Appointment setting companies compared by pricing model: Belkins, CIENCE, SalesHive, Martal, Callbox, Sopro and four more, and what an empty month costs.
By Moe Alhosni, founder of ROI Maximizer. Published 14 October 2026.
Short answer: The ten appointment setting companies compared here sell one of five contract shapes. An SDR seat by the month (SalesRoads, SalesHive, Callbox). A multichannel retainer with a minimum term (Belkins, Martal Group). Outreach for a flat fee, with the meetings left to you (Sopro, Modern Inbound). A retainer with some pay tied to meetings (CIENCE, FunnL). Or a one-off setup fee, then a fee per qualified meeting (us). Prices on the firms' own pages run from $599 a month to an estimated $32,000 a month. The column that separates them is not the price. It is what you owe in a month with no meetings.
I run ROI Maximizer, the last row in the table. That makes me biased, so I built the page to be checked. Every figure about another firm comes from a page opened on 13 or 14 October 2026, linked where it appears, so read them as of October 2026. Where a firm publishes nothing, I use a dated third-party estimate and label it. Where a number is my arithmetic or my assumption, I say so.
Search for the best appointment setting companies and most lists are written by a firm on them. Callbox's list, updated 13 August 2026, puts Callbox first. SetSmart's puts SetSmart first. If I ranked, I would put us first, and you would be right to ignore it.
So the firms are grouped by pricing model. The model decides who pays for a bad month, and the bad month is what the one-star reviews on our pages about these firms keep describing. Channel comes second. Several of these firms phone buyers we cannot reach by email.
| Firm | Model | Price, published or third-party | Minimum term | Zero-meeting month | Our page on them |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SalesRoads | Flat fee per SDR, phone and email | $11,950 per 4 weeks for one SDR, $16,750 for two | None; recommends a 12-week first run | The full fee | SalesRoads pricing |
| SalesHive | Flat monthly fee, phone-first | Not published; one 2026 client reported $7,000 a month | Month to month, plus one billing month after notice | The full fee | SalesHive review |
| Callbox | Subscription per one-SDR pod, multichannel | $16,000 to $32,000 a month per pod, estimated | Not published | The full fee | Callbox pricing |
| Belkins | Monthly retainer, sized by appointments a year | Not published; third-party estimates of $5,000 to $14,800+ a month (Salesforge) | Third parties say 3 to 6 months | The full retainer | Belkins pricing |
| Martal Group | Flat monthly fee; commission on higher tiers | Not on its pricing page; about $138,000 a year per rep on its blog | 3- or 4-month pilot | The full fee | Martal Group pricing |
| Sopro | Managed outreach; replies go to your team | "starts at around €3.4K per month" | "no minimum contract" | The full fee | Sopro alternatives |
| Modern Inbound | Flat fee for outreach; you book the meetings | $599 or $899 a month plus GST, plus mailboxes and domains | One quarter, billed in advance | Already paid; "No guarantees. No refunds." | Sopro alternatives (covers Modern Inbound) |
| CIENCE | Retainer plus SDR fees, plus a bonus tied to held meetings | $2,000 team and $499 platform a month, SDRs from $1,750 a month; setup quoted on the call | "Month to month, no long contract" | $4,249 with one offshore SDR | CIENCE pricing |
| FunnL | Retainer plus a fee per meeting | From $2,000 a month plus $300 per "completed" meeting | Not stated | $2,000 | None yet; see Sopro alternatives (covers FunnL) |
| ROI Maximizer (us) | Pay per qualified meeting, or a flat retainer | $1,000 to $3,000 setup, then $200 to $500 per qualified meeting; or $5,000 a month flat | None; no minimum spend | Nothing after the one-off setup; $5,000 on the retainer | Pay per meeting lead generation pricing |
The zero-month column is what each contract shape implies. Where a page is silent, I assume you pay. Pages also move. On 13 October CIENCE listed a $5,000 setup and three SDR levels, as our CIENCE pricing page records. By 14 October setup was "quoted on the call" and offshore SDRs started at $1,750. The order form is the price.
Most cost-per-held-meeting figures below come from our page on each firm. SalesHive, CIENCE and FunnL are worked out here.
You rent a person, or a pod built around one, and pay for their time. All three run the phone, the best reason to hire them.
SalesRoads bills per four weeks, so 13 invoices a year, not 12. There is no long-term contract, but it recommends a 12-week first run, $35,850 for one SDR, and calling starts on business day 16. On its own case-study meeting rates and an 85% show rate taken from one of them, a held meeting costs roughly $600 to $1,250.
SalesHive's page says "One flat monthly fee, all-inclusive" and "SalesHive does not price by the meeting". Starter is phone only; higher tiers add email. One firm that signed in March 2026 reported paying $7,000 a month on Trustpilot, and SalesHive disputes that firm's account. If $7,000 buys five to ten held meetings, my assumption, each costs $700 to $1,400.
Callbox's FAQ says its cost "is not based on performance outcomes." At the volumes its reviewers and its own case study report, a held meeting costs roughly $700 to $4,200. Its homepage claims "60+ Countries" and "7+ languages live today".
