Compare retainers on cost per product per month and on what sits inside the fee, not on the headline price. A flat tier including every service at $800 for one product up to $2,400 for five is a different purchase from an hours-based retainer where scope is metered. Ask which you are buying.
The short version
- Two retainers at the same price can differ by an order of magnitude in scope. Convert both to cost per product per month.
- Metered scope moves the risk to you. Every extra request becomes a negotiation instead of work.
- Ask what capability is actually inside the building. Sourcing and quality control are the usual gaps.
- Check the cash terms, not just the rate. Our first invoice covers the first and last month upfront.
- A retainer should get cheaper per product as you grow. If it scales linearly, you are paying for hours in a costume.
Reduce every offer to one number
Retainer comparison is arithmetic, and most proposals are written to prevent you from doing it. Convert each one to cost per product per month, then list what that buys.
| Retainer model | How it is priced | Cost per product per month | Where the risk sits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat tier by product count | Fixed monthly fee, all services included | Falls as products increase | The agency. Extra work does not raise your invoice |
| Hours or credits | A block of hours per month | Unknowable in advance | You. Scope is metered and overruns are billed |
| Percentage of ad spend | A share of your advertising budget | Rises with your budget | You. Their revenue grows when you spend more |
| Percentage of revenue | A share of sales | Rises with your success | Shared, but only above a real scale |
| Base plus performance bonus | Small fixed fee, upside on a target | Depends entirely on the target's definition | Whoever wrote the target definition |
Our tiers work out at $800 for one product, $1,150 for two, $1,500 for three, $1,950 for four, and $2,400 for five, which is $800 per product at one and $480 per product at five. Six or more we scope on a call. That curve is the point of the model. An agency that has built shared capability gets cheaper per product as you add products, because the second product reuses the research, the creative system, and the supplier relationships from the first. If a retainer costs the same per product at five as at one, you are being sold headcount.
We also apply revenue share only above $50,000 per month in profit, at 10 to 20 percent with no fixed fee, and we consider discounted services for equity case by case. Both are exceptions with a threshold attached rather than the default structure.
The scope question that decides value
Price per product is only half the arithmetic. The other half is what the fee contains, and this is where most comparisons quietly fail.
Ask what capability exists inside the building rather than in the proposal. The gap is almost always upstream. Anyone can manage a listing. Far fewer can help you fix the product itself, negotiate with the factory, or catch a quality problem before it lands in a warehouse and becomes a rating collapse.
We run an in-house sourcing studio in Guangzhou, and our sourcing frameworks were built across more than 500 brands. I mention it here not as a sales point but because it is the clearest example of what "included" should mean. When a client's return rate rises, the answer is usually a manufacturing or packaging fix rather than a marketing one, and a retainer that cannot reach the factory cannot solve it at any price.
So for every retainer you are comparing, list what happens when the problem turns out to be upstream. If the answer is a referral to a third party, that is a real cost you should add to the monthly number.
What is never in a retainer
At any agency worth hiring, these are yours: inventory, Amazon's own seller fees, freight and duties, trademark filing, and advertising spend. A proposal that blurs the fee and the pass-through costs cannot be compared with anything, so ask for a version that separates them before you look at the total.
Also check the cash shape. Ours bills the first and last month upfront on the first invoice, terms are month to month with 30 days' notice, and there is no onboarding fee and no lock-in. Those three details change your first-quarter cash position more than a $200 difference in the monthly rate, and they are the easiest thing to leave off a comparison spreadsheet.
What retainer proposals will not tell you
A retainer with metered hours is a service that gets slower exactly when you need it fastest. The month a listing gets suppressed, or a competitor moves on your price, is the month you need unlimited responsiveness from the people who know your account, and it is the month you will be having a conversation about the hours budget instead.
The second thing: every pricing structure reveals itself at the same moment, which is when the honest advice is to spend less or to stop a product. Ask each candidate what happens to their invoice in that scenario. A flat fee means their revenue does not move, so the advice costs them nothing to give. Any model that shrinks when your spend shrinks will hesitate, and the hesitation will look like optimism.
Related answers
- Pricing models for Amazon brand management retainers
- Full-service Amazon brand management pricing
- Amazon agency vs in-house team: pros and cons
- Month-to-month vs annual Amazon contracts
- Done-for-you Amazon management: the complete guide
Every tier and every included service is published rather than quoted at Flapen.
