Ramp Card Review for Media Buyers
Ramp's pitch is irresistible to growing agencies: high limits, no fees, no personal guarantee, beautiful software, and 1.5% cashback. We ran a media-buying agency on Ramp as the primary card for 6 months to see if it actually replaces Amex. Verdict: not quite.
By Editorial Team · Media buyer research desk
Published May 29, 2026 · 6 min read · How we review
What Ramp does brilliantly
Onboarding is 30 minutes. Limits are 5-10x what Amex or Chase will approve in the same week. Virtual cards per employee, per vendor, per campaign with hard spend caps. Receipt matching is the best in the category. QuickBooks/Xero/NetSuite sync is real-time. Accounting team time savings alone justify the switch.
Where it loses
Rewards. 1.5% flat cashback on ad spend vs Amex Gold's 4x category bonus (~6-8% transfer value) is a 4-6 percentage point gap on your largest expense. At $15K/month of Meta, that gap is $7,000-$11,000 a year of foregone rewards.
The right setup
Use Ramp for: employee cards, SaaS subscriptions, client lunches, contractor payments, overflow ad spend above Amex caps. Use Amex Business Gold for: the first $150K/year of ad spend where 4x maximizes value.
Ramp Plus vs free Ramp
Ramp's free product is genuinely good. Ramp Plus ($15/user/month) adds advanced approval workflows and procurement features mostly relevant to companies past 25 employees. Sub-25 person agencies don't need it.
Ramp Treasury and bill pay
Underrated. Ramp's bill pay is free and high-quality (better than Bill.com for most agency use cases). Treasury yield is competitive with high-yield savings. Worth using even if you keep Amex as your rewards card.
Takeaway
Ramp is the right tool for spend management, employee cards, and bill pay. It's the wrong tool for primary ad-spend rewards. Run both — Amex for the points, Ramp for the operations.