A SaaS-first alternative
to Directive Consulting
Directive is a strong B2B SaaS performance agency for mid-market and enterprise teams with marketing leaders and $20K+ a month budgets. If you are a B2B SaaS founder or lean marketing team and you want Google and Meta built and run for you without an enterprise retainer, Atlas is built for you
Why Switch
Why B2B SaaS teams look for a Directive alternative
Directive is a respected agency, these are the four reasons it stops fitting when you are a lean SaaS team rather than a Series B+ marketing org
The Startup Package floor is too high for early-stage SaaS
Directive's entry tier is $6,500 a month before media spend. For a SaaS spending £1K to £20K a month on ads, the retainer alone is more than the media budget. The economics break before the campaigns ship
You only need paid, not the full multi-service bundle
Directive's model is paid plus SEO plus CRO plus content plus RevOps, all coordinated under one strategist. If your real bottleneck is just Google and Meta, you are paying for breadth you do not need this quarter
3 to 4 weeks of onboarding before execution
Directive runs a structured discovery, audit, strategy and access setup phase before campaigns launch. That is right for a multi-channel enterprise engagement, slow when a founder wants experiments live in market this week
Continuity depends on which strategist owns the account
Like any human-team agency, the quality of your engagement is shaped by which strategist runs it. Some Clutch reviews flag staff rotation and inconsistent communication on longer retainers, which is the cost of a 200-person agency model
At a Glance
Directive Consulting vs Atlas, side by side
| Directive Consulting | Atlas | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Mid-market and enterprise B2B SaaS, Series B and beyond, with $50K+ a year in ad budget and an internal marketing leader to coordinate the program | B2B SaaS founders and lean marketing teams |
| Core job | Run an integrated multi-service program (paid, SEO, content, CRO, RevOps) for mid-market and enterprise SaaS, with senior strategy and pipeline-first reporting | Builds, launches and improves Google + Meta campaigns for SaaS |
| Builds campaigns | Yes | Yes, full build and launch |
| Platforms | Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube Ads | Google Ads, Facebook Ads |
| Operated by | 200+ team across Irvine, Austin, NYC, London and Toronto, founded 2014 by Garrett Mehrguth | You, with Atlas doing the heavy lifting |
| Starts at | $6,500/mo | £0 Free, £99/mo Atlas |
How Atlas is Different
Atlas is an AI ads manager, not a 200-person multi-service agency
The first difference is what is in the seat. Directive is a 200-person agency, with strategists, planners, analysts, creative, RevOps and reporting layered into your engagement. Atlas is an AI ads manager trained on £10M of real SaaS spend, with you in the seat as the human who steers it. Directive is right when your bottleneck is orchestration across many channels and stakeholders. Atlas is right when your bottleneck is competent paid execution on Google and Meta without a five-figure retainer
The second difference is the scope of the offer. Directive bundles paid plus SEO plus content plus CRO plus RevOps because that is what a Series B+ SaaS marketing program needs. Atlas focuses on what most pre-Series A and lean SaaS teams actually need first, Google Ads built and run weekly plus weekly Meta tools, so you stop paying for breadth you cannot use this quarter
The third difference is time to live. Directive runs 3 to 4 weeks of audits, kickoff workshops, strategy decks and access setup before campaigns launch. Atlas drafts your full Google and Meta campaign structure inside an hour, paused, in your own ad accounts. You can review, adjust and unpause the same weekend. From sign-up to ads in market is days, not weeks
The fourth difference is how the weekly work happens. On Google, Atlas manages your account every week, search-term cleanup, broad match sweeps, budget pacing, negatives, bid adjustments, all proposed and applied at the approval tier you choose, manual, smart or full auto. Every change clears deterministic safety rails first and is reversible for 30 days. On Meta, Atlas builds the campaigns and ships weekly tools you run in a few minutes alongside it, like fatigue checks and audience refresh prompts, applied with your approval. We did not feel comfortable claiming a tool can run a SaaS Meta account on autopilot, especially given the pace of platform change. So Atlas keeps you in the loop on Meta
The fifth difference is pricing predictability. Atlas is £99 a month for the Atlas tier and £249 a month with Atlas plus Specialists, regardless of your Google or Meta spend. The Directive Startup Package is $6,500 a month and full retainers run $10K to $25K+ a month before media. With Atlas, the price stays the same as your spend grows, and you keep ownership of strategy rather than handing it to an outside team
