ThriveFinity vs Whitehat SEO for AEO, GEO and Go-to-Market

Whitehat SEO and ThriveFinity both sell AI search work to B2B companies, and both publish their prices. That's where most of the overlap ends.

Whitehat is a London agency that runs SEO, answer engine optimisation and HubSpot work on monthly retainers, with a long list of other services around them. We sell fixed-scope projects. One is AI search work with a measured before and after. The other is a go-to-market build that produces your positioning, a website, a sales deck and an email sequence in ten days.

This page lines up what each firm publishes. Every fact about Whitehat links to its own website or Companies House, and every check is dated. There's a section on when Whitehat is the better choice. If your business runs on HubSpot, it may well be.

Facts about Whitehat SEO come from its own website and Companies House, checked on 10 October 2026. Its prices exclude VAT, and its pricing page dates them February 2026. Prices and services change, so check its site before you decide. ThriveFinity isn't affiliated with Whitehat SEO.

An Agency Retainer and a Fixed-Scope Studio

The two firms differ in how the work is bought, how long it runs and how much of your marketing they take on. Here's each one in a paragraph.

Whitehat SEO says on its homepage that it runs your SEO, AEO and GEO "as one system", powered by its own AI engine, Marketing Mary, and directed by senior marketers. Its About page says founder Clwyd Probert started it in London in 2011, that it became a HubSpot Solutions Partner in 2016, and that it now operates as a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner. Companies House lists its trading company, White Hat SEO Limited, as active and incorporated on 10 October 2011.

ThriveFinity sells AI search optimisation (GEO) as defined pieces of work, from a free Signal to a fixed-price Retrofit with a re-test at day 30. We also sell a fixed-price Go-to-Market Build for B2B companies whose offer is real but whose website and sales materials aren't converting. It's a one-person company registered in Chennai, India, and every paid deliverable is signed by a named verifier.

So one is an agency you hire to keep running your search marketing. The other is a studio you hire to finish a defined job.

Side-by-Side Comparison

The table lines up what each firm publishes on the same fourteen points. Whitehat's column quotes or summarises its own pages, all checked on 10 October 2026. Its prices are the "from" prices on its pricing page.

"Not stated" means the pages we checked didn't say. It doesn't mean the firm doesn't offer it. Ask them.

What Whitehat Publishes About Its AEO Work

Whitehat's Answer Engine Optimisation page is long and specific. It defines AEO as structuring your content, technical markup and brand signals so that AI search platforms cite your brand, and it says AEO "builds on traditional SEO foundations rather than replacing them."

It also does something I respect. It acknowledges the argument that AEO is just good SEO with a new name, and says "There is truth in this". That matches Google's own guide to optimising for generative AI features, updated in July 2026, which says optimising for generative AI search is "still SEO."

The page sets out a four-phase roadmap. Phase one, in weeks 1 to 4, is an audit that queries ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews and Claude with your "top 20 buyer queries", plus a check of AI crawler access, schema on your top 20 pages and AI referral tracking. Phase two restructures content. Phase three, from month three, builds presence off your site in forums, trade publications and review platforms. Phase four is ongoing measurement.

Its two AEO tiers are described this way. Done-With-You covers an "AI visibility audit, content strategy, schema implementation guidance, monthly monitoring, and team training", and you do the execution. Done-For-You covers "content creation, schema deployment, AI crawler configuration, citation building, multi-platform monitoring, and monthly reporting with lead attribution."

On timing, its FAQ says early AI visibility gains can show "within a few weeks" if your SEO foundations are solid, and puts measurable business impact at six to 12 months.

Whitehat's YouTube channel goes back years and is mostly HubSpot material. This short video from December 2023 explains how it thinks about an SEO campaign, which is still the base its AEO work sits on:

Play Video (Loads YouTube)

What I couldn't find on the pages I checked: how many buyer questions its paid tiers track, how many times each question is run, or a guarantee. Those are fair questions to put to any agency.

Prices and Terms, as Published

Whitehat publishes a full price list, which makes this part of the comparison easier than usual. Its pricing page lists these starting prices, excluding VAT, and says they're "correct as of February 2026":

• SEO Retainer from £1,967 a month, and SEO + Content from £2,967 a month.
• AEO Done-With-You from £1,967 a month, and Done-For-You from £2,967 a month.
• PPC management from £780 a month, plus ad spend.
• Inbound marketing from £5,000 a month.
• HubSpot CMS website design from £15,000, and HubSpot onboarding from £980.
• Website audits from £2,500, and AI consultancy programmes from £15,000 to £95,000.

