It is renewal week, and the statement carries three dollar subscriptions. Each one arrives as a dirham figure a little off the one you budgeted, with a foreign transaction fee stuck to the end of it. You run social for four clients out of Dubai, you invoice those clients in dirhams, and the one cost you cannot quote cleanly is your own software.
Currency is the surface of it. Under it sit two quieter things: the shape of the bill, and the clock the calendar runs on. Those two decide what a tool costs you as you grow and how much of it you can actually use.
The sticker price and the invoice
The dirham is pegged to the dollar, so the exchange rate is not the problem people expect it to be. The fee is. Most cards here add a charge on spending in a foreign currency, so a $99 plan lands on your statement as roughly AED 364 with a percentage on top, and the total is never a number you would choose to write into a budget.
In your own books that is a small nuisance. Inside a client retainer you quoted six months ago it is a real problem, because the software line is the one that will not sit still while everything you charge for is fixed in dirhams. A dirham price and a dollar price are not the same kind of number. One of them you can write into a budget and leave there for a year.
Three shapes, all in dollars
The shortlist an agency here usually draws up is built on three different shapes. Buffer charges per channel, so the bill grows with every account you connect. Sprout Social charges per seat, so it grows the week you hire. ManyChat charges per active contact, so it grows in the month a reel does well. Emplifi sits at the enterprise end and publishes no price list, so that number arrives after a sales call.
Every shape suits somebody, and none of them is sharp practice. What they have in common here is the currency. Each one is quoted in dollars, so whichever shape you pick, the fee rides on top and the figure you budget is never quite the figure you pay. The full arithmetic, worked through for five clients, is in what it costs to run social media for five clients.
Ignis charges per client workspace. A workspace holds one account per platform, so connecting a client’s Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, Reddit and WhatsApp costs the same as connecting one of them, and ten team members are included before anyone pays for a seat. On Agency, each additional client workspace is AED 29 a month. The number that grows your bill is the number of clients you have, which is the one you already track, and it is quoted in the currency you invoice in.
Evening in Dubai, evening in Paris
A lot of offices here run Sunday to Thursday, and most calendars are drawn with Monday first, so your busiest planning day sits at the far right of the week view. You get used to reading round it. The hours matter more than the day names, because a post written for the evening scroll has to land in the evening where the audience is, not in the evening where you are.
In Ignis every client carries their own time zone, so half six means half six on their clock. Aurora Café posts at 6:30pm in Dubai. Lumière Atelier posts at 6:30pm in Paris. Same number on the calendar, two different moments in the day, and no arithmetic to redo when the clocks change in one city and not the other.
What it costs
Basic is free and stays free: one seat, one client workspace, three connected accounts, thirty scheduled posts a month, publishing to Instagram, TikTok and Facebook, and an inbox you can read but not reply from. Growth is AED 49 a month and adds ten seats, unlimited posts, all eight platforms, replying from the inbox, automations, and analytics you can export to CSV or XLSX.
The AI writer, the image editor and the video editor come with Growth, all three in beta, and the writer only ever drafts because a person always sends. The white-label client portal comes with Growth and Agency at no extra cost. Agency starts at the same AED 49, which covers one client workspace and ten members, then adds AED 29 a month for each additional client workspace and AED 5.50 a month per member past ten. Annual is ten months for twelve, so two months free.
All of it is billed in AED by Novamind Technologies FZE in Ajman Freezone, so if you bank in dirhams the amount on the invoice is the amount on the page. The FAQ covers currency and refunds. Start on Basic with one client, keep it as long as you like, and read the full breakdown on the pricing page before you pay for anything.
Run one client, or ten, from one place.
Basic is free for one client. Growth is AED 49 a month, with every platform and the automations.