How to choose an Allegro agency: 8 criteria and the questions to ask

We’re writing this guide as a marketplace agency with Allegro Ads Partner+ status, so we’re not neutral on this subject. That said, we’ve based it on what we’ve seen for ourselves while running client accounts, and we’ve linked our examples to the full case studies so that you can check them. Use this guide, then, as a checklist you can hold up against any proposal, ours included. Our examples come from the Polish market, which is why all amounts, like our prices, are given in Polish zloty (PLN).

What does an Allegro agency do?

An Allegro agency takes over some or all of the work involved in selling on the platform and, in practice, acts as an external e-commerce department for the seller’s business. The scope of that work can vary widely, however, so before you start comparing proposals it’s worth distinguishing between the two basic ways of working with an agency.

The first is limited to running Allegro Ads campaigns, meaning sponsored offers and display ads, together with setting bids and the advertising budget, ongoing optimisation and reporting. The second covers the entire account, from setup and the product catalogue to listings, parameters, variants, shipping rate tables, sales quality and advertising campaigns. The difference between them matters a great deal, because advertising won’t fix a weak listing. If customers land on poor photos, a thin description or a price higher than the competition’s, a campaign will simply make your budget run out faster. That’s why, for a brick-and-mortar pharmacy that was only just starting to sell online, we built up the listings and sales quality first and didn’t switch on the ads until the first ratings had come in. So before anything else, establish whether the problem lies in the ads alone or in your entire sales operation on Allegro, because that determines what kind of agency you’re actually looking for.

Two of our other projects show this well. A stationery distributor entrusted us with its Allegro Ads campaigns alone and implemented the other recommendations from the audit itself, and between April and December 2023 the ads generated 1,580,667 PLN in sales, more than 58% above target. The starting point was completely different for a distributor of Italian coffee that had only ever sold B2B. There we began by setting up the account, the returns policy and the shipping rate tables, and the challenge for the business lay not only in the ads but also in after-sales processes such as invoicing, returns and complaints.

Is it worth hiring an Allegro agency?

Working with an agency makes sense above all when you have a good product and a healthy margin but lack the time or know-how to grow sales on your own. This most often applies to manufacturers, importers with their own brands and distributors for whom Allegro is an important channel but not their main day-to-day work. In businesses like these, the agency takes on tasks that would otherwise sit waiting for a spare moment, and the owner can get back to developing the product and the range. The same is true when you enter Allegro’s Polish marketplace from abroad, with a foreign language and unfamiliar market rules coming on top of the day-to-day work.

Not every situation calls for an agency, however. If you’re left with little per unit after commission, delivery costs and the purchase price, no campaign will change that, and a fixed agency fee will only make matters worse. So if your sales are modest, first work out whether the extra cost stands a chance of paying for itself. If you’re also considering hiring an employee or selling on your own, we’ve compared all three routes in our article on choosing between an agency, an in-house hire and going it alone.

What should you look for when choosing an Allegro agency?

Once you know what you need, you can move on to comparing specific firms. The criteria below form a logical sequence: they begin with what you’re paying for and end with how to check whether the promises hold up.

1. The scope of work set out in the contract

Every agency has its own idea of what ‘full-service management’ means, so what’s included in the price in one proposal may be charged as an extra in another. So ask for a list of the tasks covered by the monthly fee, and press the agency in particular on graphics, customer service in the buyers’ language, returns and sales on Allegro’s other marketplaces. Only a scope spelled out in this way lets you compare two proposals fairly, since without it you’re simply setting one price against another. Nor does it have to be broad for the partnership to work: for a furniture distributor, we were responsible for promoting the shop and improving its listing rankings, while the owners made the remaining changes to the account themselves. What matters is that both sides know from the outset who is responsible for what.

2. Status in the Allegro Ads Partner programme

Once you know what the agency should be doing, check that it has the verified expertise to do it. The Allegro Ads partner programme has three levels: Participant, Allegro Ads Partner and Allegro Ads Partner+. A Partner has at least 3 active clients and spends at least 400,000 PLN gross per quarter on the agency account, while a Partner+ needs at least 6 clients, 1,000,000 PLN gross per quarter and 2 Allegro Ads tools. Membership alone therefore says little, so ask which level the agency holds and request proof of it. Bear in mind, too, that partner status reflects scale and knowledge but doesn’t guarantee results on your account, because a certified partner can run campaigns either very well or no better than average.

