This is usually framed as a cost question. It isn't. It's a question about what you're short of.
An agency sells judgment — experienced people who look at your site and see what you can't. Software sells repetition — a measurement applied consistently, forever, at a cost that doesn't rise each time you use it.
You're short of one of these. Work out which.
What an agency is genuinely good at
Seeing your site freshly. You cannot; you know too much about it. A skilled outsider walking your checkout as a stranger will find things no scan reports.
Strategy that isn't page-level. Whether your offer, price, or audience is the actual problem is not a question any tool answers.
Doing the work. Many teams don't lack diagnosis; they lack anyone with time to ship the fix.
What an agency is structurally bad at
Continuity. An engagement ends. Your site keeps changing, and friction reappears in the places you just cleaned.
Repeatability. Two consultants produce two different lists. Neither is a baseline you can move.
Cost per look. Every re-audit is a new invoice, which means you re-audit rarely, which means you find problems late.
What software is good at
Watching continuously and cheaply. Applying the same measure every time, so a change in the number means a change in the site. Ranking issues by a consistent rule instead of by whoever spoke last. Being there on the Tuesday you shipped something that broke a form.
What software is bad at
Judgment about anything above the page. No scan will tell you your pricing is wrong for your market.
Seeing what it wasn't built to see. A structural scan reads structure. It doesn't know your customers.
Doing the work. It gives you the fix. Someone still has to ship it.
The honest decision rule
If you've never had an expert look at your funnel, and you can afford it once, do that — the first outside look usually finds something structural and large.
If you already know roughly where you leak and can't get fixes shipped, neither an agency nor software is your problem. Capacity is.
If you have modest traffic, ongoing changes, and no in-house CRO person, software is the better shape: it costs the same in month twelve as in month one, and it catches the regression you introduced last week.
Many teams use both, and the sequence usually works best that way round: a hard look once, then continuous measurement so the gains don't quietly erode.
Where Defrixa fits, stated plainly
Defrixa is software. The free scan gives a deterministic score and the biggest structural issue, immediately, without a snippet. The paid product measures which step loses visitors and whether a fix worked, once the snippet is installed and traffic accumulates.
It does not replace a good consultant's judgment about your offer or your market. It replaces the part of the audit that should have been a repeatable measurement in the first place.
Common questions
Sometimes once, for the fresh look. Rarely on retainer, because the cost per finding rises as the obvious problems are removed.
It replaces the measuring and ranking. It doesn't replace the person who decides whether the problem is the page or the product.
What their first deliverable is. If the answer is "an audit," ask how many items it will contain — and whether it ends with one prioritized fix or forty.