What social media management costs in Tbilisi
Published rates are rare in this category, which makes the ones that exist useful. The agency on this list that prints its price list runs from 1,400 GEL a month for Facebook and Instagram with a modest post count, to 3,500 GEL for four platforms plus ads, email and competitor analysis. Quotes elsewhere in the city cluster between 1,500 and 2,500 GEL, and pass 4,000 GEL once you want video produced every week. Hourly rates from Tbilisi agencies are commonly quoted at USD 30 to 70.
Two things move the number more than anything else. The first is how many platforms you want, because each one is a separate content format, not a copy and paste. The second is video. Reels and TikToks need a shoot, an editor and a turnaround schedule, and that is the line item that separates a 1,500 GEL retainer from a 4,000 GEL one.
Ad spend is separate. It is paid to Meta or Google, from your account, and it is not the agency's money.
How to choose
Start from what you are actually buying. If you need reach next month, you are buying paid social and you want a team that can show ad account structure, audience testing and reported cost per result. If you are building a brand presence over a year, you are buying content production, and the question is whether they shoot in house or subcontract every video.
Ask these on the first call
- How many posts, stories and videos, counted? A package described in adjectives becomes an argument in month two.
- Who owns the Business Manager and the ad account? It should be you, on your own billing.
- Are shoots included? This is the most common hidden cost in the category.
- Who writes the captions? If your market is abroad, you want someone who writes that language natively or close to it.
Red flags
- Guaranteed follower counts or guaranteed engagement rates. Nobody controls the algorithm, and the cheap way to hit those numbers is bought followers that poison your targeting.
- Ads run through the agency's own ad account with your budget. When you leave, the pixel data and custom audiences leave with them.
- No named contact who will actually do the work. Sales pitch from a director, delivery by an intern, is a real pattern here.
- A twelve-month lock-in on a first engagement. Three months is plenty to see whether it works.
- Portfolios made entirely of visuals with no numbers attached. Pretty grids are not results.
When you do not need to pay for this
If you run a single Instagram account, post a few times a week and your customers find you by word of mouth or Google, an agency retainer is money badly spent. Learn the platform yourself for six months first. The same goes for B2B companies whose buyers are found on LinkedIn one at a time, where a founder posting personally beats a managed brand page almost every time.
Pay for it when one of three things is true. You are spending real money on ads and losing it. You need weekly video and cannot produce it. Or your own time is worth more per hour than the retainer, which for most foreign business owners here happens sooner than they expect.
If you are still setting up the entity behind all this, see our guides on registering a company in Georgia and VAT registration, since agency invoices above the threshold carry 18% VAT.
