Written by Lucy Hall and reviewed, fact-checked and signed off by a SocialDay editor before publication. Read our editorial standards and corrections policy. Spotted something wrong? Tell the newsroom.

The headline subscription is only the starting point. Build a budget around your users, accounts, activity and the work needed to keep the stack running.

A £20 tool can become a £100 bill when a team adds accounts. A platform priced per user can look affordable until several colleagues need access. An annual discount may improve the yearly total while creating a larger upfront commitment.

There is no useful universal average for a social media stack without defining the team and its work. A freelancer publishing for one brand, an agency serving ten clients and a customer service operation are buying different things. Compare a defined workload and show the complete annual cost.

Start with what the vendor counts. A seat normally represents a user with a particular access level. A channel or profile represents an account. A brand can group several accounts but may impose limits on their structure. Contacts, messages, media hours and automation tasks measure activity rather than headcount.

Check whether approvers, inbox agents and occasional reviewers require the same paid access as daily users. Ask whether adding a user also increases the account allowance. Never assume those two limits grow together.

Buffer's public pricing uses channels, while Metricool prices brand tiers and Agorapulse uses per-user pricing with shared profile slots. These are billing models to compare, rather than evidence that one is automatically cheaper.

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