What does social media management cost?

The discipline most often priced by activity — posts per week — and most usefully priced by what the activity is for.

Before anything else

The honest problem with pricing this at all

Most social media quotes price a publishing schedule, because a schedule is easy to count. But the same twelve posts a month can cost wildly different amounts depending on who makes the content, who answers the comments, and whether anyone is thinking about why. Before comparing numbers, decide which of those you are actually buying — the calendar, the community, or the outcome.

Side by side

The models, and what each one rewards

Pricing models compared
Model	What it is	What it rewards
Post-volume retainer	A fixed number of posts per week across agreed channels, on a monthly fee.	Rewards publishing, not performing. Twelve forgettable posts satisfy the contract as fully as twelve good ones.
Outcome retainer	A monthly fee against defined goals — enquiries, community growth, content that feeds other channels.	Rewards judgement, and demands measurement. Needs a baseline and honest reporting to mean anything.
Strategy project	Positioning, channel choice, content pillars and templates as a one-off, executed by your own team.	Rewards clarity and costs less long-term — if there is genuinely someone internal with the hours to execute.
Hourly / ad-hoc	Occasional content days, launches or takeovers, billed by time.	Rewards flexibility. As the default model it produces a feed that posts in bursts and goes quiet, which reads worse than posting less, consistently.

The number depends on who makes the content

The management fee is often the smaller half of the real cost. Original photography, design and video are separate work — either inside the fee at lower volume, or billed as production on top.

A quote that includes daily video for a small retainer is telling you the content will be templates. That can be fine for some businesses; it should be a choice, not a surprise.

Ask what is produced versus repurposed, per week
Ask who replies to comments and messages, and inside what hours
Ask which channels are included — and which the fee quietly ignores
Ask what would make them recommend posting less

Organic and paid are different line items

Managing a feed and running paid social are different disciplines that happen to share a login. If growth targets are attached, ask which part is expected to deliver them — organic reach alone rarely carries acquisition goals any more, and a fee that implies otherwise is pricing hope.

Boosting and ads budget sit outside the management fee
Paid social management is its own scope, usually its own specialist
Reporting should separate organic performance from paid

How this works here

Social engagements on AdSTARS Connect start from a brief that states the outcome, not the posting frequency — the AI turns "we need our launch to reach hospitality buyers" into a scope a specialist can price honestly. Milestones fund into escrow before work starts and release when you approve.

Strategy, production batches and ongoing management can be separate milestones, so you can buy the thinking once and the execution only as long as it earns its keep.

Have questions?

The things people ask next

What does social media management typically cost per month?

Indicatively, ongoing management for a small business runs from a few hundred euros for light, repurposed-content schedules to several thousand where original production, community management and reporting are included. The spread is the scope — which is why the questions above matter more than the number.

Can I just do it in-house?

If someone internal genuinely has the hours and an eye for it, yes — and a strategy project that leaves them with positioning, pillars and templates is the cheapest good outcome on this page. The failure mode is assigning it to whoever is youngest and calling that a strategy.

Which channels should the budget cover?

Fewer than you think. A feed that is excellent on the one channel your customers actually use beats a presence that is thin on four. A specialist who opens by asking where your customers are — rather than listing what they post everywhere — is pricing the right job.

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Keep comparing

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AdSTARS Connect introduces businesses to independent marketing specialists and is not a party to the resulting contract. Comparisons describe the other platforms' publicly documented terms at the date of writing and are not endorsed by them.

¹Third-party product names and marks belong to their respective owners. Nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by them.
²Fees, escrow terms and the verification policy apply. The platform commission is deducted from the specialist as a milestone releases; clients pay the agreed milestone amount with no additional platform fee.
³Cost ranges quoted are indicative market figures for orientation, not quotes, and not professional advice.

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