Honest Rail
Not every SaaS team should choose Atlas
Directive Consulting is a real product with real strengths. Here is how we would decide, on your behalf, if you asked
Choose Directive Consulting if
- You are Series B or later with a $20K+/mo budget and want a senior agency to run paid, SEO, content and RevOps as one coordinated program
- You need enterprise references and blue-chip case studies for board credibility, not just an AI tool from a smaller brand
- Your pipeline problem is full-funnel demand creation plus capture for a $50K+ ACV motion, not just Google and Meta execution
Choose Atlas if
- Your monthly ad budget is in the £1K to £20K range and a $6,500/mo retainer plus media is the wrong economics for your stage
- You only need Google Ads built and managed plus weekly Meta tools, not SEO, content, CRO, video and RevOps stitched together
- You want to start in days not weeks, with no annual contract and the option to cancel any time
- You would rather steer the account yourself with AI doing the weekly grunt work than hand strategy off to an outside agency team
Pricing
What each one costs, honestly
Directive Consulting
$6,500/moto start
Startup Package from $6,500/mo (paid + SEO + CRO + creative + reporting), no annual contract. Mid-market and enterprise retainers $10K to $25K+/mo, typically 6 to 12 month engagements.
Pricing scales with connected ad spend and accounts
Atlas
£0 to £99/mo to start
Free tier to try Atlas with no card. £99 Atlas tier builds and runs Google + Facebook Ads. £249 adds weekly human review. £899 VIP for hands-on senior oversight
Flat tiers, no overage fees based on your ad spend
Pricing current at time of writing. See Atlas pricing and Directive Consulting pricing for the latest
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Atlas a direct replacement for Directive Consulting?
For a B2B SaaS founder or lean marketing team that mainly needs Google and Meta paid ads built and run well, yes. Atlas builds the campaigns, runs weekly Google management with your approval, and ships weekly Meta tools you run alongside it, for £99 to £899 a month. Directive is the better fit if you are Series B or later, you want paid plus SEO plus content plus CRO plus RevOps coordinated by one senior team, and your budget supports a $10K to $25K+ a month retainer. The two are aimed at different stages of SaaS, not the same buyer.
What about the multi-channel work Directive does, LinkedIn and YouTube and Microsoft Ads?
Atlas focuses on Google Ads and Facebook plus Instagram, the two channels that do the most work for most B2B SaaS in the £1K to £50K monthly spend range. LinkedIn Ads is genuinely powerful for high-ACV enterprise SaaS, and that is a place Directive earns the spend. If LinkedIn is core to your motion today, Directive covers ground Atlas does not. If your funnel is Google-led with a Meta retargeting layer, Atlas covers what you need without the multi-channel overhead.
Can Atlas handle the strategic side, offer design, ICP positioning, attribution?
Atlas is trained on £10M of real SaaS spend and asks the right questions about your ICP, ACV, funnel and offer to shape the campaigns. It is an AI ads manager, not a full demand gen consultancy. For tactical paid execution shaped to a SaaS funnel, Atlas does the job. For multi-channel demand gen strategy that includes content cadence, sales-marketing alignment and RevOps wiring, Directive is doing a different job that Atlas does not try to replicate.
How does pricing compare for a £10K a month Google ad budget?
At £10K a month of media spend, Atlas is £99 a month for the Atlas tier or £249 a month with Atlas plus Specialists, all-in for build and weekly management. Directive's Startup Package is $6,500 a month on top of your media. Across the year that is roughly £2K of Atlas plus £120K of media versus $78K of Directive plus £120K of media. The agency math works at a different stage of SaaS than where Atlas is priced.
What about reporting and pipeline attribution?
Atlas writes a plain-English explanation for every recommendation and weekly change, plus weekly performance summaries. It connects to your Google Ads and Meta Ads accounts and surfaces the spend, conversions and weekly trend lines you need to brief the team. For deeper Salesforce or HubSpot pipeline attribution wired into a custom dashboard, Directive's Stratos platform and RevOps team go further than Atlas does. Most lean SaaS teams find the Atlas reporting layer enough at our price point.
Skip the 3-week onboarding,
get Atlas building today
Start free, no card. Atlas drafts your first Google and Facebook campaigns inside an hour