How to price a monthly social media retainer

"What should I charge for a monthly social package?" is almost always answered by looking outward: what the agency down the street charges, what budget the client mentioned, what someone posted in a Slack group. Retainer pricing is not discovered in the market. It is calculated from two things only you know: your cost per hour and how many hours that client will actually consume.

Step 1: your true cost per productive hour

Add everything the business spends monthly even if it sells nothing: salaries and payroll taxes, owner draws, rent, software, accounting, utilities, scheduling and design tools. Call it monthly fixed cost.

Now count real productive hours. A full-time person nominally has about 160 hours a month, but between internal meetings, proposals, training and rework, billable capacity lands between 60% and 70%. Use 100 to 112 hours per person and multiply by the team.

Fixed cost divided by productive hours is your cost per hour. A team with $18,000 of fixed cost and three productive people (330 hours) sits near $55 per hour. That number is an absolute floor: below it, every hour sold destroys cash. The hourly rate calculator runs this with your own numbers.

Step 2: size the scope in hours, not deliverables

Scope written in assets ("12 posts, 8 stories, 2 reels") is the single biggest margin killer in social media, because two accounts with identical asset counts can consume wildly different hours. Translate scope into hours by activity:

• Monthly planning and content calendar
• Copywriting and editing
• Design and video editing
• Approval cycles and revisions
• Scheduling and publishing
• Community management, comments and DMs
• Reporting and the monthly call

A mid-sized retainer rarely comes in under 30 hours a month once community management and meetings are counted. Community work is what quietly eats margin: replying to DMs daily is a daily job, not a monthly deliverable.

Step 3: build the price

Estimated hours multiplied by cost per hour gives the direct cost of the contract. On top of that you apply your multiplier. For service agencies and studios, a multiplier between 2.5 and 3.5 is the band that sustains the business, absorbs bench time between projects and still leaves profit.

At $55 per hour, 35 estimated hours and a 3x multiplier, the retainer lands near $5,800. If your market will not support that number, the problem is not the price, it is the scope. Cut hours, not margin.

Three clauses that protect the price

• Revision cap: two rounds per asset, third round quoted hourly. Without it, the indecisive client pays the same as the decisive one.
• Annual indexed increase: percentage and month written into the contract. An increase that depends on a yearly negotiation rarely happens, and inflation quietly eats your margin.
• Explicit exclusions: on-location shoots, talent, paid media management, landing pages, event coverage. List what is out, with the hourly rate next to it.

The client who consumes double

After two months, compare estimated hours to actual hours per contract. You will find a client burning 60 hours while paying for 35. That client is not profitable; they are being subsidised by everyone else.

There are three ways out: renegotiate with the hours data in hand, cut scope back to contracted hours, or end the engagement. Leaving it as it is the only option that is not an option. Without tracking hours per contract you never know which client is which, and the feeling of "we are completely booked but there is no money left" stays unexplained.

Recurring revenue is the real prize

A well-priced retainer is the most valuable asset an agency owns, because it converts unpredictable revenue into a predictable base. A business with 70% contracted recurring revenue can plan hiring, invest in structure and decline bad work. A project-only business accepts any brief that shows up in January.

Managing that requires contract value, renewal date, price increases and hours consumed in one view, which is what Eluvie was built for. Start with the pricing guide to choose your method before touching the numbers.