Hibu charges $500/month for a website and an account manager.
We charge $99/month for a website and an AI that never sleeps.
Hibu is one of the largest digital marketing agencies for local businesses. They'll build you a website, manage your listings, run your ads, and handle your reviews — all through account managers and phone calls. It works. But it's slow, expensive, and built for a world before AI search existed.
The agency model worked. Past tense.
Hibu is a managed service. You get an account manager. You call them when you need changes. They do it on their timeline. You pay for every service separately — website, SEO, ads, listings, reputation — and the bill adds up fast.
| What you need | Hibu’s approach | WebsiteTherapy’s approach |
|---|---|---|
| A text change on your site | Call or email your account manager. Wait. | “Change my hours to 9–5.” Done in seconds. |
| A new blog post | Request it. Wait for their content team. Pay extra for SEO content. | “Write a post about managing holiday anxiety.” Review. Approve. Published. |
| Updated business hours | Call. Wait for it to propagate. | Tell your assistant. Listings update automatically. |
| A new service page | Submit a request. 7–10 business days. | “Add a page for EMDR therapy.” Preview. Approve. Live. |
| Social media posts | Extra service, extra cost. | Automated from your blog content. 9 platforms. |
| Understanding your AI visibility | They recently started offering this. | Built into every page from day one. Score, monitoring, optimization. |
The agency model charges you for human time. We replaced the human with an AI that works 24/7, responds in seconds, and costs a fraction of what an account manager does.
Hibu won't tell you what it costs. We will.
Hibu uses custom pricing — you can't see costs until you sit through a sales call. Based on reviews and third-party reports:
| Service | Hibu (estimated) | WebsiteTherapy |
|---|---|---|
| Website design | Up to $499 one-time setup | $0 setup |
| Website monthly | ~$99/mo | Included in all plans |
| SEO | $300–500+/mo add-on | Included — automatic on every page |
| Listings management | Included (60+ directories) | Included — 5 platforms AI checks + agent-guided for therapy directories |
| Reputation/reviews | Included (monitoring + response) | Included — collection, monitoring, smart routing |
| Social media | Extra cost | Included — automated across 9 platforms |
| Email/SMS marketing | Included (basic automation) | Included — newsletters, segmentation, scheduling |
| Content writing | Extra cost | Included — AI writes blog posts in your voice |
| Ad campaigns | $300–500+/mo (core revenue) | Not yet — researching ROI for therapists |
| Contract | 12-month minimum | No contract. Cancel anytime. |
| Total typical cost | $500–1,000+/mo | $99–199/mo |
Hibu's core business is selling you ad campaigns. The website and listings are the entry point — the real revenue comes from managing your Google Ads and Facebook Ads budget.
Feature by feature. No sales call required.
| Feature | Hibu | WebsiteTherapy |
|---|---|---|
| Site management | Account manager (call/email, wait) | AI assistant (chat, instant) |
| Site updates | Request through account manager | Tell your assistant, see preview, approve |
| Design | Custom-built by their designers (7–10 days) | 10 themes + AI-customized in conversation |
| AI discoverability | Recently added: llms.txt, LLM data submissions | Architecture-native: entity.json → 25+ JSON-LD types, AI sitemaps, GEO optimization |
| Structured data | Schema markup (basic) | 25+ JSON-LD types auto-generated from practice identity |
| AI crawler access | Recently updated | Explicit from day one — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Google AI all welcomed |
| Listings sync | 60+ directories (via data aggregators) | 5 platforms AI checks (automated) + Foursquare + therapy-specific directories |
| Content creation | Extra service | AI writes blog posts, social, newsletters — you review and approve |
| Content velocity | Limited by human capacity | 3+ posts/week achievable — AI handles 80%, you add 20% |
| Visitor chat | No AI visitor agent | 24/7 AI visitor agent — answers questions, captures leads, books appointments |
| SEO | Managed SEO (add-on cost) | Automatic — every page optimized at build time |
| GEO (AI search optimization) | New — basic LLM submissions | Built in — statistics, FAQ sections, tables, interrogative headers, answer-ready content |
| Entity graph | No canonical entity definition | entity.json — single source of truth powers website, schema, listings, AI visibility |
| Review management | Automated requests + monitoring | Collection, smart routing (GBP for Google AI, Yelp for Perplexity), ethical pacing |
| Newsletters | Basic email automation | AI-drafted, segmented, scheduled, performance tracked |
| Social media | Extra cost | Automated from blog content — 9 platforms, AI verification signals |
| Courses / products | Limited e-commerce (10 products max) | Stripe-gated courses, digital products, sales pages |
| Image generation | No | Theme-consistent AI illustrations + professional headshot enhancement |
| Accessibility | Unknown | WCAG 2.1 AA baked in via React Aria |
| Data portability | Data stays with Hibu | Full export anytime — GitHub repo, CSV, JSON. You own everything. |
| Version history | No | Git-backed. Undo any change. Preview old versions. |
| Pricing transparency | Custom (requires sales call) | Published: $99 / $149 / $199 per month |
| Contract | 12-month minimum | No minimum. 14-day free trial. |
They added AI visibility. We were born with it.
