Burnswright vs. a Twin Cities agency.
The Minneapolis / Saint Paul agencies are good at what they do. They're also priced for clients who can carry their overhead. For most mid-market Midwest operators, the math doesn't work.
We don't have a problem with Twin Cities agencies. They do real work for real clients. Their typical engagement is $35-80k for a brand+web project, 3-6 month timeline, account team of 4-6 people, formal discovery phase, decks, brand books, the whole apparatus.
If your operation is at the size where an agency's machinery pays for itself — Fortune 500 division, multi-state hospitality group, $50M+ revenue — that's the right tool.
If you're a mid-market operator ($1-30M revenue) in a Midwest market, the agency invoice is going to sit on top of agency overhead you don't get value from. Their producer's time, their account director's time, their strategy team's time — all of it on your bill. Our equivalent engagement is one founder-led shop, four to six weeks, fixed fee in the $8-22k band. Same deliverable, different cost structure.
How the two compare
| Dimension | a Twin Cities agency | Burnswright |
|---|---|---|
| Typical project cost (brand + site) | $35-80k | $8-22k fixed |
| Typical timeline | 3-6 months | 4-6 weeks |
| Team size | 4-8 people (AD, strategy, design, dev, PM) | Founder + 1-2 specialists when needed |
| Discovery phase | Paid, 2-6 weeks, deck-driven | 1-hour call, free, fixed-fee proposal within 24h |
| Code & brand ownership | Usually yours, sometimes with proprietary hooks | Yours outright, no hooks, transferable on day 1 |
| Post-launch retainer | $3-10k/month typical | $150-300/month typical · scope-dependent |
Where a Twin Cities agency is the better tool
- Large project scale — they have the team to staff a multi-product rollout simultaneously
- Brand-heavy work — full brand systems with naming, voice, brand guidelines spanning hundreds of pages
- Stakeholder management — they can run a 12-person client team through a 6-month engagement
- Specialty niches — they may have deep specialty in a vertical we haven't shipped in yet
- Conference photo ops — "we work with [big agency]" is a status signal that matters in some industries
Where we're the better tool
- Cost — same scope, 3-4× lower invoice. Period.
- Timeline — 4-6 weeks vs. 3-6 months. We start the day you sign.
- Direct work — the person scoping is the person building. No account-director game of telephone.
- Ownership — code, brand, every account in your name on day one. Agencies often keep proprietary hooks that lock you in.
- Honesty — we'll tell you when a project is out of our depth and recommend someone else. Agencies sell every project that walks in the door.
Who should pick what
If your project is a brand+web rollout for a 12-stakeholder operation with a $50k+ budget and a need for senior strategy work, hire a Twin Cities agency. They're built for it.
If your project is a marketing site, brand refresh, or custom booking platform for a mid-market operator with a 1-3-person decision team, we're going to beat the agency on cost and timeline without losing anything on the deliverable. We've done it for operators who've been quoted both ways.
What buyers ask after reading this
Is this just a cheaper version of the same work?
Same deliverable, different cost structure. We don't carry the agency machinery (account directors, strategists, project managers) you'd be paying for in their invoice — those roles either fold into one person (the founder) or aren't needed at our scale. The website you launch with us is comparable to what they'd launch.
What if I've already paid for an agency discovery and want to skip ahead?
Send us the discovery output. We'll honor what's been done, scope from there, and credit the discovery work we don't have to redo. Most agency discovery has 60-70% reusable output.
Send us the a Twin Cities agency quote.
We'll come back within 24 hours with our own proposal and an honest read on which one's the better fit for your operation. No discovery decks, no paid scopes.