For freelancers with local business clients

The monthly client report, already done.

Connect Search Console and Google Analytics once. On the 1st, a branded PDF lands in your inbox — charts built, commentary drafted, ready to forward. $39/month, unlimited clients.

An August report for a local dental practice — generated on the 1st, edited in about ten minutes.

Brightside Dental
Organic Search Performance · August 2026 · Prepared by Your Agency
Clicks
1,847
▲ 23.0% MoM
Impressions
42,910
▲ 11.4% MoM
Avg. position
6.4
▲ 1.2 places
Contact forms
41
▲ 31.0% MoM
Summary

Organic search kept building through August. Clicks rose 23% to 1,847, driven mostly by "emergency dentist near me", which moved from position 4.5 to 3.1 and now accounts for 17% of all organic clicks. Contact form submissions grew 31% to 41 — the strongest month since tracking began in March.

One thing to watch: "invisalign cost" slipped 0.3 places, and the page it lands on is the slowest on the site. Worth a look before next month.

Clicks, last six months
Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug
Top queries
QueryClicksPos.Δ
emergency dentist near me3123.1▲1.4
dentist fairview2684.0▲0.6
teeth whitening fairview1416.2▲2.1
invisalign cost968.7▼0.3
dental implants near me7411.4▲3.0
Google Search Console & Google Analytics 4 · 1–31 Aug 2026 vs 1–31 Jul 2026 Timezone America/New_York · Generated 1 Sep 2026, 06:00
Your branding, not ours. Your logo, your colours, your name in the footer. Nothing on the page says Firstly.
The summary is a draft. Written from the actual numbers, edited by you in the browser before you send.
Every figure is sourced. Date range, comparison period and timezone are printed on the report — so when your client opens GA4 themselves, the numbers reconcile.

The honest arithmetic

Most of that time isn't thinking. It's formatting.

Agencies report spending around 8.2 hours per client per month on reporting. We're not going to claim we delete all of it — some of that time is your judgement, and software has no business touching it.

But pulling numbers out of four tabs and nudging a bar chart into place isn't judgement. That's the part that goes away.

The part nobody else admits: you will still spend about ten minutes per report reading it before you send it. Nobody should forward a generated document to a client unread — so Firstly is built around that review step instead of pretending it away.

Where 8.2 hours actually goes

Per client, per monthHoursFirstly
Pulling and exporting platform data2.5Gone
Formatting, charts, slide layout3.0Gone
Writing commentary1.5Drafted
Sanity-checking the numbers0.8Still yours
Sending and client follow-ups0.4Partly
Realistically removed5.5of 8.2
22 hrs

Back every month, if you run four clients. Over half a working week.

$1,100

What those hours are worth at a modest $50/hour effective rate.

$39

What Firstly costs. Flat. However many clients you take on.

That's a 28× return, and it survives being wrong by 75%. Put another way: Firstly costs under 3% of a single $1,500 retainer and buys back time on every retainer you have.

Let's be direct about the competition

You already tried Looker Studio. That's the real question.

Not AgencyAnalytics. Not Whatagraph. The thing standing between you and Firstly is a free Google product you've already got open in a tab. So here's the honest comparison, and here's where it stops working.

Looker Studio, month eleven

Five to eight hours of setup, per clientTwenty clients is roughly 100–160 hours before you've sent a single report.
No native PDFThe actual deliverable — the thing you send — is the one thing it won't produce properly.
Blends get unreliable past three or four sourcesAnd they break quietly, which is worse than breaking loudly.
Maintenance, foreverEvery template tweak, every new client, every Google change is your Saturday.
It builds dashboardsAnd your client has never once logged into a dashboard.

Firstly, month eleven

Five minutes of setup, per clientConnect the property, name the client, pick the industry. There is nothing else to configure, because there is no builder.
A PDF is the whole pointForward it, attach it to the invoice, print it for the meeting. The format small-business clients actually expect.
Two sources, done properlySearch Console and GA4. No blending, no silent breakage, no "(not set)" surprises in front of a client.
No maintenance, because you own no templateWhen Google changes something, that's my emergency at 3am, not yours on the 1st.
It builds documentsOne page, written in sentences your client's clients can read. Nobody has to log into anything.

Looker Studio is genuinely good at what it's for, and it's free. If you've got it working and you're happy, keep it — you're not the person Firstly is for. This is for the freelancer whose "system" is a Google Sheet, four browser tabs and the first Tuesday of every month.

Setup, in full

Three steps. Then it's just there, every month.

There is no report builder, no widget library and no blank canvas. That's not a missing feature — it's the entire reason setup takes minutes instead of an afternoon.

01

Connect Google, once

Sign in with the Google account that already has access to your clients' Search Console and Analytics. Read-only, and you can revoke it from your Google account at any time.

About 2 minutes
02

Add a client, pick their trade

Name the client, choose the property, tell us what they do — dental, legal, fitness, home services. The template already knows what a local business report should lead with.

About 3 minutes each
03

Read it, tweak it, forward it

A draft appears around the 28th so nothing is a surprise. The final PDF lands in your inbox on the 1st. Change any sentence, re-export, send it on with your name on it.

About 10 minutes a month

Pricing

Everyone else charges you for winning more clients.

The category leader bills per client. Land a sixth retainer and your reporting bill goes up — which is a strange thing for your own software to do to you. Firstly is one flat price, whatever you're running.

