Retainer math, plainly
A monthly plan is usually obviously worth it or obviously not. The third case is genuinely yours to call.
Subscriptions are easy to sell and easy to resent. So rather than describe ours, here is the arithmetic on three real shapes of client — our published one-off prices against our published plans, with every line shown.
We sell both, and the monthly one is better for us. Which is why every number below is one you can check against the pricing pages, and why one of the three examples ends with us telling you not to subscribe.
What each thing actually contains
This is the part that makes the comparison work, and the part people skip. A plan is not a discount on reels — it’s a fixed monthly bundle with a set number of deliverables in it.
One-off: $750 buys one edited vertical reel, a square crop, and about five edited photos from the same capture. Each additional reel on the same shoot is $250. Usage rights and cleared audio included.
Lite, $950/mo: one content session of about four hours, roughly 15 edited photos and 3 short vertical clips. You post them.
Growth, $1,900/mo: a content session, about 20 photos and 5 reels, plus captions written, scheduled and posted on two platforms, light community management, and a monthly snapshot.
Pro, $3,200/mo: a video or interview session on top of the content session, about 24 assets including 6 or more reels, full posting, active community engagement, a monthly strategy call, and growth reporting.
So the honest comparison is never “plan versus however many reels you want.” It’s plan versus the same number of reels that plan contains, bought one at a time. That’s what the three examples below do.
Prices and contents as published on our social reels and monthly media pages. Those plans are described there as example packages — we shape the exact mix around what you need, so treat the counts below as the shape of the deal rather than a contract.
Three worked examples
The method: price the same content both ways — and where a plan isn’t even in contention, say so and price what you’d actually buy instead. That’s the first example. The second and third take what the plan contains and price that exact quantity as one-offs. No hidden assumptions, and nothing you can drag into a combination nobody checked.
The gallery that posts around shows
Two or three openings a year and quiet in between. Wants a reel when something is actually happening.
- One reel, one-off
- $750
- Times three, across the year
- $2,250
- A year of Lite instead ($950 × 12)
- $11,400
- Cheaper option
- One-off, by $9,150
Don’t subscribe. Event-driven posting is what one-offs are for. A plan here means paying twelve months to cover three busy weeks, and you’d feel it by month four. Buy the $750 reel when the show goes up.
The studio building a steady feed
Wants to post consistently, handles their own captions and scheduling, doesn’t want to think about it beyond that.
- Lite — 3 clips + ~15 photos
- $950/mo
- Same 3 reels from one one-off shoot ($750 + $250 + $250)
- $1,250/mo
- And the one-off route yields only ~5 photos, not 15
- —
- Cheaper option
- Lite, by $300/mo
Lite wins, and it isn’t close once you count the photos. The crossover on price is two reels, not three: one reel is $750 against $950, so the one-off wins; two is $1,000 against $950, so the plan does. The first one-off reel carries the cost of us turning up, which is why the line crosses that early.
Our advice sits a notch above the arithmetic, at around three pieces a month, and it’s worth saying why rather than pretending the two numbers are the same. At two reels the plan is only $50 ahead — close enough that the extra clip and the ten extra photos decide it, and those are only worth $50 to you if you’ll actually post them. At three you’re $300 ahead and it stops being a judgement call.
One caveat we’d rather flag than bury: Lite lists “3 short vertical clips” and we’ve priced them here as three one-off reels. Treat that as the shape of the trade rather than a like-for-like swap — if what you need is three fully finished 15–30 second reels every month specifically, say so when you write in and we’ll confirm the scope before you commit to anything.
The brand that wants it off their desk
Five reels a month, twenty photos, and no interest in writing captions or scheduling anything.
- Growth — 5 reels, ~20 photos, posting, community management
- $1,900/mo
- Same 5 reels from one one-off shoot ($750 + $250 × 4)
- $1,750/mo
- Difference on content alone
- $150/mo more
- What the $150 buys
- Posting, captions, ~15 extra photos
Growth costs slightly more on content and that’s the point. If you were going to buy five reels anyway, the plan is $150 a month above doing it piecemeal — and that $150 covers captions, scheduling, posting on two platforms, and roughly fifteen more photos than the one-off route produces. Whether that’s worth it depends on how many hours a month posting currently costs you, which is a number only you have.
Arithmetic shown in full so you can check it. One-off pricing is $750 for the first reel on a shoot and $250 for each additional reel on that same shoot — three separate visits would cost more than the figures above.
When not to subscribe to us
One piece a month — don’t. At one reel the one-off is $750 against a $950 plan, so buying it outright is straightforwardly cheaper. At two the plan edges ahead by $50, which is close enough that we’d still say wait unless you know you’ll use the extra clip and photos. Three is where it stops being close.
If your posting is genuinely event-driven — don’t. An opening, a launch, a fair. Those are one-offs by nature, as the first example above works out in full.
If you’re not sure the content is doing anything — not yet. Do a one-off, watch what happens, decide after. We’d rather you subscribed on evidence than on intention. There’s a three-month minimum on plans, so it’s a real commitment and worth being sure.
What genuinely tips it: a rhythm you already keep, or one you keep failing to keep and would rather hand over. The plan becomes the cheaper option at two pieces a month and the obvious one at three — the gap between those two numbers is the whole judgement call, and it’s yours rather than ours.
Tell us what you actually make
We’ll tell you which of the two is cheaper for you, including when that’s the one-off. No call needed — we’ll just reply.
Full plans on the monthly media page, one-off pricing on social reels.