What does Instagram management cost? Three price levels, and what you actually get for each.

The price ladder at a glance

Instagram management falls into three price levels, and what separates them is not the number of posts but who does the thinking. Search for it and you mostly find providers who fill your feed for a few euro a day. That sounds like a bargain, until you look at what happens for that money.

These are rough ranges, and they vary by country and provider. Each level has its place, as long as you buy what you think you are buying. Most disappointment in this market comes from founders who expect a stream of clients for 150 euro a month, while what they bought was a scheduling tool with templates.

Who each level makes sense for

Each level fits a different founder: the cheaper the level, the more of the thinking stays with you.

• Around 100 euro. Makes sense if you have sharp ideas, write yourself and only want the scheduling and design off your plate. You are the strategy, the tool is the hands.
• 300 to 800 euro. Makes sense if you already know what works and only want to hand off execution: you record, someone else edits and posts. Responsibility for the result stays with you.
• 1,000 to 2,500 euro and more. Makes sense once your offer is proven and you want someone responsible for the whole system, from positioning to inquiries. This is the level where outsourcing can pay for itself, because it steers on clients instead of posts.

So the question is not which provider is best, but which part of the work you want to give away. Execution is cheap. The thinking around it, from positioning to funnel, is where the result comes from.

Why cheap often turns out expensive

Cheap Instagram management often turns out expensive because a full feed is not the same as a feed that brings in clients. Scheduling for a few euro a day delivers exactly what it promises: consistency in your feed. Without positioning and without a path from viewer to conversation, that consistency produces no inquiries, however neat it looks.

Do the math. Six months of basic post management costs 600 to 1,800 euro. If it produces no inquiries, it was not a cheap solution but an expensive one. And the real loss is bigger than the amount: you conclude that content does not work, while only the thinking was missing. What to do yourself and what to hand off.

What to check before you hire someone

Compare providers on these five points, not on the price per post.

• What do they report on? Followers and reach are execution numbers. Profile visits, messages and inquiries are the numbers you pay for. A provider who only shows the first is selling the first.
• Who does the thinking? Ask who decides what you post about, and why. If the answer is you, you are buying execution, not a result. That is fine, as long as you know it.
• Does it stay your voice? Templates and standard captions make you unrecognisable, and on Instagram your viewer buys you, not a house style. Ask for other client work and check whether you can recognise the person in it.
• What is the contract? Month to month is the healthy default. A mandatory six or twelve month minimum shifts all the risk to you before anything is proven.
• Is there a path to a conversation? Views without a next step are entertainment. Ask how a viewer ends up as an inquiry: which content, which next step, which page. No answer is also an answer.

What we charge, and what to expect

Our retainers start in the low four figures per month, month to month, no lock-in, and cover the whole system for Instagram and YouTube together, done for you, in your voice. That includes strategy, hooks, editing and distribution, with you as the only input on about a shoot day a month. How we run Instagram for founders.

What to expect: count on 2 to 3 months before the first serious conversations come from content. For reference, two e-commerce founders went from $12.5K to $80K per month in 7 months, from about 50 to about 320 community members at $250, almost all of it organic, mostly through YouTube and Instagram. That is not a promise, but it shows what a full system does that a scheduling tool cannot.

Considering long-form video as well? The same honest math for YouTube is in what it costs to have your YouTube channel run.