1,921 hours. The [employee cost calculator](https://app.pilotiko.com/en/tools/employee-cost-quebec) does the math.
4. **Request comparable quotes** — Send the same task list to at least two agencies and compare deliverables, not just price.
5. **Add coordination time** — Include the hours you or a staff member will spend briefing and approving, whatever the option.
6. **Compare at equivalent capacity** — Line the options up in one table with the same tasks and hours, then decide. Redo the math after three months of real data.

## Frequently asked questions

### How much should a Quebec small business spend on marketing?

There is no official percentage that fits every business, and we do not publish unsourced figures. Start from the tasks and hours you need, then price the options. Pilotiko's calculator helps you do that with your own data.

### Is hiring cheaper than paying an agency?

It depends on the hours and tasks to cover. An employee costs wages and payroll contributions but works only about 1,921 hours a year; an agency bills for specific deliverables. Compare both at equivalent capacity before deciding.

### Where do the $16,688 to $55,023 monthly figures come from?

They are Pilotiko's 2026 pricing study estimates for assembling a full marketing and sales capacity from agencies and tools. The mid-range scenario is $28,426 a month. They are not quotes, so always get your own.

### Why does a 24/7 position need 4.56 people?

A year has 8,760 hours and a full-time employee works about 1,921 of them once vacation, eight statutory holidays and absences are removed. 8,760 divided by 1,921 gives 4.56. It is a Pilotiko estimate based on the minimums in Quebec's labour standards.

### Is ad spend included in agency fees?

Usually not: the media budget goes to Google, Meta or another platform, and management fees are added on top. Ask each agency to show both amounts separately in its quote. Otherwise the comparison is skewed.

### Which payroll costs does a Quebec employer pay?

Employers pay QPP, QPIP, Employment Insurance and Health Services Fund contributions, the labour standards contribution and CNESST premiums, among others. In 2026, the employer's EI share in Quebec tops out at $1,253.98 per employee. Pilotiko's employee cost study covers the other rates.

### Can software do all the work of a marketing team?

No. Software handles repetitive, continuous tasks well, but judgment, customer relationships and approvals stay human. At Pilotiko, advertising, prospecting, phone reception and email marketing are still marked Coming soon.

### Does Pilotiko promise to cost less than an agency?

No. We talk about equivalent capacity: what the same work, at the same hours, would cost another way. The outcome depends on your needs and numbers, and some tasks still call for an agency or a person.

### Should CASL be part of the marketing budget?

Yes. Every commercial email or text needs consent, sender identification and an unsubscribe mechanism. Managing consent takes time or a tool, and a violation can cost a business up to $10,000,000.

## Sources

1. LégisQuébec, « Act respecting labour standards (CQLR, c. N-1.1) », https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/en/document/cs/N-1.1 (accessed on 2026-10-15)
2. LégisQuébec, « Loi sur la fête nationale (RLRQ, c. F-1.1) », https://www.legisquebec.gouv.qc.ca/fr/document/lc/F-1.1 (accessed on 2026-10-15)
3. Canada Revenue Agency, « EI premium rates and maximums (including Quebec) », https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/payroll/payroll-deductions-contributions/employment-insurance-ei/ei-premium-rates-maximums.html (accessed on 2026-10-15)
4. Statistics Canada, « Analysis on planned use of artificial intelligence by businesses in Canada, third quarter of 2026 », https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2026013-eng.htm (accessed on 2026-10-15)
5. Justice Laws (Justice Canada), « Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (S.C. 2010, c. 23), sections 1 to 9 », https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-1.6/page-1.html (accessed on 2026-10-15)
6. Justice Laws (Justice Canada), « Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation, section 20 (administrative monetary penalties) », https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-1.6/page-3.html (accessed on 2026-10-15)
7. BDC, « What is return on investment (ROI)? », https://www.bdc.ca/en/articles-tools/entrepreneur-toolkit/templates-business-guides/glossary/return-on-investment (accessed on 2026-10-15)
8. Google Search Central, « Spam policies for Google web search », https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials/spam-policies (accessed on 2026-10-15)