Key facts
- Proposal date 2026-09-24, currency USD, sent by email the same day at the owner's instruction; the therapist's name and cities are withheld beyond the two states, and the prices are what was quoted on that date, not an offer.
- Starting fee $1,000 a month with a 12-page website included, $0 setup, $0 upfront, a 30-day guarantee and no contract term; the ladder steps to $2,000 and $3,000 at new-client targets the therapist had stated herself, five to ten to start and fifteen over time.
- The therapist's Psychology Today profile showed a per-session fee and an insurance line while her own new site said self-pay only, a mixed signal the cover named, and the site's emergency note pointed to 911 and the emergency room without the 988 line.
- Two mobile Lighthouse runs on the same day scored 63 and 66 for performance on pages over three megabytes, with the largest contentful paint swinging between runs, so the cover quoted only the two scores and the page weight.
- The offer carried a privacy line as an included row: no health details sent to ad platforms, HIPAA-aware forms, the 988 line on every form, and no client testimonials, which is the rule for advertising a therapy practice.
The business behind this proposal
The client is a solo therapist licensed in New York and South Carolina, seeing private-pay clients online, with a focus on anxiety, relationships and burnout and a side practice of clinical supervision and continuing education. When she first asked for help in July she had only a Psychology Today profile; by the time the proposal was built in September a site was live. The lead came through a proposal request and the proposal was written in the September batch.
A therapy client searches a concern plus a city or state, reads the therapist's page and the directory profile, checks the fee and whether insurance applies, and requests a consultation. Any contradiction between the profile and the site costs the consult.
What we measured before pricing it
Two Lighthouse runs on the home page the same day scored 63 and 66 for mobile performance, both on pages over three megabytes, with the largest contentful paint moving from 7.4 seconds to 3.2 seconds between runs; the cover quoted the two scores and the weight and not the swinging timings.
The Psychology Today profile listed a per-session fee, stated that insurance was accepted and named an insurer, alongside a line saying the therapist was out of network and did not bill insurance directly; the site said self-pay with no insurance plans. The cover named the mixed signal. The site's emergency note referred to 911 and the emergency room and did not mention the 988 line, which the demo added to every form. Those findings, plus the absence of a page per concern and per state, set the scope.
The offer, exactly as quoted
$1,000 a month to start with the new site included, $0 upfront, a 30-day guarantee, month to month, stepping to $2,000 and $3,000 at new-client targets the therapist had named herself: five to ten clients to start and fifteen over time. Ad spend separate.
Included rows: Google Ads on self-pay searches in the two markets, a consultation request on every page, follow-up, the new website, SEO with a page per concern and per state, AI search visibility, Google Business Profile and directories with Psychology Today kept, email marketing for the supervision and continuing-education list only, analytics, and the privacy line: no health details in ad platforms, HIPAA-aware forms, the 988 line on every form, and no testimonials. The demo was a calm 12-page site with three concern pages, a how-sessions-work page for online sessions in both states, a fees page with her figures verbatim, supervision and continuing-education pages, about, FAQ and contact.
What moved the price, and what was excluded
Nothing moved the fee above the standard starting point. What is unusual about this proposal is what it excluded on principle: client testimonials, which the rules for advertising a therapy practice do not permit; any health detail passed to an ad platform; and marketing email to clients, with the email list limited to supervision and continuing-education contacts.
Also excluded: ad spend, paid by the client; the Psychology Today listing fee, which stayed with the therapist; and any promise of client numbers beyond the targets she had already set for herself, which the ladder simply adopted.
What happened, and what a practice can take from it
The proposal was sent on 2026-09-24 at the owner's instruction, with a follow-up scheduled for five days later. What is recorded is the send; the rest is unknown.
For a therapist or small practice, the transferable parts are the consistency check between the directory profile and the site on fees and insurance, the 988 line on every form, a page per concern and per licensed state, and the privacy rules written into the offer rather than assumed. SearchPod's public prices are on the pricing page, and a proposal for your practice takes one business day.
Related questions
No. These are the USD numbers from a real proposal dated 2026-09-24, with names removed. A proposal for your own practice is built from your situation and starts from the public prices at /pricing.
She had stated what a full caseload looked like to her: five to ten new clients to start and fifteen over time. The ladder used those figures rather than inventing targets, and the steps only apply once a target agreed in writing is reached.
The rules for advertising a therapy practice do not permit client testimonials, and the proposal said so as an included row rather than leaving it to chance. The same row excluded health details from ad platforms and required HIPAA-aware forms.
The directory profile showed a fee and an insurance line with an insurer named, next to a note about being out of network, while the site said self-pay only. The cover named it so it could be fixed in both places.
Beyond the send on 2026-09-24 there is nothing to add. No acceptance or decline had reached us when this was written.
a real proposal, anonymized; prices as quoted on that date, not an offer; no client name, person or address is given; SearchPod wrote and sent the proposal described.
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