Stone Systems marketing, honestly compared
We are a competitor, so read this with that in mind - and we have tried to write the page we would want to find if the positions were reversed. Everything about their offer below is quoted from their own site, read on 5 August 2026.
Stone Systems is $297/month for a 10-20 page website built to turn visitors into text conversations, plus automated follow-up, missed-call text-back, a review funnel and on-site SEO. Despite the name it is not a stone-trade specialist - "Stone" is founder Kai Stone's surname, and they serve 22+ trades. Advertising is not included; Google Ads is a separate service. If you need a website, that is a good price. If you need leads, a website alone will not produce them.
We sell a competing service. You should assume we are motivated to make ourselves look good, and you should check anything here against their own site before deciding.
We have written it straight because a comparison page that only flatters its author is worthless to the reader and obvious to everyone. There is a section below on where they are the better choice, and it is not a token one. There is also a section on where they beat us outright.
First: the name is not what you think
Most people who search "stone systems" while running a countertop shop are expecting a stone-industry specialist. That is not what this is.
"Stone" is the founder's surname - Kai Stone. The company is a generalist contractor marketing agency. Their own site lists the trades they serve, and the list runs to more than twenty: landscapers, remodelling, pressure washing, pest control, moving companies, flooring and carpet cleaning, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, electricians, handymen, painters, decks and patios, siding, pool construction, paving, hardscaping, windows and doors, general contractors, tree service, home builders - and dog groomers.
Countertops, granite, quartz and stone fabrication do not appear anywhere on their homepage.
This is not a criticism. A generalist who has built four hundred contractor websites has seen more of what works than a specialist who has built ten. But it is the single most useful thing to know if you arrived expecting stone expertise, and it changes what you should ask on their demo call.
What $297 a month actually includes
Their Contractor Advanced plan, taken from their pricing page:
- Functional website, 10-20 pages - built specifically to turn visitors into text conversations. Website chat that creates text conversations, quote forms that fire an SMS to both you and the customer, hyperlinked phone numbers. Their stated principle: "Everything gets sent to you over text, never email."
- Automated lead follow-up - instant SMS confirmations to all website leads.
- Missed-call text-back - a text goes out automatically when you cannot pick up.
- 5-Star Magic Review Funnel - automated review requests, capped at four reminders. See the section below before you buy this one.
- One-click marketing campaigns - pre-built referral requests and discount offers to past customers.
- On-site SEO - keyword research, content optimisation, alt tags and JSON schema, image and pagespeed optimisation.
No contract, monthly or annual billing. Their stated build time is 7-10 days after an onboarding form, with a 20-minute demo call up front and a 25-minute launch call at the end. Their own description of the demo call is worth repeating because it is more honest than most: "It's actually a sales call, we just didn't want to scare you."
Three things sit under "other services" on the same page, not inside the plan:
- Google Business Profile optimisation - GMB SEO evaluation, full revamp, keyword and local optimisation.
- Advanced SEO - backlinks, directories, cloudstacks, press releases, heavy keyword research, ongoing blog posts.
- Google Ads - PPC and Local Services Ads.
Prices for these are not published. If your plan involves any of them, the real monthly figure is not $297 and you should get it in writing before signing. We also found no mention of managed Facebook or Instagram advertising anywhere in their published materials - their paid-traffic offering appears to be Google only.
The review funnel, and a question you should ask
This one deserves care, because it is the only part of their offer where we think a shop owner carries a risk they may not have been told about. We are quoting both sides rather than characterising either.
What their pricing page says, describing the 5-Star Magic Review Funnel:
What Google's policy says. Under Rating Manipulation in the Maps user-generated content policy, merchants must not "Discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers."
The honest reading. These may not be in conflict at all. "Your public pages" could mean testimonial widgets on your own website - filtering which reviews you choose to display on your own site is completely normal and nobody's policy prevents it. If that is what it means, there is no issue here.
But it could also describe pre-screening customers before sending the happy ones to Google, which is the practice Google's policy names. So:
- Ask them directly: "Does the funnel ask customers about their experience before deciding whether to send them to my Google review link?" A yes to that is review gating.
