Key takeaways
- Cost-plus sets your floor: hours per month times a loaded hourly cost, plus tools, plus margin.
- Value-based pricing sets your ceiling: what the outcome is worth to the client, not what the hours cost you.
- Sell three tiers with a clear scope list each; a client choosing between packages does not haggle over hours.
- Scope creep is a pricing problem: define deliverables, revisions and response times in writing.
- All figures in this guide are labelled illustrations, not market benchmarks.
How do you price social media management packages with cost-plus?
Start from the work. List everything one client requires each month, estimate the hours for each item, and multiply by your loaded hourly cost, meaning what an hour of your team's time really costs you including salary, overhead and non-billable time. Add the tools you pay for on that client's behalf, then add the margin you need.
Illustration only: suppose a client needs 12 posts a month, and each post takes 1.5 hours including copy, design, scheduling and review, plus 3 hours of reporting and 2 hours of account management. That is 23 hours. At a loaded cost of 40 per hour that is 920, plus 30 of tools is 950. At a 40 percent margin you would price at 950 divided by 0.6, about 1,583. Change any input and the answer changes; the method is the point.
Cost-plus is honest and defensible, but it has a flaw: it rewards slowness and ignores value. Use it as the floor you will not go below, not as the price.
How do you price on value instead?
Value-based pricing asks what a good outcome is worth to the client. If a social programme brings a business qualified leads, a share of what a lead is worth is a defensible ceiling, whatever the hours were. It only works where you can connect the work to an outcome the client already measures, and where you can show it.
For most social packages the outcome is softer (reach, audience, brand presence), so value pricing shows up as a premium for expertise, speed and results you can evidence rather than a strict formula. The social media ROI calculator helps frame that conversation.
Why sell tiers, and how many?
Three tiers is a common pattern because it turns a negotiation over hours into a choice between packages. Define each tier by deliverables, not hours: number of posts and platforms, number of design revisions, reporting cadence, response time, and included extras.
Illustration only: a Starter tier might cover two platforms and a monthly report, a Growth tier four platforms with weekly notes and approvals, and a Premium tier everything plus a quarterly strategy call. The prices should rise faster than your hours, because higher tiers include more of your judgment, not only more posts.
- Deliverables: posts per month, platforms, formats (static, carousel, video).
- Process: approval rounds included, turnaround time, who the client contacts.
- Reporting: cadence and format (see the reporting cadence guide).
- Out of scope: paid ads management, community management, crisis response, unless priced separately.
How do you stop scope creep?
Put the boundaries in the package, not in a conversation. State how many revisions are included, how far ahead the client must supply assets, and what counts as a new request. An approval workflow helps: when the client must sign off in a defined queue, changes arrive as structured requests rather than a stream of messages. See multi-step approval.
Price add-ons explicitly (extra platform, extra post, rush turnaround) so that saying yes to extra work is a paid decision.
How do you check your margin, and where do tool costs fit?
Margin is what is left after the loaded cost of delivery. Track hours per client for a couple of months; the packages that feel busy but unprofitable are usually the ones where scope crept. The free agency pricing calculator and agency margin calculator run the arithmetic above for your own inputs.
Tool cost matters most when it scales per client or per seat. A tool priced per connected account grows as you add clients; one priced per seat grows as you hire. SkedCast is priced by connected accounts and includes a stated number of team seats per plan (Solo 10 accounts and 1 seat, up to Agency+ 500 accounts and 40 seats), with client limits of 3 on Solo up to 150 on Agency+. See the pricing page for current prices, and the cost calculator to model your own roster.
What about publishing costs on platforms like X?
A few platforms charge for API posting, and X is the one that does so per post today. If a client is heavy on X, price for it explicitly rather than absorbing it. The free X API cost calculator estimates it, and X's current rates are on its own pricing page.
Sources and last reviewed
Last reviewed 2026-09-23. This guide cites no market-rate survey: every number in the worked examples is an invented illustration to show the arithmetic, and none is a claim about what other agencies charge. Statements about SkedCast were checked against the product's code and docs; statements about other vendors were read from the pages listed on that date. Vendors change plans without notice, so confirm on their page before you buy.
FAQ
- How much should I charge for social media management (social media consultant rates)?
- There is no single right number, and any published figure for social media management company pricing, social media management services pricing (or social media marketing services pricing) is an average across very different scopes — a guess without your own costs behind it, same as any quoted rates for social media consulting. Work out your loaded hourly cost, estimate the hours a package takes, add tools and margin for a floor, then check the price against the value of the outcome for the client.
- Should I charge by the hour or by package?
- Packages, for ongoing social work. Hourly billing rewards slowness and invites debate over every task; a package with defined deliverables lets the client choose a tier and lets you improve your efficiency without losing revenue.
- How many pricing tiers should I offer?
- Three is a common and workable pattern: it turns a negotiation over hours into a choice between packages. Define each tier by deliverables, process and reporting rather than hours.
- How do I stop clients asking for more than the package includes?
- Write the boundaries into the package: included revisions, asset deadlines, response times and what counts as a new request. Price add-ons explicitly so extra work is a paid decision.
- Do the example numbers in this guide reflect market rates?
- No. They are illustrations to show the arithmetic. We did not verify a market-rate survey for this guide, so it makes no claim about what other agencies charge.