A $2 million HVAC company in Phoenix does about $250,000 in July.
The same company does about $85,000 in October.
Same trucks. Same techs. Same overhead sitting there whether the phone rings or not. The only thing that changed is the thermometer — and every HVAC owner reading this already knows the shape of that curve, because you live inside it every single year.
Now go look at your marketing agency’s invoice. July, when you’re turning work away: the retainer. October, when the phone goes quiet: the same retainer. February, when your bank account is at its thinnest: the same retainer again. Your revenue swings 60% across the year and that number never moves — flat as a dead thermostat, usually locked into a 12-month contract that makes sure you can’t do anything about it.
That’s the part of this industry we think is broken. So we priced our plans differently.
The October phone call every agency dreads
Here’s what happens every year, in thousands of shops just like yours.
Peak season ends in September. Cash gets tight in October — you’re still carrying summer payroll into shoulder-season revenue. You look at your fixed costs, and the marketing retainer is the easiest line to cut. So you call the agency to pause or cancel.
And the agency — contract or not — tells you that cutting marketing in the off-season is the worst mistake you can make. Annoyingly, they’re right. Winter is when next summer’s rankings get built. But being right doesn’t put cash in your account in October. So you either churn, or you spend the whole winter resenting an invoice that feels completely disconnected from your reality.
The big agencies solved this problem — for themselves — with 12-month lock-in contracts. Nobody solved it for the contractor.
What we do instead: a season rate and a winter rate
Every Zelipt plan has two prices, set on a calendar, written into your agreement before you ever sign a thing:
| Plan | Season rate (Apr–Sep) | Winter rate (Oct–Mar) |
|---|---|---|
| Foundation | $3,500/mo | $2,500/mo |
| Growth | $7,500/mo | $5,500/mo |
| Scale | $11,500+/mo | $8,500+/mo |
It’s not a promotion. It’s not a discount you have to haggle for. It’s not some “dynamic price” an algorithm changes on you when you’re not looking. Two numbers, on a calendar, that never move mid-season. Your bill drops in October because your call volume drops in October — and it steps back up in April, right as the first heat wave starts printing money for you again.
Why the two rates are different (it’s the work, not the weather)
We don’t charge more in summer because you’re busy. That would just be us taxing your good months. We charge more in summer because the summer work is genuinely heavier — and less in winter because the winter work is different, not optional.
What the season rate covers (April–September): your ad accounts get managed at roughly three times the intensity. Cost-per-click in HVAC inflates 20 to 40% in peak season, and an unmanaged account bleeds money at exactly the moment every click is most valuable. Add live budget steering through heat waves and monsoon surges, call-volume tracking, and weekly reporting.
What the winter rate covers (October–March): this is the build season. Site and SEO work that decides where you rank next June. Review-engine campaigns while your techs still have a fresh stack of happy customers. Maintenance-plan marketing — the exact thing that smooths out your own winter revenue. And spring pre-booking campaigns in February and March, so April starts loaded instead of cold.
Winter isn’t half the work. It’s the half of the work that pays off in June. You just pay less for it in the months your cash flow is thinnest.
”Does anybody else do this?” No. We checked.
We looked. The big home-services agencies charge somewhere between $2,500 and $15,000 a month, flat, most of them behind annual contracts. Plenty of them will happily scale your ad budget up in May — but the agency’s own fee never moves. As far as we can find, a retainer actually priced to the HVAC season doesn’t exist anywhere else in this market.
We can do it because we already run month-to-month after a 3-month minimum. We don’t need a contract to trap you through the slow months. The pricing just stops pretending your business is flat when we both know it isn’t.
The math, out loud
Across twelve months, Foundation averages exactly $3,000 a month — the same number on our pricing page, the same number you’d hand a flat-rate agency. We’re not discounting the year and we’re not marking it up. We moved the shape of the bill to match the shape of your year:
- 6 season months × $3,500 = $21,000
- 6 winter months × $2,500 = $15,000
- Total: $36,000 a year — identical to $3,000 flat.
The difference is that no invoice ever lands at the moment it hurts most. The average small business runs on about 27 days of cash in the bank. October is when that cushion is thinnest — and October is exactly when your bill steps down.
What this looks like before you sign
We’ll put your market’s actual demand curve in front of you — not a stock chart, your metro’s real numbers — right next to the two rates and the calendar. If you’ve ever wanted an agency to prove it understands the HVAC year before it takes your money, that’s the conversation.
Book a free audit and we’ll show you your market’s curve either way. Even if you never hire us, you’ll walk away knowing what your season actually looks like from the outside.