The same page says "Every price on this page is a starting point", and that "All monthly retainers operate on 30-day rolling contracts."

Our prices, all from our published pricing, are fixed rather than "from": the Diagnostic at £349, the Retrofit at £1,950, the Retainer at £1,950 a month and the Go-to-Market Build at £3,999. Our AI Visibility Retainer has a 3-month minimum, then 30 days' notice. On monthly flexibility, Whitehat's terms are shorter than ours.

Comparing the monthly numbers on their own won't tell you much, because the scopes differ. Our Retainer sets a fixed amount of work each month: 4 priority pages improved, 2 content pieces, 2 authority actions, and the same buyer questions re-run, each item signed off by a verifier. Ask Whitehat for the equivalent list for whichever tier you're quoted, then line the two up item by item.

Websites and Go-to-Market Work

Both firms build websites for B2B companies, but they're different products. Whitehat builds full sites on HubSpot's CMS with your CRM wired in. Our Go-to-Market Build starts with positioning and produces a small site plus the sales materials that go with it.

Whitehat's pricing page lists HubSpot CMS website design from £15,000, covering "Strategy, UX/UI design, HubSpot CMS build, CRM integration, training, post-launch support". If you want forms, workflows and contact data flowing into HubSpot from day one, that's the job it's describing.

Our Go-to-Market Build costs £3,999, with a 50% deposit to start and the rest on delivery. In 10 days you get a positioning audit, a messaging framework, a 5-page website, a 20-slide sales deck and a 3-email sequence, all written from the same positioning. Every claim is sourced and recorded in a signed evidence record. If you find an unsupported claim or a factual error within 30 days, we refund you in full.

It doesn't include CRM integration, a brand refresh or a large site. If your problem is that buyers don't understand what you do, start with the positioning. If your problem is that your CRM and website don't talk to each other, that's Whitehat's territory. I've written more about fixed-price go-to-market work and when it makes sense.

How Each One Measures Results

Whitehat measures AI search through four KPIs and ties them to revenue in HubSpot. We measure a fixed set of buyer questions, run several times, before and after the work. Both are useful, and they answer different questions.

Whitehat's AEO page names the four: AI Citation Rate, Share of AI Voice, AI referral traffic conversion rate and Citation Drift Rate. It suggests tools such as Otterly.AI or Ahrefs Brand Radar for tracking, and HubSpot for lead attribution. Connecting AI visibility to pipeline is a real strength if your CRM data is clean.

Clicks are only part of the picture, though, because fewer people click when an AI summary appears. Pew Research Center tracked the browsing of 900 US adults in March 2025. Users clicked a traditional result on 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, against 15% when it didn't. They clicked a link inside the summary on just 1% of those visits.

So a buyer can read about you in an AI answer, never click, and still end up on your shortlist. That's why I'd always pair traffic and pipeline data with a direct measure of what AI tools say about you.

That direct measure needs repeat runs. In January 2026, SparkToro reported a "<1 in 100 chance that ChatGPT or Google's AI, if asked 100X, will give you the same list of brands in any two responses". We ask each of 100 to 150 buyer questions 3 times in each of five AI tools, then run the same set again at day 30.

Wil Reynolds of Seer Interactive shared a list of AI-era metrics in August 2026. The first one is a question I'd ask whichever firm you hire:

Whitehat's HubSpot attribution speaks to the revenue half of that. A day-30 re-test speaks to the visibility half. Ideally you'd see both.

When Whitehat SEO Is the Better Choice

Whitehat is the better choice when you want an agency to keep running your search and inbound marketing month after month, especially inside HubSpot. These are the situations where I'd point you there rather than to us.

• You run on HubSpot, or plan to. It describes itself as a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner, sells onboarding from £980 and ties its reporting to HubSpot CRM. We don't do CRM work at all.
• You want SEO, AEO, PPC and content run continuously by one team. Its retainers cover all four, and PPC starts from £780 a month plus ad spend. We don't run paid media or an ongoing SEO programme.
• You need a full website on HubSpot CMS. Its website design starts from £15,000 with CRM integration and post-launch support. Our 5-page build is a different, smaller job.
• You want to be able to leave at a month's notice. Its monthly retainers run on 30-day rolling contracts. Our AI Visibility Retainer has a 3-month minimum.
• You want help bringing AI into the wider business. Its AI consultancy programmes cover readiness, training, governance and implementation. We don't offer that.
• You want a long-established agency. Its trading company was incorporated in 2011, and its About page says it founded the London HubSpot User Group in 2017.

