Four typical social media subscriptions add up to 438 euros and 348 dollars a year for a solo creator, and 2,352 euros and 828 dollars a year for a three person agency running ten brands, on annual rates and before tax. The figure grows with use, because one of the four charges by contact reached.
Four tools, four different billing units
The stack in this article is the most repeated one in small and mid sized operations: ManyChat to automate private messages, Linktree for the link page, Metricool to schedule and measure, and Calendly so people can book time with you. None of the four is expensive on its own, and that is precisely the problem.
What makes the sum hard is not the number of subscriptions but that each one charges for a different thing. Metricool charges per brand, Calendly per seat, Linktree per page, and ManyChat per unique contact reached in the month. Whichever direction you grow in, at least one of the four lines moves, and it is almost never the one you expected.
That mismatch of units is why almost nobody knows what they are paying. When a new client arrives, the head reaches for the Metricool line because that is the one people think of as the social media tool, and that is exactly the one that moves least: one more brand inside a tier you already bought costs nothing. What moves is that brand's link page, and the contacts the automation will reach once the content starts working. The invoice grows where nobody is looking.
| Tool | Unit it bills | What makes it climb | Currency |
|---|---|---|---|
| ManyChat | Active contact per month | A video that works | Dollars |
| Linktree | Page | Each new brand | Euros |
| Metricool | Brand | Each new client | Euros |
| Calendly | Seat | Each person joining the team | Euros |
The rates, with a date on them
These are the figures each one publishes on its own page, on annual billing, which is where every product shows its lowest price.
| Plan | What it includes | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| ManyChat Essential | 250 active contacts | 14 $ | 168 $ |
| ManyChat Pro | 2,500 active contacts | 29 $ | 348 $ |
| ManyChat Business | 7,500 active contacts | 69 $ | 828 $ |
| ManyChat Advanced | 25,000 active contacts | 139 $ | 1,668 $ |
| Linktree Starter | Personalisation and basic analytics | 4.50 € | 54 € |
| Linktree Pro | No mark in the footer | 10.50 € | 126 € |
| Linktree Premium | No sales fee | 27.50 € | 330 € |
| Metricool Starter | 5 brands | 16 € | 192 € |
| Metricool Starter | 10 brands | 29 € | 348 € |
| Metricool Advanced | 15 brands | 43 € | 516 € |
| Calendly Standard | Per seat | 10 € | 120 € |
| Calendly Teams | Per seat, with round robin | 16 € | 192 € |
Prices checked on 6 September 2026: ManyChat, Linktree, Metricool, Calendly.
Three of the four serve euros to anyone opening them from Spain. ManyChat publishes in dollars and warns that the final price depends on your billing country. None of the four includes tax in the printed figure, and Metricool says so in as many words on its own page. For a Spanish business that tax is IVA, the value added tax charged here.
Profile one: a solo creator
One person, one brand, a link page with no product mark in the footer, a comment automation reaching a couple of thousand people a month, and a booking link for calls.
| Tool | Plan chosen | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metricool | Starter, 5 brands | 16 € | 192 € |
| Linktree | Pro | 10.50 € | 126 € |
| Calendly | Standard, 1 seat | 10 € | 120 € |
| Subtotal in euros | Three subscriptions | 36.50 € | 438 € |
| ManyChat | Pro, 2,500 contacts | 29 $ | 348 $ |
One detail in the first row deserves a paragraph. Metricool has a free plan for one brand, but it caps you at twenty posts a month, and anyone posting three times a week on two networks is past that. The next rung up is not two brands or three: it is five. So a creator with a single brand buys five and uses one, and that is not a flaw in the tool, it is how the rungs are built across almost all of this market.
The Linktree line is arguable too. On the Starter plan, at 4.50 euros a month, the page gets personalised but keeps the Linktree logo in the footer. Removing it means the jump to Pro, which is more than double. It is the smallest decision in the table and the one most people make without thinking about it.
Profile two: a three person agency with ten brands
Three people, ten client brands, a link page per brand, post approval before anything goes out, and incoming meetings shared between the three.
| Tool | Plan chosen | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Metricool | Advanced, 15 brands | 43 € | 516 € |
| Linktree | Pro, ten pages | 105 € | 1,260 € |
| Calendly | Teams, three seats | 48 € | 576 € |
| Subtotal in euros | Three subscriptions | 196 € | 2,352 € |
| ManyChat | Business, 7,500 contacts | 69 $ | 828 $ |
The line that surprises everybody is the second one. Linktree charges per page, and ten brands is ten accounts, ten subscriptions and ten passwords, so the link page ends up costing more than twice the tool you schedule fourteen networks with. There is an agency plan with team seats, but its price is on request, which means it cannot go into a table like this one.