Your monthly reporting bill AgencyAnalytics Swydo Metrics Watch Firstly
3 clients$60–75$62–69$29$39
6 clients$120–150$62–69$29–100$39
12 clients$240–300$69+$100$39
20 clients$400–500$69+$100$39

Published list prices as of August 2026, for the plan a solo freelancer would actually buy. Metrics Watch is email-only with no PDF attachment. Firstly is narrower than all three — Google only, one template — which is exactly why it can be flat and why it can be five minutes.

One client

Free

forever, no card

  • One client, the full report — not a crippled sample
  • Your branding on the PDF
  • Delivered every month

Every feature. We gate on client count, never on features.

First 25 signups

Founding monthly

$39$29

per month, locked for life

  • Unlimited clients. Three or thirty, same price
  • Branded PDF + email version, every month
  • Drafted commentary you edit before sending
  • Previews from the 28th, final on the 1st
  • Direct line to me while it's early

Price never rises, for as long as you stay subscribed.

Annual

$390

per year — two months free

  • Everything in monthly
  • Unlimited clients
  • Two months free versus paying monthly

Available at launch. Founding signups get $290 for the first year.

Before you sign up

Six things Firstly deliberately will not do.

Better you find this out now than in week two. Every one of these is a decision, not a backlog item — and each one is a reason setup is five minutes rather than five hours.

No dashboardYour client has never logged into one and never will. The deliverable is a document you send them.
No report builderOne fixed, opinionated template for local business clients. You can't rearrange it. That's the trade for zero setup.
No Meta, TikTok or LinkedIn AdsSearch Console and GA4 only. If you run paid social for clients, Firstly is not your tool yet — and I'd rather say so than take your money.
No seats, permissions or approval flowsBuilt for one person, not an agency org chart. If you need six logins, buy AgencyAnalytics.
It won't email your client directlyThe report goes to you, not to them. Nobody should forward a generated document to a paying client unread, so the workflow doesn't let you.
It won't do your thinkingThe commentary is a competent first draft off real numbers. The recommendation that keeps the retainer is still yours to write.

Next up, and not in version one: Google Business Profile — calls, direction requests and local rankings. It's the right second integration for local clients, and it's the one thing early users can genuinely push up the queue.

Questions

The ones that actually matter

Will the numbers match what my client sees in GA4?

This is the question that decides whether a reporting tool is trustworthy, so here's the real answer rather than a comfortable one.

Small differences are normal across every tool in this category — sampling, attribution windows, timezone boundaries and internal-traffic filters all move numbers a little. What matters is that you can explain a difference when your client asks.

So every Firstly report prints its exact date range, comparison period, data source and timezone in the footer, matches your GA4 property's own reporting timezone, and never silently rounds or re-aggregates. If a number ever doesn't reconcile, that's a bug and I treat it as the most serious kind.

What access do you need, and how are my clients' credentials stored?

Firstly asks for read-only Search Console and Google Analytics scopes — the narrowest ones that will produce the report. It cannot change anything in your or your clients' accounts, because it never requests the permission to.

Tokens are encrypted at rest, never written to logs, and you can revoke access at any time either inside Firstly or from your own Google account security page.

You're trusting me with access to other people's business data, and you should ask this of any tool you connect. If you want more detail before you sign up, email me and ask — I'd rather answer it than have you wonder.

Can I edit the report before I send it?

Yes, and you should. The commentary is written from your client's actual numbers, but it is a draft — you open the report in the browser, change any sentence, re-export the PDF and send it on.

Most people spend about ten minutes on this. Firstly is designed around that ten minutes rather than pretending it doesn't happen.

What if a client needs Meta Ads, or LinkedIn, or a rank tracker?

Then Firstly won't cover that client, and I'd rather tell you here than after you've paid. Version one is Google Search Console and GA4, full stop.

That's not a roadmap gap I'm embarrassed about — every integration is a permanent maintenance liability, and staying narrow is what lets one person keep the thing reliable on the 1st of the month. Google Business Profile is next; paid social is not on the list.

Why $39 when Looker Studio is free and Porter is $12.50?

Because you're not buying data access, you're buying back an afternoon. Porter moves data into Looker Studio — you still build and maintain the report. Looker Studio is free and costs you five to eight hours per client to set up, then keeps costing you.

If your time is worth $50/hour, Firstly pays for itself roughly 28 times over in the first month you use it. If your time genuinely isn't the constraint, use Looker Studio — that's a fair answer and I'm not going to argue you out of it.

I only have one client right now. Is there a free tier?

Yes. One client, free, forever — and it's the complete report, not a watermarked teaser. Your branding, the full PDF, delivered every month.

When you land your second retainer, that's when it's worth $39 to you, and that's when I'd like you to pay.

When does it actually ship, and what am I signing up for?

You're joining an early-access list, not buying anything — there's no card, no trial clock and no charge. Firstly is being built now, targeting October 2026.

The first 25 people on the list get it free while it's rough, in exchange for telling me what's broken, and then $29/month locked for life if they want to keep it. If it slips, you get an honest email saying so.

Who's building this?

One person, working directly with the first handful of users. That's the reason the feature list is short and the reason you'll get a real answer when you email.

It's also a fair thing to weigh up: a solo tool is more responsive and less hedged than a funded competitor, and it's a smaller company. You should know which you're choosing.

Get your first Tuesday back.

Join the early-access list. If you're one of the first 25, you'll be using it before it's finished — and paying $29/month for as long as you keep it.