How much does social media management cost in Ottawa?

If you have tried to find out what social media management costs, you already know the problem. Every agency site says "packages tailored to your needs" and asks you to book a call. You just want to know whether this is a $300 thing or a $3,000 thing before you spend forty minutes on the phone.

So here it is, plainly.

The short answer

In Ottawa, in 2026, social media management for a small business generally lands between $500 and $2,500 a month. Below $500 you are usually buying scheduling and nothing else. Above $2,500 you are usually buying filming as well as management.

Our own pricing sits in the middle of that:

Why the range is so wide

Because "social media management" describes about five different jobs, and two agencies quoting you wildly different numbers may be quoting for completely different work.

Scheduling only — $200 to $500 a month

Somebody loads content you provide into a scheduling tool and it goes out on time. That is genuinely useful if you already make content and just never post it. It is not going to grow anything on its own, and you are still doing the hard part.

Management — $600 to $1,200 a month

Posting, captions, replying to comments and DMs, stories, engaging with your local community. The account stops looking abandoned. This is what most people mean when they say social media management.

Management plus content — $1,500 to $3,000 a month

Everything above, plus somebody actually turns up and films. This is the big jump in price, and it is also the jump where most businesses finally see movement — because the honest truth is that no amount of clever scheduling fixes not having anything good to post.

The part almost nobody sells separately

There is a second half to this that rarely appears on a price list: daily work on the account itself so the platform learns who your content is for. It decides whether a reel goes to 200 people or 200,000, and it is largely invisible from the outside. We price it separately at $799 because it is genuinely a different job from posting.

How to tell if you are overpaying

Price alone will not tell you. These questions will:

• Who films? If you are still shooting everything yourself, you are buying management, and management should not cost content money.
• Who replies? Comments and DMs are where sales actually happen. If nobody is answering them, half the value is being left on the table.
• What happens when a post does badly? A good answer describes what they will change. A vague answer about "the algorithm" means nobody is really watching.
• Do you own the footage? You should. Always. If an agency keeps your raw files, leaving them costs you everything you paid for.
• Is there a lock-in? Twelve-month contracts protect the agency, not you. Month to month means they have to keep earning it.

What you should actually budget

If you are just starting and money is tight, one thing done properly beats three done badly. Get content made first — you can post it yourself. That is $299 for one reel or $1,799 for ten a month, and it solves the real bottleneck, which is that you have nothing good to post.

If you have content and the account is just quiet, buy management at $799 and let somebody keep it alive.

If you want the whole thing handled and you want views rather than tidiness, that is management plus back-end work plus filming — and that is where you are into a couple of thousand a month. It is real money. It should come with real numbers attached.

One last thing about cheap

There is a version of this that costs $99 a month. It is somebody in a content farm posting stock captions on twelve accounts at once. It will not hurt you exactly, but it will not do anything either, and a year later you will have spent $1,200 to discover that.

Spend nothing, or spend enough that a person is actually thinking about your business. The middle is where money goes to die.

Want a package built around what you can actually spend? Answer six quick questions and we will come back with a plan and a real number.

Published 10 September 2026 · More posts