Value illustrations

Maktura does not prove revenue and has no paying customers yet. Introduce every number here with:

Say

"Worked illustration, and I'm labelling it as exactly that, because I'm not going to pretend this is a forecast."

One per conversation, matching what the buyer already pays for. Let the buyer supply the number. Work it at the open band. Never present uplift, conversion, "Maktura made you £x", lead attribution or Alex's results as a return.

Against a marketing hire, a ghostwriter or an agency#

Twelve licences, a month and a year: £828 and £9,936 (Spark); £1,068 and £12,816 (Ignition); £1,440 and £17,280 (Momentum); £1,800 and £21,600 (Velocity). A marketing hire: about £40,000 in salary. A LinkedIn ghostwriter: about £1,800 a month for three posts a week for one person (£21,600 a year). Agency retainers: £3,000 to £15,000 a month (£36,000 to £180,000 a year). Ten people for a year: £8,280, £10,680, £14,400 or £18,000 by band.

Say (hire)

"Worked illustration, and I'm labelling it as exactly that. Twelve people on Maktura at [the open band] is [monthly figure] a month, [annual figure] a year. One marketing hire is about forty thousand in salary before you've recruited them, managed them or waited for them to get good. I'm not saying this replaces that person; if you need brand and strategy, it doesn't. It takes the routine work off the twelve people who already have the judgement."

Say (ghostwriter): "Worked illustration. A ghostwriter for one partner is about eighteen hundred pounds a month for three posts a week: over twenty thousand a year, for one person. Ten of your people at [the open band] is [annual figure] a year, and it's their own voice, not the writer's."

Against the tools they already pay for#

Schedulers: about £75 to £190 per user a month; teams typically pay £300 to £1,000 a month across several logins. Ten scheduler users: £750 to £1,900 a month, against £690, £890, £1,200 or £1,500 for ten seats.

Say

"Worked illustration. What do you pay across the tools you use for this today? [Their number.] [The open band] for [n] people is [n x price] a month, in one login, with approvals and your rules checked before anything goes out."

One new client#

Say

"Worked illustration. One licence at [the open band] is [£828, £1,068, £1,440 or £1,800] a year. What's one new client worth to you?"

Then say nothing. They supply the number, so they believe it.

The time argument, at their own rate#

About 50 minutes a day, five days a week, is about 4.2 hours a week; over about 46 working weeks, roughly 190 hours a year. The fifty minutes is the founders' estimate (an hour by hand against ten minutes with Maktura), not measured. Say so if asked.

Ask their rate; give both numbers, never the ratio. Then the honest part:

Say

"To be fair, you're probably not spending an hour a day on this at the moment. If you tried, it may not have survived a busy month, and now it's zero. So the saving isn't really the point. At ten minutes it actually happens, and at an hour it doesn't. You're buying an outcome you're not getting at the moment, for an amount of time you can sustain."

The team version (labelled illustration). Never multiply one person's hour by headcount. Offer four choices: nobody posts ("The damage doesn't show up when you stop. It shows up three months later, and by then you've decided it's the market."); one person does it for everyone (about £40,000 in salary, one voice covering the firm); an agency (£3,000 to £15,000 a month, in the agency's voice); ten minutes each (the founders' estimate).

Say

"Ten minutes is the only thing that comes out of anyone's day, and it's small enough to survive a busy Tuesday. That's what we built it for: telling everyone to post more didn't survive, here or anywhere we've seen it tried by hand."

Doing nothing, costed: every restart pays the effort again and never collects the compounding, and on return the price is whichever band is open, or Standard after 31 December. Once, as fact.

The recruitment illustration#

Use the buyer's consultants, average fee and one extra placement each a year. The £12,000 fee is a placeholder.

Say

"Worked illustration, with your numbers. If it only works for three of your ten consultants, it still pays for itself several times over."

Check first: with the placeholder, three placements are about 4.3 times a year of Spark, 3.4 of Ignition, 2.5 of Momentum, 2.0 of Velocity. Below three times, say "it still pays for itself" and show both numbers. Never say the multiple. Never link this to finding candidates among engagers: engagement data must not be used that way (D1 open).

From around 100 people, the per-seat comparison with a hire runs the other way. Sell governance, voice and the calendar; route Standard pricing to Alex or John.

Comparing costs with alternatives#

Spoken only. Never sent in writing to a prospect: a comparative table in an email is advertising and must be objective and verifiable. Use it when a buyer says "we already pay for tools" or names a tool, introduced with the "Worked illustration" line. Lead with the open band; show Standard only if asked. Never present a founding band as a discount from Standard.

Every competitor figure is a published list price on the date shown, multiplied out for ten people for twelve months. It is arithmetic, not a quote from that vendor. Check before quoting if older than a quarter (anything dated before 19 July 2026). Never convert dollars to pounds in Maktura's favour: convert at the day's rate and say "roughly". Source labels: [V] the vendor's own page; [C] a competing vendor's blog or comparison page (say "published figures suggest"); [A] an aggregator.

Maktura, ten people, one year: Standard £250 a licence, £2,500 a month, £30,000 a year; Velocity £150, £1,500, £18,000; Momentum £120, £1,200, £14,400; Ignition £89, £890, £10,680; Spark £69, £690, £8,280. No annual discount on any founding band. Do not compute Standard's 20% annual rate until John confirms whether £250 is the monthly or annual rate.

Sprout listening, advocacy and premium analytics are quote-only extras, not included above. Hootsuite's full listening source set is reported as Enterprise only. Re-check quarterly: the September figures pass a quarter old from mid-December 2026.

Be honest in the room

Several alternatives are cheaper per head than Maktura, including Paiger's posting module, Postbeam and the entry tiers of Hootsuite, Sprout and Agorapulse. At Standard, Maktura is dearer per seat than the middle tiers of Hootsuite and Sprout. Our case is never "cheapest". It is everyone in the team posting in their own voice, inside your rules, with Holly doing the routine work, and "the software is all in".