SalesHive vs CIENCE from their own pages, October 2026: channels, price, term, guarantee, ramp, and what a month with zero meetings costs at each.
By Moe Alhosni, founder of ROI Maximizer. Published 14 October 2026.
Short answer: SalesHive vs CIENCE comes down to what you want to rent. SalesHive rents you one or two callers, US-based by default, for a flat monthly fee it does not publish, month to month, and says plainly that it does not guarantee meetings. CIENCE publishes a rate card (pricing page, as of October 2026): $2,000 a month for the campaign team, $499 for its platform, SDRs from $1,750 a month each, a bonus when they hit a held-meeting target, and a setup fee quoted on the call. In a month with zero meetings, both invoices still arrive.
I run ROI Maximizer, a pay-per-meeting agency, so I compete with both. Read this with that in mind. Every figure below comes from the two firms' own pages and review profiles, opened on 14 October 2026, or from third-party pages I name and date.
SalesHive sells "one flat monthly fee", "custom quoted", with $0 setup, and states "SalesHive does not price by the meeting" (pricing page, as of October 2026). The core team is "100% US-based" (homepage, as of October 2026).
The price is not on the page. LeadHaste (updated 11 October 2026) puts the US plans at $5,000, $8,000 and $12,000 a month; Prospeo says $7,000, $8,000 and $12,000 "as of early 2026". Both are vendors: LeadHaste is an outbound agency, and Prospeo sells contact data. The one price I found from a client is $7,000 a month, in an April 2026 review on Trustpilot.
CIENCE sells SDRs by the head: "starting at" $1,750 offshore, $2,500 in Europe and $4,500 in the US, per SDR per month, on top of the team and platform lines (pricing page, as of October 2026). Its own example, five offshore SDRs, comes to $11,249 a month "plus bonus", plus setup.
One warning. On 13 October, when I wrote my CIENCE pricing breakdown, that page listed a fixed setup price and a per-meeting fee. A day later both were gone. The homepage still promises "a commission per held meeting" (homepage, as of October 2026); the pricing page offers a bonus that pays nothing below 60% of target. The order form is the price.
| What to compare | SalesHive | CIENCE | Pay per qualified meeting (us) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Channels | Phone on every plan; email on Growth and Crush; no LinkedIn listed (pricing, as of Oct 2026) | "Our SDRs call, email, and message your buyers on LinkedIn" (homepage, as of Oct 2026) | Cold email only |
| Pricing model | One flat monthly fee, custom quoted, no setup fee (pricing, as of Oct 2026) | $2,000 team plus $499 platform a month, SDRs from $1,750 each a month, a bonus against a held-meeting target, setup quoted on the call (pricing, as of Oct 2026) | Setup $1,000–$3,000, then $200–$500 per qualified meeting, billed monthly in arrears, approved meetings only, nothing for a no-show. Or a flat $5,000 a month retainer, no per-meeting fee. Pay per meeting pricing terms |
| Minimum term | Month to month; annual plans "run at a lower monthly rate than month to month" (pricing, as of Oct 2026). Once outreach starts, written notice, then billing ends "at the end of your next billing month" | "Month to month, no long contract" (pricing, as of Oct 2026) | No minimum spend on the per-meeting option |
| What is guaranteed | No meeting count. The FAQ answer starts "No." (homepage, as of Oct 2026) | No guarantee on either page. The homepage claims "5 to 20+ qualified meetings a month per SDR, depending on industry and target" (homepage, as of Oct 2026) | Nothing. You pay only for meetings that took place and that you approved |
| Ramp time | "2 to 3 wks" to launch (pricing, as of Oct 2026) | "Live in 14 days" (pricing, as of Oct 2026) | PR Noir: 27 leads, 10 meetings, one $90K close in the first 30 days. One client, not a promise |
| Who it suits | SalesHive's words for Starter: "Teams testing outbound or adding focused phone coverage" | My read: buyers who want several reps across phone, email and LinkedIn without hiring them | Agencies and B2B SaaS with deals worth roughly $5k a year or more that cannot carry a fee through a dry month |
The only CIENCE vs SalesHive comparison I found is CIENCE's own (comparison page, marked "Updated March 2026"). It is a competitor writing about a competitor, like this page, so I checked it.