The first line has a catch of its own. Ten brands fit inside the ten brand Starter plan at 29 euros a month, but the post approval system lives on Advanced. If your process includes somebody saying yes before publishing, the right plan is the fifteen brand one, and the difference is 168 euros a year for a single feature.
And a warning about Calendly: the seat is needed by whoever connects a calendar and hosts the meeting, not by whoever books it. Three people is three seats however many clients book.
Between those two profiles sits a third, very common one, and it lands surprisingly close to the first: a local business with one brand and two people answering. Metricool Starter at five brands for 16 euros, Linktree Starter for 4.50, Calendly Standard with two seats for 20 and ManyChat Essential for 14 dollars comes to 40.50 euros and 14 dollars a month. That is less than the solo creator in dollars and slightly more in euros, and the reason is that this business pays for people where the creator pays for appearance. The same figure, split the other way around.
Everything in this article happens in one place in GoFeed.
Try it freeThe variable cost is what breaks the budget
The first three lines of each table are fixed. The fourth is not, and that is the real risk in this stack.
ManyChat bills by active contact, which is one unique person you message or who messages you inside the month. It does not accumulate and the count restarts every month. Above the included ceiling, the excess is charged per contact at a rate that falls as you climb: 0.082 dollars on Essential, 0.038 on Pro, 0.018 on Business and 0.0028 on Advanced, on annual billing. And its own page warns that on annual plans contacts are still counted monthly and overage is still billed monthly, so paying for the year up front flattens nothing.
Translated into two concrete months:
- The creator in the first profile publishes a video that works and the automation reaches 4,000 people. On Pro, 2,500 are included, 1,500 are not, and the overage is 57 dollars on top of the 29 dollar plan. That month the automation costs three times what was budgeted.
- The agency in the second profile runs a campaign across two brands and reaches 20,000 contacts. On Business, 7,500 are included, 12,500 are not, and the overage is 225 dollars on top of the 69 dollar plan.
Neither of those figures appears on a pricing page, and both are the direct consequence of things going well. It is the pattern to understand before signing anything that charges by volume: success is an invoice.
The four things the sum still leaves out
VAT. None of the four prints it. For a Spanish business it is deductible, but it leaves the bank account all the same each month, and suppliers outside the European Union arrive with their own reverse charge mechanics, which is paperwork even when it is not cost.
The exchange rate. One of the four bills in dollars. An annual budget with a line in another currency is not a closed budget, it is an estimate with a margin you do not control.
The rise. These four rates have moved several times in recent years, always in the same direction. A stack budgeted today as flat for three years is badly budgeted.
The time of whoever keeps them connected. Four dashboards, four invoices, four sets of permissions and four places to remove somebody who leaves. That work appears in no table and it is the part that grows fastest when a client arrives.
What to do with this number
The useful conclusion is not that four subscriptions are expensive, because set against one billable hour they are not. The conclusion is that all four grow along different axes and none of them knows the other three exist, so the combined invoice climbs in places you cannot anticipate by reading a single pricing page.
There are two ways to bring it down and only one of them works. The first, dropping a tier, almost always means getting the footer mark back or losing the approval step, and it undoes itself within a quarter. The second, consolidating, only pays off when half your subscriptions are there for one feature each. If you use two of the four thoroughly, consolidating loses you things you were actually using and the maths stops working.
About our own arithmetic, only the structural part is worth saying, because that is the part that does not change. GoFeed charges per workspace rather than per seat: the limits belong to the whole workspace, adding somebody to the team does not move the invoice, and nothing is charged per post. Automation contacts are not counted either once you leave the entry tier, which is precisely the line that makes the sum above grow. The trial runs fourteen days; it asks for a card to start and charges nothing until day 15. The current figures are on the pricing page, which reads the live catalogue, which is exactly why they are not printed here.
The two profiles above are the most common ones and neither is exactly yours. With your own headcount and your own number of brands in front of you, the sum redoes itself in the stack cost calculator.
And to review each line on its own, with that category's figures in front of you, the comparisons feeding this sum are Metricool, Later and Buffer, ManyChat, Chatfuel and InstaChamp, and Linktree, Beacons and Stan Store.