You're making money from your product. Maybe $2K/month, maybe $10K. Enough to know it's real, not enough to throw $5,000 at an agency and hope for the best. You need marketing, but you need it to make financial sense.
Here's what every option actually costs — not the optimistic sales pitch, but the real math.
Option 1: The Marketing Agency ($3,000-$8,000/month)
Agencies are the "hire a professional" option. You get a team: strategist, content writer, designer, account manager. They build campaigns, create content, manage your social presence.
The real costs:
- Monthly retainer: $3,000-$8,000 for a decent agency (bottom-tier agencies charging $500/month are outsourcing everything to overseas contractors)
- Setup fee: $500-$2,000 upfront
- Minimum contract: 3-6 months typically
- Ad spend: separate, usually $1,000+ recommended
- Total year-one cost: $40,000-$100,000+
What you get: Professional content, strategic planning, someone else dealing with it. What you also get: lots of meetings, slow turnaround (1-2 weeks per content batch), and a team that's managing 15-30 other clients simultaneously. Your project gets maybe 5-10 hours of actual work per month.
Best for: Companies doing $50K+/month in revenue who need comprehensive marketing across many channels including paid ads, PR, and events.
Option 2: The Freelancer ($1,000-$3,000/month)
A social media freelancer handles content creation and posting. Some will handle strategy; most just execute whatever you tell them to.
The real costs:
- Monthly rate: $1,000-$3,000 for someone competent
- Finding a good one: 2-4 weeks of interviews and trial periods
- Management overhead: 2-3 hours/week of your time for briefings and reviews
- Total year-one cost: $12,000-$36,000 plus your time
What you get: Dedicated attention (assuming they're not overbooked), human-written content, someone who can respond to comments and engage with your community.
What you also get: Dependency on one person. They get sick, you go dark. They quit, you start over. They write generic content because they manage social for a SaaS tool, a bakery, and a fitness coach simultaneously and can't go deep on any of them.
Best for: Companies that need community engagement and have the time to manage a contractor relationship.
Option 3: DIY ($0 + Your Time)
The most popular option for indie developers. Also the most expensive, if you value your time correctly.
The real costs:
- Tools (Buffer/Hootsuite/Later): $15-$50/month
- Your time: 5-15 hours/week for content creation, scheduling, and engagement
- Opportunity cost: at a modest $100/hour developer rate, that's $2,000-$6,000/month in lost productivity
- Courses/learning: $200-$500 to actually learn what works
- Total year-one cost: $24,000-$72,000 in opportunity cost, plus tool subscriptions
What you get: Complete control, authentic voice, deep product knowledge in every post.
What you also get: Burnout. Inconsistency. That creeping guilt when you haven't posted in two weeks because you were busy fixing a production bug. Most developers who try the DIY route maintain it for 2-3 months before it dies.
Best for: People who genuinely enjoy content creation and social media. (If that's you, great. For most developers, it's not.)
Option 4: Automated Marketing Platform ($49-$399/month)
This is the category LoudHype sits in. Automated content generation, scheduling, and optimization powered by AI that actually understands your product.
The real costs with LoudHype:
- Starter plan: $49/month (3 social accounts, 30 posts/month)
- Pro plan: $149/month (10 accounts, 100 posts/month, advanced analytics)
- Agency plan: $399/month (25 accounts, 300 posts/month, white-label)
- Setup time: ~15 minutes for product onboarding
- Ongoing time: 0-30 minutes/week for optional review
- Total year-one cost: $588-$4,788
What you get: Consistent, platform-native content generated from deep product analysis. Automatic scheduling at optimal times. Performance tracking and optimization. Content that actually sounds like it's about your product, not a generic template.
What you don't get: Community engagement (you still need to reply to comments yourself), personal storytelling, and PR/press outreach.
The ROI Comparison
Let's normalize this. Assume you need 15 social posts per week across 3 platforms (a pretty standard cadence for maintaining visibility):
| Option | Annual Cost | Posts/Week | Cost Per Post | Your Time/Week | |--------|------------|------------|---------------|----------------| | Agency | $48,000 | 15 | $61.50 | 2h (meetings) | | Freelancer | $24,000 | 15 | $30.80 | 3h (management) | | DIY | $36,000* | 15 | $46.15 | 10h+ | | LoudHype (Starter) | $588 | 7 | $1.61 | 0-30min | | LoudHype (Pro) | $1,788 | 25 | $1.37 | 0-30min |
*DIY cost calculated at $75/hour opportunity cost for 10 hours/week
The per-post economics aren't even in the same universe. And the time savings are the real story — especially for solo developers where every hour counts.
What You're Actually Buying
When you pay an agency $5,000/month, you're not just paying for posts. You're paying for strategy, creative direction, brand consistency, and someone to blame when things go wrong.
But here's the thing: most of that "strategy" at the small business level is formulaic. Post consistently. Mix educational content with promotional content. Use platform best practices. Test different angles. Double down on what works.
That's exactly what LoudHype automates. The strategic decisions that a junior social media manager makes 50 times a week — what to post, when, on which platform, with what format — are pattern-based decisions that AI handles well.
What LoudHype doesn't replace is high-level brand strategy, PR, influencer relationships, and paid advertising management. If you need those things, you need a human (or an agency). But if your primary need is "I want consistent, competent social media content that accurately represents my product without me spending 10 hours a week on it" — that's exactly the problem we solve.
The Honest Recommendation
Revenue under $5K/month? LoudHype Starter ($49/mo) handles your core social presence while you focus on product-market fit. Every dollar and hour should go toward making your product better and getting to sustainable revenue.
Revenue $5K-$20K/month? LoudHype Pro ($149/mo) gives you comprehensive content coverage. Add 1-2 hours/week of personal engagement (replying to comments, sharing personal updates) for the human touch.
Revenue $20K+/month? Consider LoudHype Pro for the automated baseline, plus a part-time freelancer for community engagement and personal content. This combo costs $1,500-$2,000/month and outperforms most $5K agencies.
Revenue $50K+/month? You can probably afford an agency. You might still want LoudHype for the consistency and speed, with an agency handling the bigger strategic plays.
The worst option at any revenue level? Doing nothing. The second worst? Trying to do everything yourself and burning out after two months.
Marketing isn't optional anymore. But it doesn't have to be expensive, time-consuming, or painful. Pick the option that matches your budget and your stage, and actually stick with it.
Check out LoudHype's plans and see which one fits.
LoudHype automates your social media marketing starting at $49/month. Consistent content, platform-native posts, zero busywork. Get started.