It says SalesHive costs "$6,000 to $12,000/month" with a "3 month minimum commitment"; SalesHive's pricing page says month to month. It lists SalesHive's channels as "Often email plus LinkedIn"; SalesHive's plans are phone first, with no LinkedIn. It credits SalesHive with 4.8 on Clutch; Clutch shows 0.5 from a single review, as of October 2026. Read each firm's terms on its own site.
SalesHive scores 3.7 from 39 reviews on Trustpilot, as of October 2026: 61% five-star, 33% one-star. Brentt Brown, July 2026: "They were focused, highly professional, and consistently hit the targets we set together." Drew C, June 2026: "I cannot recommend SalesHive based on our 3-month experience." My SalesHive review takes the 2026 complaints one by one.
CIENCE scores 1.6 from 21 reviews on Trustpilot, as of October 2026, 95% of them one-star. Andrew Morgan, September 2026: "We paid $20k and they didn't generate a single lead." Clutch gives CIENCE 4.2 from 142 reviews, as of October 2026. Clutch's newest review is from September 2024; five of the 21 on Trustpilot are from 2025 or 2026.
What do you pay in a month with zero held meetings? Neither pricing page says.
At SalesHive, the full fee. That is the product, not a trick, and notice given that month runs to the end of the next. A four-star reviewer, Saskia van Nieuwenhuizen (Trustpilot, January 2025), named the downside: "the fixed cost, rather than the pay-per-meeting-scheduled setup".
At CIENCE, the cheapest build on the page is the team, the platform and one offshore SDR: $4,249 a month. The bonus is zero below 60% of target, so a zero month costs $4,249. CIENCE ties more of its bill to held meetings than SalesHive does, but only the bonus moves.
Cost per held meeting at each firm's numbers, setup left out:
| Held meetings that month | SalesHive at $7,000 (one client's price) | CIENCE: team, platform, 1 offshore SDR | Pay per qualified meeting (us) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | $7,000 for nothing | $4,249 for nothing | $0 |
| 5 | $1,400 each | $850 each | $200–$500 each |
| 10 | $700 each | about $547 each | $200–$500 each |
| 20 | $350 each | about $335 each | $200–$500 each |
The CIENCE column assumes a target of 10 and reads "base" in the bonus formula as the SDR's $1,750 fee. CIENCE publishes neither, so ask. Our range, and the setup fee on top, is on the pay per meeting lead generation pricing page. Where we land in each range depends on deal size, reach and list difficulty; exact figures are confirmed on the call.
Look at the last row. At 20 meetings a month, a fixed fee costs about what we do, or less. That is the trade: per-meeting pricing costs more when everything works and nothing when it does not. Our flat $5,000 a month retainer bills in a zero month too. The full argument is in pay per meeting vs retainer lead generation.
Your buyers answer the phone, you want US callers, and you want to leave on a month's notice. SalesHive. No setup fee. Budget for the notice month and read the 2026 one-star reviews first.
You want several reps across phone, email and LinkedIn without hiring them. CIENCE. It publishes a rate card and is built for volume. Get the setup fee, the bonus target and the definition of "held" on the order form, because the pricing page changed between 13 and 14 October.
You are an agency or a B2B SaaS firm, you know your deal size, and a month with no meetings would hurt. Pay per qualified meeting. You pay when a qualified person turns up, nothing when they do not. We are one option, and the model is only as good as the written definition behind it.
We run cold email only, so if your buyers live on the phone, hire one of the other two. If your market is a few hundred companies, per-meeting pricing rewards volume and you cannot afford to burn the list. If you have never closed a deal from outbound, no pricing model fixes the offer; run the free GTM teardown first. And we turn down deals below roughly $5k a year, because the maths fails both sides.
If you want reps you direct yourself, read in-house SDR vs pay-per-result agency. Other pairs: Belkins vs SalesHive, CIENCE vs Martal Group. Then run the lead generation agency checklist against all three.
Get four things in writing:
That first item is set out line by line in what counts as a qualified meeting. Before you take a quote from SalesHive, CIENCE or us, use the ROI calculator to work out the most you can pay per meeting and still make money.
Or run the free GTM teardown on your own site for the ICP, cold email and numbers specific to your company.