- Understand where the risk sits. Enforcement lands on your Google Business Profile - reviews stripped, or the profile suspended - not on the agency's. Your profile is usually your most valuable free marketing asset. See how Maps ranking actually works for why losing it would hurt.
- Note that the underlying feature is good. Automated review requests capped at four reminders is a genuinely useful thing to have, and most shops do it badly or not at all. It is only the filtering step that needs the question asked.
Their wording read from stonesystems.io/pricing and Google's from Google's Maps user-generated content policy, both on 5 August 2026. We are not asserting that they breach it - we are saying the wording is ambiguous and the answer matters to you more than to them.
Where they are genuinely better than us
Three things, and we would rather say them than have you find them out and stop trusting the rest of the page.
- They have far more proof than we do. Their site carries a wall of named client testimonials with photos, plus a press section. StoneMagnet was founded on 21 July 2026. Our numbers come from one shop over one month. If track record is what you are buying on, that is not a close call, and it should not be.
- They are dramatically cheaper. $297 against roughly $3,000 all-in for us. For a shop where cash is genuinely tight, that difference is not a detail, it is the whole decision.
- They will work with you anywhere, in any trade. We take one shop per city and only countertop and stone shops. If your city is taken, or you are a remodeller rather than a fabricator, we are not an option and they are.
Stone Systems' own press page describes why the company exists: agencies were pricing contractors out of the market. In their words, "Agencies routinely charged contractors between $2,000 and $5,000 a month" - rates the founder judged unjustifiable for most contractors - and $297 was the deliberate contrarian answer.
That range brackets us precisely. Our founding rate is $1,987 and our standard rate is $5,000. We are the thing their company was started to undercut, and we would be hiding the ball if we left that out of a page comparing the two.
The counter-argument is the one this whole page turns on, and it is not a rhetorical dodge: an agency charging $2,000-$5,000 that only rebuilds your website is overcharging, and he is right about that. An agency at that price that runs the ad budget, guarantees the lead volume and refunds you if it misses is selling a different thing. Judge which one you are being offered, on either call.
How the two actually compare
| Stone Systems | StoneMagnet | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $297/mo no contract | $1,987/mo founding rate standard $5,000 |
| Ad budget | Not applicable ads are an add-on | $1,000-$2,000 separate, on your own card |
| Realistic all-in | $297/mo | ~$3,000/mo |
| Who they serve | 22+ trades, anywhere | Countertop & stone shops, one per city |
| Website | Yes, 10-20 pages | Yes |
| Missed-call text-back | Yes | Yes |
| Automated follow-up | Yes, SMS | Yes, AI that books measures |
| Review automation | Yes | Yes |
| On-site SEO | Yes | Yes |
| Managed Meta ads | Not offered | Included |
| Google Ads | Paid add-on price not published | Included |
| Google Business Profile work | Paid add-on | Included |
| Lead board / CRM | No | Yes |
| AI kitchen visualizer | No | Yes |
| Lead guarantee | None | 20 qualified leads in month one or you don't pay |
| City exclusivity | No | One shop per city |
| Track record | Years, many named clients | Founded July 2026 |
Their column read from stonesystems.io/pricing and their homepage on 5 August 2026. "Not offered" means we found no mention in their published materials, not that they will refuse to discuss it - ask them.
The question that actually decides this
Forget the feature tables. There is one question, and it is about which problem you have.
Are you losing enquiries you already get, or are you not getting enough enquiries?
If you are losing enquiries you already get - your phone rings, people fill in forms, and then things go cold because there is no website worth the name, nobody answers in the evening, and you have eleven Google reviews - then $297 a month for a site that texts you is good value and genuinely hard to beat. Fix that first. Do not pay anyone ten times as much to pour more leads into a bucket with a hole in it.
If you are not getting enough enquiries - the phone is quiet, the calendar has gaps, and word of mouth has plateaued - then a website will not solve it, and this is the part that gets glossed over in a lot of agency sales calls. A website converts demand. It does not create it. A beautiful site that nobody visits produces nothing. You will need advertising on top, from them as an add-on, from us, or from someone else.
What the $2,700 difference buys, if anything
We should justify our own price or stop quoting it. The gap between $297 and roughly $3,000 all-in is mostly two things:
- About $1,000-$2,000 of that is media spend that goes to the ad platforms, not to us. It is on your own card and you can see it. That is not a fee, it is the cost of buying attention, and Stone Systems' customers who add Google Ads will pay their own version of it on top of the $297 - plus whatever the management fee is, which they do not publish.