3. Case studies with numbers

Nothing will tell you more about how an agency works in practice than its results. Yet the claim ‘we increased sales’ proves nothing until you know over what period, from what starting point and at what cost it was achieved. A reliable case study gives you this information outright, as ours does for a manufacturer of construction chemicals, whose sales came to 400,610 PLN between March and July 2023, with every zloty spent on Allegro Ads in July coming back as 15.68 PLN in sales. You can relate figures like these to your own situation, especially if they come from your category or a similar one. You’ll find more examples from a range of industries in our Allegro portfolio, and it’s fair to expect the same level of detail from other agencies.

4. Profitability, not just turnover

When you look at results, pay attention to whether the agency talks about profit or only about revenue, because anyone can spend your budget to push the numbers up. Ask how it assesses advertising on Allegro and how it calculates ROAS (the revenue from every zloty spent on advertising), and above all whether it takes your margin into account. A high ROAS on a low margin can still mean a loss, which is why a good agency will start by working out how much you really earn per unit.

In practice, caring about profitability sometimes means spending less. For the coffee distributor mentioned earlier, we didn’t scale up the campaigns in spring and summer, because searches for ‘kawa’ (coffee) on Allegro drop noticeably at that time of year, and a bigger budget would simply have run out sooner without delivering measurable results. From June 2024 to April 2025, every zloty spent on ads there came back as 16.67 PLN in sales. So ask the agency when it last advised a client to spend less, as the answer will tell you a lot about its approach.

5. The person who will run your account

Even an agency’s best results mean little if your account is handled by someone with no similar projects under their belt. The person on the sales call is often not the one who later works on the account, so ask exactly who will look after you, what experience they have, which language you’ll be speaking and how quickly you’ll be able to reach them. The point is that, if a problem arises, you should be talking to an expert who knows your products rather than a helpline that has to ‘check’ everything.

6. Reporting and access to data

This is the person you’ll be reviewing results with regularly, so agree from the start what the reports will look like. They should show sales, advertising costs, ROAS, the optimisation work carried out and the plan for the following month, because a chart of clicks on its own tells you nothing about whether you’re making money. For our clients, every month ends with an online meeting at which we go through the report, the work done and the plan for the next period, but whatever the format, what counts is that you understand what happened and why. You also have the right to see the data directly in your Allegro account rather than just in a presentation prepared by the agency, because you’re the one paying for the campaigns and they’re your sales.

7. Contract, notice period and access

Transparency should extend to the contract as well. A long notice period mainly protects the agency, which is why ours is one month: we believe that results, not contract clauses, should decide whether the partnership continues. Also check how the agency gets access to your account, because the right way is through permission management, not by handing over your password. That way the account remains yours throughout, and when the partnership ends you simply revoke access.

8. Reviews you can verify

Finally, test all of this against what clients say. Credible reviews come with a person’s name, a company name and specific details, so it’s worth reading them on the agency’s Google Business Profile, negative ones included, and seeing how it responds. Employer review sites, on the other hand, describe a company as a place to work rather than the quality of its services, so don’t read them as an assessment of its work for clients. The strongest evidence remains a conversation with someone who already works with the agency, especially if they sell in a similar category.

How much does an Allegro agency cost?

When comparing prices, remember that the total cost is made up of three elements: the agency fee, the advertising budget in Allegro Ads and the costs on Allegro’s side, such as commission and any subscription. Only when you add them up can you see how much you’ll really pay, which is why the figure on a price list can be misleading on its own.

Our campaign management starts at 1,000 PLN excl. VAT per month and our account management at 2,500 PLN excl. VAT per month, with the price depending on factors such as how many products you have and how many countries you sell in. The minimum advertising budget we recommend is 1,500 PLN per month, since with less than that it’s hard to optimise effectively or get reliable data. Some agencies, on the other hand, charge a percentage of sales, so in that case check whether this means all sales or only those from advertising, and compare the cost at your level of turnover, as a low starting rate doesn’t always mean a lower cost after a year.

What questions should you ask an agency before you start working together?

