Every creator hits this question a few months out: do it yourself, hire a freelancer, sign with a big launch agency, or bring in a small specialist? It depends, and what it depends on can be written down. We've also included the number almost nobody publishes: what a confirmed pre-launch subscriber cost in 2026, read from our own ad accounts.
None of them is right in the abstract. Each one works in a specific situation, and picking the wrong situation costs more than the most expensive agency.
Plenty of projects fund without an agency, and sometimes that's the right call. The real cost is time: the page, the ads and the pre-launch emails eat a few hours a day for at least three months. And a first ad account pays a learning tax no tutorial removes. Meta optimises on data, and you buy data by getting things wrong.
When it makes sense: a modest goal, a community that's already yours (an active Discord, a newsletter), a launch date that can slip.
A freelance media buyer costs less than an agency and can be enough, if you already have the rest of the machine. The weak point sits elsewhere: page, ads and emails become three different heads, and when the cost per subscriber climbs, nobody owns the final number.
When it makes sense: you've launched at least once before and advertising is the only piece you're missing.
LaunchBoom, Jellop, BackerKit's ad network: on six-figure launches they are proven machines. The model is industrial, though, with dozens of projects in the pipeline at any given moment. The economics work out across the portfolio, not on your single launch. Yours goes the way it goes. And a campaign with a $30,000 goal is buying machinery sized for one aiming at $500,000.
When it makes sense: an English-language project, a six-figure goal, production and fulfilment already sorted.
Below the big names sits a handful of small agencies that do crowdfunding as their core trade. Ours is one of them, and almost none of us publish our numbers. That's your selection criterion, and it applies to us too: ask any agency for the results of its last three campaigns, not the best seven projects on the shelf. Our last three are in the next section.
When it makes sense: a first or second launch, a mixed European and international market, one team that answers for the whole pre-launch.
The last three Kickstarter pre-launches we closed, June and July 2026, all tabletop games. Each column stays in the currency of its ad account: currencies don't add up, so you get no single blended average here.
You'll still find posts quoting $0.50 to $2 per subscriber. That range was realistic a few years ago. Today, on audiences of real backers, with conversion measured on the thank-you page instead of the click, these are the numbers. Anyone promising subscribers at 50 cents is counting something else.
Figures read from Meta Ads over each campaign's full duration. A subscriber is an email confirmed on the thank-you page. Project names belong to our clients and we don't publish them without written approval: on a call, with their ok, we go into detail.
Agencies with international clients run accounts in pounds, in Canadian or Australian dollars. If you're shown one tidy average in a single currency, ask for the currency line by line: adding up different currencies produces numbers that look great and mean nothing.
On the button click, on the form submit, or on the thank-you page? The first two count people who never subscribed. It's the difference between a real cost per subscriber and one built for a slide deck.
The email list, the pixel and the ad account should be in your name. If the agency keeps the list when the contract ends, you paid for your pre-launch twice.
Our model is a €1,000 test up front, then 5% of net funds raised, and we defend it for a simple reason: if the campaign goes badly, so do we. A monthly retainer gets paid either way, including when the campaign flops.
The right answer is uncomfortable: we tell you, and we stop you before you spend on production. An agency with no room for a no will sell a yes to anyone.
If your goal is a few thousand euros and you already have a community that shows up, there's no margin left to pay a vendor. Launch on your own: the risk is low, and what you learn comes with you to the second campaign.
If you're less than two months from launch, no agency fixes that. A serious pre-launch needs three to four months. Move the date rather than paying someone to rush.
If the timing works and the project holds up, with us it starts with a €1,000 smoke test that tells you, with your own numbers, whether the goal is within reach. It also works as a second opinion if you're already with someone else.
How the smoke test worksA thirty-minute call, free. You arrive with the project, you leave knowing whether launching it makes sense, and how. If you'd rather run the numbers yourself first, the calculator shows how much of what you raise actually stays in your pocket.