The trade-off is the usual one with a retainer. You're buying ongoing capacity, so agree in writing what gets delivered each month and how you'll judge whether it's working.

When ThriveFinity Is the Better Choice

We fit when you want a defined job finished at a known price, with evidence for every claim and a measured result.

• AI Visibility Signal (free, under an hour): 12 buyer questions across GPT (OpenAI), Claude, Gemini and Perplexity, scored 0 to 100. It's automated and unsigned, and you can run the free AI visibility check today.
• AI Search Readiness Retrofit (£1,950, 10 working days): 100 to 150 buyer questions across five AI tools, your 10 highest-value pages fixed, 5 briefs for new pages and a re-test at day 30. A £349 Diagnostic is available on its own and credited in full if you book the Retrofit within 30 days.
• AI Visibility Retainer (£1,950 a month) or Quarterly Re-measurement (£595): after the Retrofit, if you want ongoing work or tracking.
• Go-to-Market Build (£3,999, 10 days): positioning, messaging, a 5-page website, a 20-slide deck and 3 emails, every claim sourced and signed.

You can see what each deliverable looks like in our anonymised samples before you spend anything.

We're not the right choice if you need HubSpot set up or managed, PPC, an ongoing SEO and content programme, a large website, or someone to run your marketing month to month. Whitehat or a similar agency will serve you better there. We also don't buy links or placements, and we won't promise that any AI tool will name you.

How to Decide

Answer these questions before you speak to either firm, and the choice usually gets much clearer.

1. Do you need someone to keep running your marketing, or to finish one defined job?
2. Is HubSpot central to how you sell, or would CRM work be a distraction right now?
3. Is your real problem visibility in AI answers, or buyers not understanding what you do once they find you?
4. How many buyer questions will be tracked, and how many runs of each?
5. What exactly gets delivered each month, and what's the minimum term?
6. What happens if a report or a page contains a factual error?

Google's advice on hiring help applies here too. Its page on whether you need an SEO, updated in June 2026, suggests asking what results to expect "and in what timeframe", and checking that any AEO or GEO advice is "aligned with Google Search's official guidance on optimizing for generative AI features". It also says that if someone guarantees first place in search results, "find someone else."

Google's Search Central team has a short video on hiring an SEO specialist that covers references and a technical interview. It works just as well for an AEO or GEO hire:

Play Video (Loads YouTube)

Plenty of established B2B companies are surprised when they first check. This founder's post on Reddit is typical of what people find:

That's one person's experience, not proof of anything. But it's the kind of result a baseline turns into a number you can act on. Our GEO agency buyer's guide lists the questions and red flags in more detail.

If you're weighing other options, read our comparisons with The GEO Agency and with Exposure Ninja and a fractional CMO, or browse every comparison we've published.

How We Wrote This Comparison

This page names a competitor, so UK advertising rules apply to it, and you should know which ones. Section 3 of the CAP Code says a comparison with an identifiable competitor must "compare products meeting the same needs or intended for the same purpose" and must "objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature". The same conditions sit in regulation 4 of the Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008, which also bars comparisons that discredit or denigrate a competitor.

So every fact about Whitehat links to the page it came from, and every check is dated. I've compared AI search work with AI search work, and website builds with website builds, and said where the scopes differ. I haven't repeated any of Whitehat's client results, partner rankings, statistics or testimonials, because I can't verify them, and quoting them would only repeat its marketing. Companies House lists Clwyd Probert as director of White Hat SEO Limited, at the same Uxbridge Road address shown on Whitehat's website.

Google's original "How to hire an SEO" talk, from 2017, makes the same point about evidence from the buyer's side. It's long, but the advice has aged well:

Play Video (Loads YouTube)

Spotted something out of date or wrong? Email om@thrivefinity.uk. We respond within 5 working days, and corrections are logged on our errata page. The next scheduled recheck of every fact here is due by 8 January 2027.

Whoever you choose, start with a baseline. It's the only way to know later whether the money moved anything.

Pranav Unni

Founder · ThriveFinity Connect on LinkedIn →

Pranav Unni is the founder and lead verifier of ThriveFinity. He reads and signs every paid deliverable personally, and writes about go-to-market decisions for established B2B companies.