Every agency quote you’ll get has a different number and the same vagueness. Here's the honest map — DIY, freelancer, agency — what each really costs, what’s hiding inside the retainers, and the questions that expose a bad social deal before you've signed anything.
Doing it yourself — ₹0, plus the hours you don’t have
The honest price of DIY social isn’t zero — it’s 6–10 hours a week of an owner's attention, usually spent at 11pm deciding whether a photo of today's special is “good enough.” It works, for a while. Then the busy season arrives, the posting stops, and the account goes quiet exactly when the most people are looking.
If you're going this route, do two things and skip the rest: post something real from your place twice a week, and answer every comment and DM the same day. A half-alive account run by the actual owner beats a polished one run by nobody. The trap isn’t bad content — it’s silence.
A freelancer — typically ₹8,000–20,000 a month
This is the going range across Punjab for one person handling one channel: captions written, posts scheduled, a reel here and there. At the top of the range, from someone good, it’s genuinely decent value — one channel, done steadily, is worth more than most owners expect.
What a freelancer usually can't give you: someone physically at your place shooting real content (most work from photos you send), ads run properly, your Google profile kept in step with the feed, and cover when they're ill, travelling, or gone. One person is one person. Also ask who owns the account before you start — with freelancers it’s usually right, and you want it in writing anyway.
An agency — typically ₹20,000 to ₹1,00,000+ a month
The honest range for social run as a system: a calendar you approve, content shot at your business, posting on a rhythm, comments answered, and a report that says what happened in words. Under ₹20,000, the corner usually being cut is the content itself — a template mill posting stock images with your logo on them, which your regulars can smell from across the road.
What separates a good agency from a bad one at the same price isn’t the deck — it’s the terms. Who owns the account. Whether there's a lock-in. Whether the person who pitched you is the person doing the work. For reference, our own social plans run ₹25,000 / ₹55,000 / ₹95,000 a month + 18% GST. Launch is 4 reels and 8 posts a month on one channel, from a two-hour shoot at your place. Grow is 8 reels and 16 posts on two channels, from a full shoot day, with ads. Scale is 12 reels and 24 posts on up to four channels, from two shoot days. If you’d rather post the reels yourself, Film is ₹12,500 a month + 18% GST, and Facebook, a second branch or ads can be added to Launch from ₹3,000 a month + 18% GST. Month-to-month, and every account stays in your name. That's not us being saintly; it’s just what the terms should look like anywhere.
The part nobody quotes: your ad budget
Whatever route you choose, ad spend is a separate number — and it should go straight from your card to Meta and Google, not through anyone's invoice. Here's the part that surprises people: for organic social on a single channel, ₹0 of ad budget is a perfectly honest place to start. Our Launch plan assumes exactly that — the fee buys the work, not media.
When you do add ads, the trap to check is markup: many agencies quietly take 10–30% of your ad budget as an unlisted fee, which is why the spend runs through their account instead of yours. Ask, in writing, whether the number you're quoted is the number the platforms receive. (Ours is 0%, ever — the budget leaves your own ad account, so you can see every rupee of it yourself.)
The five questions that expose a bad social deal
1. Who owns the account, the logins and the files if we part ways? 2. Is there a lock-in contract? 3. Do you mark up ad spend? 4. Will the content be shot at my place, or pulled from a stock library? 5. What exactly will this month's report tell me — in words I can read, not a dashboard export?
Any flinching on the first three, walk. The last two separate the agencies that make content from the ones that recycle it. These questions are exactly why our terms are written the way they are — and why the work we show is named, client by client. If you want the unvarnished read on your own account first, the free 48-hour filmed audit exists for precisely that.
So what should you spend?
If social is your first serious marketing spend, start with one channel run properly — ₹25,000-ish, ad budget ₹0 — and move up only when that channel is genuinely full. Spreading the same money across three thin channels is how feeds go quiet. One good reel a week beats seven stock posts.