All three share one weakness: the fee runs while things go wrong. A SalesHive client wrote in April 2026 that a script built for the wrong CRM ran "for 13 consecutive calling days". Those days were billed. SalesHive offered to waive the next cycle, not to refund.
Neither publishes a price. Both run calling, LinkedIn and email, and both suit larger deals.
Belkins calls its offer "monthly retainer packages", sized by appointments a year: Growth "100+" and Growth Plus "200+". Its page says a small-business tier of "30+" is delivered through partner agencies. Every package includes "no-show recovery". That says no-shows are handled. It does not say they are credited. Run the third-party estimates against Belkins' volumes and one third-party worked example, at an 80% show rate I assumed, and a held meeting costs about $555 to $1,910, most scenarios near $750. At a six-month minimum and the $5,000 floor, both third-party figures, you have committed $30,000 before you know your show rate.
Martal's pricing page lists a three-month pilot for lead generation and four months for the tiers that add demos, negotiation and a sales commission. Its own figure, $138,000 a year per rep, is $11,500 a month. Its homepage case studies have a median of 5.6 meetings a month. Fees run from $4,100, the low end of Cleverly's estimate, to Martal's own $11,500. At the same 80% show rate, my assumption, a held meeting costs roughly $900 to $2,600. A three-month pilot commits $12,300 to $34,500.
At $25,000 or more a deal, $750 a held meeting is cheap. On a $6,000 deal it is not. Belkins vs Martal Group compares the two directly.
These two run the outreach and hand you what comes back. That makes them the cheapest entry here, and it moves the hardest job to your side.
Sopro, a UK managed outreach service, covers email, LinkedIn, display ads and gifting. Its homepage says "Sales enquiries go directly to your team". Neither that page nor the pricing page says Sopro books the meeting.
Modern Inbound bills its fee quarterly in advance. Mailboxes cost $99 a month and domains $150 a year on top, which its pricing page describes as "In your name, paid to the provider". Its UK service page says a lead "is not a booked meeting; you book from there."
Neither publishes a meeting count, so I cannot price a meeting at either. I can show the job they leave you, as it looked on our campaigns. Of 1,543 positive replies on our own and clients' campaigns between August 2025 and July 2026, 10.9% asked for a call outright and 7.4% asked the price first. Another 56.3% matched none of our keyword classes, many of them a "sure", an "ok" or a bare signature, that a person had to answer. If nobody on your side answers those the same day, a cheap reply becomes an expensive one. The breakdown by vertical is in the cold email positive reply rate benchmark.
Both use the language of performance pricing. Both are retainers with a bonus on top.
At CIENCE, each SDR earns a bonus once they pass 60% of a monthly held-meeting target. With one offshore SDR the fixed cost is $4,249 a month. I assume a target of ten meetings and read the bonus base as the SDR's monthly price. On that basis a held meeting costs about $547 at ten meetings and $850 at five, before setup. Its Trustpilot score was 1.6 from 21 reviews on 13 October. That is a small sample; read it yourself.
FunnL says "Only pay for qualified meetings" on the same page as its $2,000 retainer, and defines neither qualified nor completed. At five meetings a month that is $700 each; at ten, $500.
Either way, an empty month still costs the retainer. Head-to-heads are in SalesHive vs CIENCE and CIENCE vs Martal Group.
This is us. A one-off setup fee of $1,000 to $3,000, then $200 to $500 per qualified meeting, billed monthly in arrears. You pay only for meetings that took place and that you approved against a definition agreed in writing before outreach. Nothing for a no-show, no minimum spend, and you own the domains and the data at exit. Where you sit in each range depends on deal size, reach and how hard the list is to build; the exact figure is confirmed on the call. The other option is $5,000 a month flat with no per-meeting fee, which carries the same zero-month risk as every retainer above. Full terms: pay per meeting lead generation pricing.
Two clients we can name. PR Noir, a US PR agency, got 27 leads, 10 meetings, a 37% lead-to-meeting rate and one $90K close in its first 30 days, broken down in PR Noir's first 30 days. P1 Communications, a UK hospitality PR agency, got 20+ qualified meetings, half moving to commercial discussions, four new deals and a projected £12K a month of pipeline. Those are P1's figures.
Where we lose. We do not phone anyone. We have no Clutch or G2 reviews, while Belkins has 234 on Clutch and Callbox 128. Hold that against us. At high volume a retainer, ours included, beats our per-meeting price. And because we are paid per meeting, we have a reason to count marginal ones, which is why the definition is written before the first email. The trade-off is in pay per meeting vs retainer lead generation.
Start from your buyer and your deal, not the logo.
Some buyers should hire none of these B2B appointment setting companies yet:
Still deciding whether to outsource at all? Appointment setting services explains the service and why booked versus held decides the invoice, and B2B lead generation agency costs the four pricing models per held meeting. To vet any firm here, us included, use how to tell if a lead generation agency is any good. For a second opinion on a shortlist, grab 20 minutes or email moe@roimaxi.com.
Get four things in writing from any firm in the table, us included:
The clause-by-clause version of point one is in what counts as a qualified meeting. Then put your deal value and close rate into the ROI calculator, so you know the most a meeting is worth to you before any of these firms quotes you one.
Or run the free GTM teardown on your own site for the ICP, cold email and numbers specific to your company.