All of these criteria are easiest to check during the first conversation. Ask every agency the same questions, and the answers will let you compare proposals on a level playing field:

• Who exactly will run my account, how many other accounts does that person handle and what language will we speak?
• What level do you hold in the Allegro Ads Partner programme and how can I verify it?
• Can you show me results from my category or a similar one?
• How do you calculate campaign profitability at my margin?
• What’s included in the price and what costs extra?
• How often will I get a report and what will it contain?
• What access to my account do you need?
• What is the notice period?
• What happens to the account and campaigns when our partnership ends?
• What don’t you do?

Warning signs when choosing an agency

What an agency avoids is just as important as what it says. Above all, be wary of anyone who guarantees a specific increase in sales or rankings, because the result depends on the product, the price, the competition and the season. The same applies to promises made without analysing the account: if nobody has seen your data, nobody can honestly tell you how much you’ll earn. Also watch out for requests for your password instead of permissions, a lack of access to the data, reports that focus on clicks rather than profit, and long contracts with no way out, because each of these signs means that the risk of the partnership is shifting onto you.

How do you assess an Allegro agency’s results?

Once the contract is signed, give the agency time, but decide in advance how you’ll recognise progress. The first steps, such as new listings or launching ads, show up quickly, whereas stable sales growth and profitability usually take 2–3 months, and building a strong brand is a 6–9 month process. These are ranges rather than deadlines, as a lot depends on the category and the state of the account.

After the first quarter, compare sales, margin, advertising costs and sales quality with your starting point. If only turnover is rising while profit stays flat, ask why and what the agency intends to do about it, because a good partnership is built on exactly these conversations. At the same time, don’t look at sales alone, since some of the work only pays off later. At the pharmacy mentioned earlier, 99% of 2,185 parcels were dispatched on time and the account’s sales quality has held steady at Super+ for more than a year, which is the foundation for further growth, even though it doesn’t show up in the sales report itself.

Frequently asked questions

Can you switch Allegro agencies while you’re already selling?

Yes, and a stationery distributor we worked with is a good example: it came to us after its partnership with a previous agency had ended, at a time when sales were weak despite competitive prices. We began with an account audit, and the campaign launched on 13 April 2023 started generating profit after a few days of bid adjustments. When you switch, make sure above all that the new agency gets access to your campaign history, because that’s the data it will base its first decisions on.

Is it worth choosing an agency with Allegro Ads Partner certification?

Yes, if advertising is your priority, because an Allegro Ads partner has to pass a knowledge check and runs campaigns of a defined scale, which gives you a benchmark that a mere claim of experience can’t provide. The certificate is only the start of your assessment, however, because it’s no substitute for checking the results and who will actually run your account.

How does an e-commerce agency differ from an Allegro agency?

An e-commerce agency usually looks after an online shop along with Google Ads and Meta Ads campaigns, whereas an Allegro agency works with the seller panel, the product catalogue, account quality and Allegro Ads. A seller with their own shop and a marketplace account may need both sets of skills, so it’s worth asking who on the team is responsible for each channel and whether one person really knows them all.

Is a success fee model for Allegro Ads management worth it?

It depends on your margin and the scale of your sales. Under this model you pay a percentage of sales, so the risk at the start is lower, but as turnover grows the cost grows with it, and after a while a fixed fee may turn out to be cheaper. Before you choose a billing model, it’s best to run the numbers for both options using data from recent months.

Can an agency guarantee an increase in sales?

No, because the result depends on the product, the price, the competition and the season, and some of these factors are beyond an agency’s control. A reliable partner will show you strategies that have worked for other sellers and give you an honest assessment of your account’s potential, but won’t promise a specific figure.

Summary

Choosing an Allegro agency is a decision best made on the basis of data rather than price or promises alone. If several firms answer the same questions, you’ll quickly see which one shows you the numbers, talks about profit and is honest with you when it sees no potential. That’s exactly the kind of partner worth looking for, whether you want to hand over just the advertising or your entire sales operation.

If you’d like to hold this checklist up against us, start with what you need: for advertising, see how we run Allegro Ads campaigns; for your entire sales operation, take a look at our ongoing Allegro account management; and if you’d rather find out where your account stands first, try an audit of your Allegro account. Or you can simply book a free consultation, and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help.