There are four kinds of shop.
Here's the honest version.
We're not going to pretend we're right for everyone. If you want the cheapest freelancer or the biggest enterprise agency in Newcastle, those have a place. But if you're a £100k–£3m SME in the North East and you want the website, the automations, and the marketing to actually be the same project — keep reading.
The four shops.
Most agency websites refuse to acknowledge the others exist. So here's what they're each actually good at.
Northern
Web + automation + marketing under one roof. SME-focused (£100k–£3m). Fixed-price tiers, named stack, NE-local.
- Northern AI Suite + Make.com named publicly
- Productised pricing from £65/mo
- Vertical playbooks (6 sectors)
- NBSL-eligible (40–50% claim-back)
- WCAG 2.1 AA + semantic HTML
- 13+ years, founder-led
NE Agency
The 20-year-old established shop. Web, SEO, PPC, social, print. Full-service but everything's a project, automations are an afterthought.
- Strong on legacy + experience
- No pricing on site — "contact us"
- Automation treated as add-on
- Stack rarely named publicly
- Project work dominates
- Blog often stale, LinkedIn quiet
Automation-Only
Specialist
The chatbot / AI agent shop. Focused, technical, clear value prop. But they don't do websites and they don't do marketing.
- Strong on automation depth
- No web design offering
- No marketing/SEO/PPC
- Limited case studies public
- You stitch them to other suppliers
- Newer, less established
Freelancer
Cheapest option. Right for tight budgets and small scopes. Wrong when you need a system that survives them being on holiday.
- £1.5k–£5k typical project
- Day-rate, not productised
- Single point of failure
- Usually one discipline only
- No retainer infrastructure
- Capacity-bound
The moats, line by line.
Pulled from a May 2026 audit of 67 North East digital/marketing agencies. ✓ = we found it. — = we didn't.
| Northern | Traditional NE Agency | Automation-Only | Freelancer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stack & Transparency | ||||
| Names Northern AI Suite publicly | ✓ | — | Sometimes | — |
| Names Make.com publicly | ✓ | — | Sometimes | — |
| Pricing visible on website | ✓ | — | — | Day-rate |
| Productised, fixed-price tiers | ✓ | — | — | — |
| Disciplines Under One Roof | ||||
| Web design + build | ✓ | ✓ | — | Solo |
| Automation + CRM + workflows | ✓ | Add-on | ✓ | — |
| SEO | ✓ | ✓ | — | Solo |
| PPC / paid social | ✓ | ✓ | — | Varies |
| Branding + design system | ✓ | ✓ | — | Varies |
| Videography + photography | ✓ | Outsourced | — | — |
| Specialisation & Credibility | ||||
| Vertical playbooks (6 sectors) | ✓ | — | — | — |
| SME-focused (£100k–£3m turnover) | ✓ | All sizes | Varies | ✓ |
| WCAG 2.1 AA + semantic HTML | ✓ | Partial | — | Varies |
| Public case studies with numbers | ✓ | Some | Limited | — |
| Local & Commercial | ||||
| Sunderland HQ, NE-local | ✓ | Sometimes | — | Varies |
| NBSL registered supplier | ✓ | Some | — | — |
| Retainer / recurring revenue model | ✓ | Some | ✓ | — |
| Founder-led delivery (no account hand-off) | ✓ | — | Varies | ✓ |
| System-agnostic (no affiliate kickbacks) | ✓ | Varies | Tied to one vendor | Varies |
The honest bit
If you're an enterprise spending six figures on a single web rebuild, hire Honcho. If you only need a chatbot stitched into your existing site, hire The Bot Factory. If your budget caps at £1,500 and you don't need anything to keep running once it ships, hire a freelancer.
Northern is built for the gap in the middle — SMEs who want web, automation, and marketing as one project, priced like a product, and run by someone whose name you actually know. That's the moat. Everyone else is welcome to copy it; the audit shows none of them have yet.
Right shop
for you?
If yes, the first call's free and there's nothing to sign. If no — even better, we'll tell you who is.