Thinking About Leaving Townsquare or Scorpion? Read This First.

The renewal invoice came in. You looked at the number, looked at the leads you've actually been getting, and felt something shift. Why am I still paying this? If that's you, you're not alone — we get this conversation in Lubbock at least once a week. Before you fire off the cancellation email, take ten minutes and read this. There are a few things that almost always trip people up on the way out the door.

What you're actually paying for

Big national agencies like Townsquare and Scorpion package together a website, some SEO, some Google Ads management, and a reporting dashboard. The dashboard makes it look like a lot is happening. The invoice is usually somewhere between the cost of a part-time employee and a full-time one.

The honest version of what you're paying for is mostly three things: a website you didn't build, traffic from paid ads (which you're also paying for on top of the management fee), and a layer of account management. The actual technology underneath is usually pretty standard — WordPress or a proprietary builder, basic call tracking, a generic CRM. Nothing magic, just bundled.

That bundle can make sense for a national chain that doesn't want to think about marketing. For a Lubbock service business, it's usually the most expensive way to do the simplest things.

The ownership question almost nobody asks until it's too late

This is the part that catches owners off guard. When you signed up, somebody handled "the website stuff" and you stopped thinking about it. Now that you're thinking about leaving, you have to figure out who owns what. Three things to check, today, before you cancel anything:

1. Who owns your domain? Log into your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Namecheap, Cloudflare, whatever) and confirm your name and your email are on the registration. If your agency owns the domain, you may not be able to take it with you. We've seen owners discover at cancellation that the domain they've used for ten years is registered to the agency, and getting it back becomes a negotiation. Sometimes a fight.

2. Who owns the website itself? If the site is built on a proprietary platform that only that agency operates, you can't just "move it" to a new vendor. The site goes dark when the contract ends. You might own the brand and the URL, but the actual pages and content disappear. Ask, in writing: "If I cancel today, do I keep a working copy of the website on a platform I can host anywhere?"

3. Who owns your contacts and call data? Every lead that called or filled out a form on your site is recorded somewhere. If that "somewhere" is your agency's CRM, those contacts may not come with you. Years of phone numbers, email addresses, and lead history can effectively vanish on cancellation day. Ask: "Can I export my full contact list, including phone numbers, emails, and conversation history, in a CSV file before I cancel?"

If the answer to any of those three is "no" or "it's complicated," you have a problem to solve before you cancel — not after.

Five things to do before you cancel

1. Confirm the domain is registered to you. If it's not, transfer it before the cancellation conversation starts.
2. Get a working export of every contact and lead. CSV with names, phone numbers, emails, and dates. Save it somewhere outside their system.
3. Save copies of every page on your current site. Even just screenshots and a Word doc of the copy. You'll want it as a starting point for the new site.
4. Re-claim your Google Business Profile. Make sure you are the primary owner, not the agency. Sign in to business.google.com and check.
5. Pull your last 12 months of analytics. Top pages, top traffic sources, conversion data. You want to know what was working before you start over.

Do those five things, and you can cancel from a position of leverage. Skip them, and you might end up locked in for another year just to avoid losing what you already have.

What a real alternative actually looks like

Here's the part most agencies don't want their clients to figure out: the actual job — a website that captures leads, a follow-up system that responds fast, reviews that get asked for automatically, and a single dashboard that ties it together — doesn't cost what they're charging. It costs a fraction.

What we do at 806 Growth is split that bundle into pieces a Lubbock business actually wants:

• A Smart-Site — a clean one-page site that captures contact info and routes calls to your phone. $197/mo. You own the domain, the content, and the analytics.
• A Growth plan — the Smart-Site plus missed-call text-back, automated review requests, and database reactivation. Same price band as one ad campaign.
• A Revenue Engine plan — everything above plus a 24/7 receptionist that answers when you can't.

Carrier costs (the actual SMS and voice minutes) get passed through at zero markup. We publish all the prices on the pricing page. No "contact us for a quote." No annual contract. You can cancel any month and keep your domain, your contacts, and your data.

If you've been paying $1,500–$5,000+ a month for the bundle and the leads aren't matching the invoice, the math gets very simple. You don't need a bigger agency. You need a smaller, more accountable system.

One last warning

Don't cancel angry. Cancel prepared. Get your domain. Get your data. Get your GBP. Get screenshots of your current site. Then send a polite cancellation notice in writing, save the confirmation, and move on. Most owners who do it that way report the actual switchover takes a weekend, not the months they were dreading.