You run five clients. Each has about four accounts, so twenty in total, and three of you split the work. The scheduler renews on the 3rd, the messaging tool on the 14th, and the suite you bought for the reports on the 28th, so no statement ever shows you the total. You have never sat down and added them up.
The total is usually bigger than the number in your head, and the prices are not the reason. Each of those three bills grows on a different axis: one counts channels, one counts seats, one counts contacts. Every figure here is what the vendor published at the time of writing, checked in September 2026, and pricing moves, so read it as a shape rather than a quote.
The four jobs you are paying for
Strip away the feature lists and an agency is buying four things. Somewhere to schedule and publish. One place to read and answer DMs, comments and mentions. Automations that handle the obvious questions while nobody is watching. Analytics you can hand a client at month end without assembling them from four exports first.
Almost no stack buys those four in one purchase. You buy a scheduler for the first, a messaging tool for the second and third, and a suite for the fourth. Each of them also does a little of the other three, so you pay twice for the overlap and the reports still open in a different tab.
Three ways a bill grows
The prices themselves are reasonable. What catches an agency is the shape, because each shape charges for the thing an agency already has a lot of. Every shape is fair to somebody. You are simply the customer who has twenty accounts, three people and five contact lists at the same time.
Buffer charges per channel. Essentials is $5 per channel a month billed annually, or $6 billed monthly. Team is $10 per channel annually, $12 monthly. Twenty channels is $100 a month on Essentials and $200 on Team. Win a sixth client with four accounts and the bill moves again before you have written a caption.
Sprout Social charges per seat. Standard is $199 per user a month billed annually and covers five social profiles. Professional is $299 per user a month annually with unlimited profiles. Three people on Professional is $897 a month. Five is $1,495. The profiles stop mattering and the head count starts.
ManyChat charges per contact. Pro is $39 a month billed monthly, or $29 billed annually, and includes 2,500 contacts and three channels. Past that, each extra active contact costs $0.05 a month. In March 2026 ManyChat moved to five tiers, tied the price to active contacts, put overage on every paid plan, and cut the free plan from 1,000 contacts to 25. The figures on its pricing page are the annual rates, and paying monthly runs roughly 18 to 30 per cent more.
The bill for five clients
Put it together for twenty channels, three people and five clients. Buffer Team is $200 a month billed annually. ManyChat Pro is $29 a month billed annually. That is $229 a month, roughly AED 840 at the pegged rate, and you still have no combined analytics and nothing to show a client for sign-off.
Then the contacts. Two and a half thousand is generous for one client and thin across five. If your five hold 5,000 active contacts between them, the extra 2,500 at $0.05 each adds $125 a month and the same stack is $354. No price went up. You grew, and the bill grew on an axis you do not set.
When a suite is the right buy
The other route is one tool that covers most of it. Hootsuite Professional is $99 a month for one user and ten social accounts. Team is $249 a month for three users and twenty accounts, with annual billing about 20 per cent less. For twenty accounts and three people that is a clean fit, and Team puts scheduling, an inbox and analytics on one bill.
Emplifi sits at the enterprise end and publishes no price list, so that number arrives after a sales call. At that end you are buying more than software: a support organisation with a phone number, a purchase order process your client’s finance team already recognises, and an account manager who will sit on the call. If a client’s buying process needs that, a suite is the right purchase and the money is well spent.
The same job, one bill
Ignis Agency starts at AED 49 a month, and that covers one client workspace and ten team members. Each extra client workspace is AED 29 a month. Five clients is AED 49 plus four lots of AED 29, so AED 165 a month, and your three people sit inside the ten and add nothing.
The white-label client portal, the one your clients log into to approve posts, is included at no extra cost however many of them use it, so AED 165 is the whole monthly bill. Annual billing is the monthly price times ten, so two months free: AED 1,650 for the year.
That covers all four jobs. Publishing to Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Threads, Reddit and WhatsApp, scheduled in each client’s own time zone. An inbox holding that client’s Instagram DMs, Messenger and WhatsApp, with comments and mentions in the same list. Automations built from a trigger, a condition and an action. Analytics per client, exported to CSV or XLSX. The AI writer, the image editor and the video editor are all in beta, and the writer only ever drafts, because a person always sends.
None of that makes the others overpriced. Each of them is the right buy for somebody, and the shape that suits you is the one that grows the way your work grows. Do the sum with your own account count and your own contact list before you renew anything.
Five clients on Ignis is AED 165 a month with the client portal included. The pricing page shows how that is built and the FAQ answers the billing questions. Basic is free and stays free: one client, three connected accounts, thirty posts a month and an inbox you can read. That is enough to see how the bill is built before any of it costs you 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.