Pricing
Every plan includes a set number of positions in your city’s weekly edition, a directory listing, and a monthly report built from our own logs. No setup fee, no contract.
Live availability
Read from the database, not written into the page. Prices are the same in every city; what differs is the size of the list you’re buying into.
Month to month. Cancel any time from your dashboard.
One placement a month, plus a proper directory entry.
Billed monthly, no contract
1 placement every month
No Listed slots left in Marlow this month.
Three placements a month, each with its own card and offer.
Billed monthly, no contract
3 placements every month
No Featured slots left in Marlow this month.
Five placements a month, one of them the lead story.
Billed monthly, no contract
5 placements every month
No Spotlight slots left in Marlow this month.
Reader listing — £0
A claimed entry in the directory. Free, forever. No placements, no card. Useful if you want to be findable before you spend anything. Claim a listing.
Founding rate
The first 40 paying businesses in each city keep the price they signed up at for 12 months, even when we raise prices as the readership grows.
If we don’t run your placements, you don’t pay for that month.
Every plan includes a set number of placements per billing month. If we publish fewer than you paid for — for any reason on our side — we refund that month in full, automatically. You can cancel from your dashboard at any time and your placements run to the end of the period you’ve already paid for.
What’s different between plans
Not a feature matrix designed to make the middle option look sensible.
| Included | Listed | Featured | Spotlight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Placements per month | 1 | 3 | 5 |
| Lead Spotlight slot | — | — | 1 a month |
| Dedicated cards | — | 3 a month | 4 a month |
| Live offers at once | — | 1 | 3 |
| We write your copy | You write it | Yes | Yes |
| Homepage rotation | — | — | Yes |
| Cities you can appear in | 1 | 1 | 3 |
| Stats refreshed |
Before you buy
We would rather lose the sale than have you cancel in month two.
We guarantee placements — a specific number, in specific editions. What those placements produce depends on your offer, your photos and your prices. If we don’t run the placements you paid for, we refund that month.
We can tell you how many people were sent an edition, opened it, and clicked through to you. We can’t tell you who walked in. If that matters, put a code in your offer line — several customers do.
Every city page shows the current number of readers. If that number is too small to justify the price for you, don’t subscribe yet — join the waitlist and we’ll tell you when it grows.
Regulated claims, unverifiable superlatives and anything we can’t stand behind editorially get turned down. Our editorial standards are published in full, and you’re refunded if we reject your submission and you don’t want to change it.
Scheduling, sending, tracking, reporting and billing are. Editorial judgement isn’t. Some submissions are read by a person, and the Spotlight write-up is written by one.
Alternatives
| Aspect | Running your own Meta ads | Parade |
|---|---|---|
| Getting started | Business Manager, a pixel, a payment method, creative, audience setup, a learning phase. | One form, once. We assemble and schedule the placements. |
| What it costs | An auction. Your cost per result rises when bigger advertisers move into your area. | £39–£199 a month, fixed. It doesn’t move because someone outbid you. |
| How people see you | An interruption in a feed. You’re competing with everything else scrolling past. | A recommendation inside a guide someone chose to subscribe to. |
| Reach | Effectively unlimited, if you keep paying for it. | Capped by our reader count in your city. We publish that number. |
| Targeting | Granular — interests, behaviours, lookalikes, retargeting. | One dimension: the city edition someone subscribed to. |
| Measurement | Detailed, and increasingly modelled rather than observed. | Sends, opens and clicks, counted directly. No conversion modelling. |
Questions
A set number of placements in your city’s weekly edition each billing month — one on Listed, three on Featured, five on Spotlight — plus a permanent directory listing and a monthly performance report. The placements are positions in an email that actually sends; you can read past editions before you buy.
As many as are subscribed to that city’s edition, minus the ones who don’t open it. We publish the live subscriber count for every city on the pricing page and on each city page, and your monthly report shows the actual send and open numbers for the editions you appeared in.
By a published rule, not by who asks loudest. Each edition has one Spotlight, six featured cards and twelve roundup mentions. Slots are filled in that order, and within each tier the business who has waited longest goes first, with anyone behind on their contracted placements caught up first. The full rule is on the how it works page.
Then it sells out and we stop taking subscriptions there until we’ve grown the readership or a customer leaves. Overselling the inventory would make the product worthless for everyone already paying. You can join the waitlist for that city and we’ll email you when a slot opens.
On Listed, you write a short description and we publish it. On Featured and Spotlight we draft the headline and body from the details you give us, and send it to you to approve or edit before anything runs.
Yes, from your dashboard, as often as you like. Featured plans can have one offer live at a time and Spotlight can have three. Changes go through the same standards check as a new submission, which usually clears in minutes.
Two clicks in your billing settings. No phone call, no retention queue. Your placements run to the end of the period you’ve paid for and your listing drops back to a free directory entry. We’ll ask why you’re leaving, and you can ignore the question.
Yes — up to three months. Your listing stays live, your placements stop, and you’re not billed. It’s designed for seasonal businesses and anyone at capacity for a while.
Read a recent Marlow edition and see the formats in context. If it doesn’t look like somewhere your business belongs, don’t subscribe.
Not publishing in your city yet? 4 more are in progress — join a waitlist from the cities page.
| Monthly |
| Monthly |
| Weekly |
| Ongoing work | Creative refresh, budget management, fatigue, rejections. | Change your offer when you want to. Otherwise, nothing. |
|---|
Getting started
Running your own Meta ads
Business Manager, a pixel, a payment method, creative, audience setup, a learning phase.
Parade
One form, once. We assemble and schedule the placements.
What it costs
Running your own Meta ads
An auction. Your cost per result rises when bigger advertisers move into your area.
Parade
£39–£199 a month, fixed. It doesn’t move because someone outbid you.
How people see you
Running your own Meta ads
An interruption in a feed. You’re competing with everything else scrolling past.
Parade
A recommendation inside a guide someone chose to subscribe to.
Reach
Running your own Meta ads
Effectively unlimited, if you keep paying for it.
Parade
Capped by our reader count in your city. We publish that number.
Targeting
Running your own Meta ads
Granular — interests, behaviours, lookalikes, retargeting.
Parade
One dimension: the city edition someone subscribed to.
Measurement
Running your own Meta ads
Detailed, and increasingly modelled rather than observed.
Parade
Sends, opens and clicks, counted directly. No conversion modelling.
Ongoing work
Running your own Meta ads
Creative refresh, budget management, fatigue, rejections.
Parade
Change your offer when you want to. Otherwise, nothing.
If you already have someone running paid social well, Parade is a complement, not a replacement. If you don’t, this is the version that doesn’t need one.
Neither. Monthly plans are month to month. Annual plans are paid up front at two months’ discount and are refundable pro rata within the first 30 days.
We tell you why and what would need to change. If you don’t want to change it, we refund the month. We’d rather do that than publish something we can’t stand behind — the guide only works if readers trust it.
We publish in a handful of UK cities and are building reader lists in more. The cities page has the current list and the subscriber count for each. If yours isn’t live, you can join the waitlist for it.
People who subscribed to a free weekly email about their own city. We grow that list ourselves and we never sell or rent it. Readers can unsubscribe in one click and a meaningful share of every edition is editorial rather than paid, because an edition that is only advertising stops being read.
Not answered? Ask us directly or email hello@parade.example.