Blog · 29 September 2026
Agency, freelancer, or do it yourself — what should you pay for?
Four ways to buy the same job, and four very different bills. Here is what each one costs in 2026, what you actually get, and how to pick without wasting a year finding out.
A freelance social media manager costs about $300 to $3,000 a month. A small agency costs about $1,000 to $2,500 a month. An employee costs about $5,600 to $6,300 a month once you add payroll costs on top of the salary. Doing it yourself costs $6 to $50 a month in apps, plus hours you do not have. We charge $799 a month. But price is not how you should choose. Choose by what is actually broken.
The short answer
Most people ask who is cheapest. The better question is what is actually stopping your social media from working. There are three real answers, and each points at a different hire.
- You have no time. You know what to post. You just never post it. Buy a freelancer.
- You have nothing to post. Your camera roll is empty. Buy content, not management.
- You post and nothing happens. This is the hardest one, and the one a cheap hire will not fix.
| Who does the work | What it costs a month |
|---|---|
| You, with a scheduling app | $6–$50 in tools + your hours |
| New freelancer | $300–$800 |
| Experienced freelancer | $1,500–$3,000 |
| Small or boutique agency | $1,000–$2,500 |
| Mid-size agency | $2,000–$5,000 |
| Employee, full time | $5,600–$6,300 all in |
Freelancer, agency and tool bands are from 2026 pricing guides by eClincher and Boomp, plus Upwork's own sample billing for small-business account management ($400–$2,000 a month). Those are US dollars — add roughly 35% for a Canadian card. The employee figure is worked out below, in Canadian dollars.
Why the employee number is so much bigger
Because a salary is not what an employee costs. PayScale puts the average social media manager salary in Canada at C$54,348 a year, with most landing between C$38,000 and C$83,000. That is 124 reported salaries, updated in June 2026. Indeed's Canadian page shows $24.17 an hour from 348 reported salaries, updated in September 2026. So call it mid-fifties for a decent one.
Then add what you pay on top. In Ontario that is CPP at 5.95%, EI at 1.4 times what the employee pays, employer health tax of about 1% to 2% depending on your payroll, workers' comp, and at least 4% vacation pay. Payroll guides put the total at 1.25 to 1.4 times the base salary. A $54,000 salary is really $68,000 to $76,000 a year. That is $5,600 to $6,300 a month.
And you still buy the phone, the laptop and the apps, and you still manage the person. For most small businesses in Ottawa, an employee is the last step, not the first.
What you actually get for each price
Doing it yourself — $6 to $50 a month
Cheap in money, expensive in time. And the time is worse than people think. Sprout Social surveyed more than 500 social media professionals this year and found that full-time marketers spend about five hours a week on content creation and approvals alone — not counting replies, not counting planning. Those are people who do this all day. You would be doing it after closing.
A freelancer — $300 to $3,000 a month
One person, doing one job, usually well. This is the right buy for most small businesses, and it is what a $799 package really is under the hood: a person who is actually thinking about your account.
Two warnings. The cheap end is cheap for a reason: at $300 a month nobody can afford real time on you, so you get scheduled posts and nothing else. And one person is one person. They get sick, they go on holiday, they take a full-time job in March and your account goes quiet for six weeks. Ask what happens when they are away before you sign.
An agency — $1,000 to $5,000 a month
You are buying cover and range. Somebody films, somebody edits, somebody posts, somebody answers your messages, and if one is away the work still happens. You also get people who have watched fifty accounts instead of one.
What you pay extra for is that reliability. Watch out for the opposite problem, though: a big agency where your $1,500 is a rounding error and your account goes to whoever started last month. Ask who is actually doing the work, and ask to speak to them.
An employee — $5,600 to $6,300 a month
Worth it when social media is how your business runs, not something it also does — a restaurant group, a shop with daily stock drops, a gym with classes to fill. If you need somebody filming five days a week, an employee is cheaper than buying that much work.
Why we are not neutral, and why you should still read this. We are an agency, so of course we would say buy an agency. What we can point at is our own work: we ran this playbook on our own cookie brand, @skuishcookies, and did 40 million views in two months with zero ad spend. Not boosted. Not promoted. If a freelancer can show you something like that, hire the freelancer.
The part nobody prices
Almost every quote you get, from a freelancer or an agency, covers posting. Very few cover the other half of the job: the daily work on the account itself, so the platform learns who your videos are for. That is what decides whether a reel goes to 200 people or 200,000.
It is invisible from the outside, so it is easy to skip. We price it separately at $799 a month because it is a different job, and pretending otherwise is how people end up paying for a tidy account that nobody sees.
When you compare two quotes, this is usually the difference. One of them is posting. The other is posting plus pushing.
Six questions that sort a good hire from a bad one
Ask all six. The answers tell you more than the price does.
- Who films? If you are still shooting everything, you are buying management. Management should not cost content money.
- Who replies to comments and messages? That is where sales happen. If the answer is "you do," half the value is gone.
- What happens when a post flops? A good answer names what they will change. A shrug about the algorithm means nobody is watching.
- Who covers holidays and sick days? Freelancers need a plan. Agencies need a bench.
- Do I own the footage and the accounts? Yes, always, in your name. If they keep the raw files, leaving costs you everything you paid for.
- Can I leave any month? Twelve-month lock-ins protect them, not you.
What we charge
| What you get | Price |
|---|---|
| Social media management — posting, captions, replies, stories | $799 / month |
| Viral management — the daily back-end algorithm work | $799 / month |
| Content creation — 10 reels filmed and edited | $1,799 / month |
| Content creation — 20 reels filmed and edited | $3,299 / month |
| One reel, filmed and edited | $299 |
| Your reels posted on every platform | $299 / month |
Month to month. You own everything. The full breakdown of what is in each one is on our Ottawa social media management page.
What you should actually budget
If you have never tried: spend nothing. Film twelve things on your phone and post them. If nothing moves in a month, at least it cost you nothing to find out.
If your camera roll is empty: buy content, not management. That is $299 for one reel or $1,799 for ten a month, and you post them yourself. It fixes the real bottleneck. We broke those numbers down here: what one reel actually costs to make.
If you have content and no time: a good freelancer at $800 to $1,500, or management at $799. Same job, different shape. Pick whoever answers those six questions best.
If you want views and not just tidiness: management plus back-end work plus filming. A couple of thousand a month. Real money, and it should come with real numbers attached.
If social media is your whole business: hire somebody. At five days of filming a week, $6,000 a month all in is the cheaper answer.
One last thing. The worst outcome is not picking wrong. It is picking cheap, seeing nothing for a year, and deciding social media does not work for your business. It does. Twelve months of $300-a-month posting is not a fair test of it.
Not sure which of these you need? Answer six quick questions and we will tell you straight, even when the answer is not us.
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