You get a PDF. Three columns. Bronze, Silver, Gold, or some version with better names. Each column has a list of checkmarks and a monthly price and the middle one is highlighted as most popular.
It looks like a menu. It is a pricing strategy.
Why they are structured that way
Because you cannot compare them. If every shop listed hours and rates you could shop on price. Bundle twelve services together with different names at each shop and comparison becomes impossible.
That is the point. The tiers also do something clever, which is anchor you to the middle. Bronze looks thin on purpose so Silver feels reasonable.
Reading the line items
Some are real. Twelve blog posts a month is a real thing, and you can count whether it happened.
Some are not. Ongoing optimization. Strategic oversight. SEO monitoring. Social media management, which can mean anything from a real content calendar to somebody scheduling four generic posts from a template.
The test is whether you could tell if it stopped. If the answer is no, it is filler.
The question that breaks it open
How many hours of actual human work is in this every month.
That one number tells you nearly everything. A 1,500 dollar package with six hours of work in it is a 250 dollar hourly rate, which is fine if the six hours are excellent and not fine if they are a junior person running reports.
Most shops get uncomfortable with that question. The good ones answer it immediately.
What you actually need
It is almost never twelve things. For a small local business it is usually two.
Somebody keeping the site alive and current. Somebody keeping the local search stuff tended. That is it. That is most of the value in any of those columns.
The other ten checkmarks are there to justify the price of the two that matter.
How I do it instead
Care plans are named for what they are. Front Porch at 79 a month is hosting and somebody watching it. Workshop at 149 includes ninety minutes of edits, and if you use eleven minutes, you used eleven minutes and I will tell you so.
No tiers designed to push you upward. No line item I cannot explain in one sentence. If you are paying for something you are not using, I would rather move you down than watch you quietly cancel in four months.