- The rest is managed demand generation and the guarantee. Someone builds the creative, runs the campaigns across both Meta and Google, watches cost per lead, and an AI answers and books measures at 9pm. Plus the guarantee: 20 qualified leads in the first month or you do not pay. Nobody at $297 can offer that, because at $297 there is no ad budget to make it true.
Whether that is worth it depends entirely on your gross profit per job. If a countertop job nets you $2,000, one extra job a month covers the difference twice over. If it nets $400, it does not. Work out your gross profit per job before you take either sales call, and use it to set your break-even cost per lead. That single number tells you more than any comparison table, including this one.
Questions worth asking on either demo
- What is my total monthly cost with everything I actually need, in writing?
- Who owns the website and the domain if I leave, and can I take the content?
- Who owns the phone number used for tracking and text-back?
- What happens to my leads and message history when I cancel?
- Does the review funnel pre-screen customers before sending them to Google?
- How many other businesses in my city and my trade do you work with?
- Where exactly do the new enquiries come from, and what do they cost?
- Show me a client in my trade, in a market like mine, with their numbers.
Question 7 is the one that separates the two products. If the answer is "from your improved website ranking better", that is SEO, it is real but slow, and it is not the same thing as buying demand. If the answer involves an ad budget, ask whose card it sits on and what the cost per lead has been.
We would rather you bought the right thing than bought from us. If the honest answer is that you need a $297 website and a review process, buy that - and come back if the calendar is still not full a few months later. Our own numbers, so you can weigh them: $30 per lead, 48 leads in 30 days, 54% booking a measure, at BedRock Countertops in Calgary, which is our own shop. One shop, one city, one month. A data point, not a benchmark, and a much smaller sample than their testimonial wall.
Common questions
How much does Stone Systems cost?
The Contractor Advanced plan is $297 a month, monthly or annual, no contract. It includes a 10-20 page website, automated lead follow-up, missed-call text-back, the review funnel, one-click referral and reactivation campaigns, and on-site SEO. Google Business Profile optimisation, advanced SEO (backlinks, directories, press releases, ongoing blog posts) and Google Ads management are listed as separate services, not part of the $297, and their prices are not published.
Is Stone Systems a countertop or stone industry specialist?
No. The name is founder Kai Stone's surname, not the trade. Their site lists more than twenty trades including landscapers, roofers, HVAC, plumbers, pool construction and dog groomers, and their homepage does not mention countertops, granite, quartz or stone fabrication anywhere. They are a generalist contractor agency, which has its own advantages - just not the one the name implies.
Does Stone Systems run ads for you?
Not within the $297 plan. Google Ads covering PPC and Local Services Ads is listed under other services. We found no mention of managed Facebook or Instagram advertising in their published materials. The core product converts visitors into text conversations rather than generating new visitors.
What is the difference between Stone Systems and StoneMagnet?
Stone Systems sells a website and follow-up system for any trade at $297/month, with advertising as a paid add-on. StoneMagnet sells managed demand for countertop shops only at $1,987/month founding rate, with $1,000-$2,000 of ad budget separate and on your own card - about $3,000 all in, roughly ten times the price. That is only worth it if your problem is a shortage of leads rather than a shortage of website. They also have far more customers and published testimonials than we do; we were founded in July 2026.
Is the review funnel safe to use?
Ask them how it works before buying. Their page describes it as preventing bad reviews from being published on any of your public pages. Google's Maps policy, under Rating Manipulation, says merchants must not discourage or prohibit negative reviews or selectively solicit positive ones. Their wording may only refer to testimonial displays on your own website, which would be unremarkable. The distinction matters because enforcement would land on your Google Business Profile, not on the agency.
Which should a countertop shop choose?
Decide by which problem you have. If you already get enquiries and lose them to a poor website, no evening cover and few reviews, $297 a month is good value and you should fix that first. If the calendar has gaps, a website will not fill it - a website converts demand rather than creating it - and you will need advertising on top from someone. Work out your gross profit per job first; it decides whether the more expensive option can pay for itself.