Hibu recently started taking AI search seriously — they retroactively installed llms.txt files and began submitting business data directly to LLMs. That's a start. But there's a difference between adding AI optimization to an existing platform and building a platform around AI optimization.
| AI visibility signal | Hibu | WebsiteTherapy |
|---|---|---|
| Structured data (JSON-LD) | Basic schema markup | 25+ types auto-generated from entity.json — MedicalBusiness, Person, FAQPage, HowTo, Course, and more |
| Entity graph | No canonical entity | entity.json defines your practice once → powers everything |
| llms.txt | Retroactively installed | Auto-generated for every site |
| AI crawler configuration | Recently updated | robots.txt explicitly allows all AI crawlers from day one |
| GEO-optimized content | Basic content optimization | Statistics in content (+35% visibility), FAQ sections (47% of AI-cited pages), tables (39%), interrogative headers (58%) |
| Bing indexing | Unknown | Sitemap submitted + IndexNow protocol for instant indexing (ChatGPT Search uses Bing) |
| NAP consistency monitoring | Across 60+ directories | Weekly audit across all platforms, auto-flagging drift |
| AI readiness score | No | 20-signal weighted score — know exactly where you stand |
| A2A agent endpoint | No | /agent/card.json for AI agent interoperability |
| Wikidata integration | No | Agent-guided creation for Knowledge Panel visibility (3.6x AI boost) |
Hibu's AI visibility story is “we're working on it.” Ours is “it's the foundation everything else is built on.”
An agency can't write 3 blog posts a week for $500/month.
Content velocity is one of the strongest signals for AI citation — 3+ articles per week correlates with 2.7x higher AI citation rates. Fresh content matters even more: Perplexity drops citations 40% after 30 days.
Hibu's agency model can't deliver this at their price point. Human writers, content teams, review cycles — the math doesn't work.
WebsiteTherapy's AI assistant drafts blog posts in your voice, formats them for both human readers and AI engines, and schedules them on your behalf. You spend 15–30 minutes reviewing and adding your clinical insight. The AI handles the other 80%.
The result: your site stays fresh, your AI citations stay active, and your practice stays visible — without hiring a content team.
What happens when you leave matters.
Hibu customers report that when they cancel, their data stays with Hibu. Customer contact information, website content, and listing management history — gone. Multiple BBB complaints and Consumer Affairs reviews cite billing disputes, cancellation difficulties, and charges for services after attempting to cancel.
WebsiteTherapy is the opposite:
- Your website content lives in a GitHub repository you can export anytime
- Your subscriber lists, leads, and conversation history export as CSV/JSON
- Your images and uploads are downloadable from cloud storage
- Your domain stays yours — we never own it
No contract. No cancellation fees. No hostage data.
If we don't earn your business every month, you should leave. And you should be able to take everything with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Hibu offer AI search optimization?
Recently, yes. They’ve started submitting business data to LLMs and installing llms.txt files. But their approach is supplemental — adding AI features to a traditional agency platform. WebsiteTherapy’s entire architecture is built around AI discoverability: entity graph, 25+ schema types, GEO-optimized content, AI readiness scoring. It’s the difference between a gas car with a hybrid battery and an electric vehicle built from the ground up.
Hibu manages 60+ directory listings. You only manage 5. Isn’t that worse?
Hibu’s “60+ directories” works through data aggregators — they submit to a few large data networks that trickle down to dozens of smaller directories. Most of those directories have zero impact on AI recommendations. AI engines check 5 platforms: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Yelp, Foursquare, and Apple Maps. We keep those 5 in automated sync, plus agent-guided management for therapy-specific directories (TherapyDen, Psychology Today). We’d rather keep 5 platforms perfectly consistent than have 60 listings with drifting data.
Hibu runs ad campaigns. You don’t. Don’t I need ads?
Hibu’s core business is managing paid ad campaigns — Google Ads, Facebook Ads, display advertising. That’s where most of their revenue comes from. Whether paid ads actually deliver meaningful ROI for therapists is something we’re actively researching — the data is mixed, and many therapists report spending $300–500/month on ads with underwhelming results. Our current approach: make your website so good at organic and AI discovery that you may not need to pay for every click. If you want ads alongside your WebsiteTherapy site, any ads specialist can point campaigns to your site and your conversion rates will be strong.
Is Hibu a bad company?
No. Hibu is a large, established company that serves hundreds of thousands of small businesses. They have real expertise in local marketing and paid advertising. But their model — agency-managed, phone-based, custom-priced — was built for a different era. If you want someone to manage everything for you and you’re comfortable with the cost and the pace, Hibu works. If you want to manage your own site through conversation, pay less, move faster, own your data, and be built for AI search from the ground up — that’s what we offer.
Can I keep my Hibu ad campaigns and use WebsiteTherapy for my website?
Absolutely. You can point any existing ad campaigns to your WebsiteTherapy site. Your conversion rates will likely improve — faster load times, AI visitor agent, better structured landing pages. We’re also researching whether to add ad management as a future feature.
I’m in a 12-month contract with Hibu. What should I do?
Start your free 14-day trial with us now. Get your site built and ready. When your Hibu contract ends, you’re already set up. Your domain switches in minutes.
Stop paying agency prices for changes you could make yourself in seconds.
$99/month. No setup fee. No contract. No sales call. Your AI assistant builds your site, writes your content, manages your listings, and captures leads 24/7 \u2014 for a fraction of what Hibu charges.
Want to see it in action? Ask our AI assistant anything. It's the same one that will manage your website.