One price is listed, the other is quoted: how to compare them

$2,000 to $3,500 a month is on our FAQ page, next to Full Page.

The other two tiers, Edit and Manage, have no number next to them at all. They are quoted on the call.

So VALORAE Media is both kinds of agency at once: the one that lists and the one that quotes.

That is awkward when a buyer asks me which is cheaper, and it is the reason this post exists.

The question usually comes in one form. Someone needs more than editing but less than a whole page, and wants to know whether Manage, once quoted, beats Full Page, which is already printed.

I could not answer that cleanly at first, and neither could they.

So I sat down to work out what a quote has to say before it becomes comparable to a listed price.

It turned out to be three lines, but I did not know that when I started, and the first version of this list had eleven.

Step 1: The three lines to get in writing

Ask for three sentences in an email, and be clear that a phone answer does not count.

The monthly figure. What changes it. What ends it.

That is the whole request. If an agency will not put those three in writing, you have learned the most important thing about the quote already.

The monthly figure means one number, for one scope, for one month. Not a range, not "depends on volume."

What changes it means the list of things that move the number up: more platforms, more videos, a shoot, a rush, managing ad spend. Every quote has these levers and most quotes hide them.

What ends it means notice period, minimum term, and what happens to the accounts and the files when you leave.

Get those three and the quote is now a price. Skip any one and it stays a guess.

Step 2: What a listed price commits to

A listed price is a promise made in public, which is why most agencies avoid making one.

Ours is Full Page at $2,000 to $3,500 a month, printed on valoraemedia.com/faq.html. It covers every platform, the calendar, strategy, repurposing and comments.

I did not know if publishing that would cost us leads. Some people see the number and leave without a call, and I never find out who they were.

But the number does a job the sales call cannot. It tells a buyer the range before they spend an hour with us, and it stops us drifting a quote upward once we hear the budget.

There is research on this beyond my gut.

A SIGIR 2026 pricing study (arXiv 2605.25517, Vishwakarma, Kumar and Jamidar at Sprinklr) found that a page with an explicit price beat the identical page without one for AI citation at an odds ratio of 6 or more.

So the listed price is also how you get found when someone asks an AI which agency to hire.

Listed prices can mislead too.

A range is a floor and a ceiling, and it is not a bill. The commitment is that both ends are real and that the scope inside them is named, in public, next to the number.

If a listed price has no scope written beside it, it is a quote wearing a price tag. Run the same three lines on it that you would run on any quote.

Step 3: What a quote hides until you ask

A quote hides four things, and none of them are the number.

It hides the scope, because "social media management" can mean a couple of reels a month or a full page run natively on every platform you have. It hides the overage, because the base fee is what gets quoted and the add-ons are what get invoiced.

It hides the exit, because a minimum term is rarely in the first email. And it hides the anchor, because a quote written after hearing your budget is shaped by your budget.

None of that makes a quoting agency dishonest. Our Edit and Manage tiers are quoted because the work varies too much between a podcast feed and a product launch to print one number honestly.

The clipping side of the group works the same way. VALORAE Arc at valoraearc.com has no public price list, but an in-house campaign starts from $1,000 and a public campaign has a $2,000 minimum.

So I am not writing this from a pulpit.

The difference is whether the agency will answer the three lines when asked.

Ask us the same three for the quoted tiers. That is the test I would apply to anyone else.

Step 4: Putting both on one page

Here is the table I build when someone is torn between our quoted Manage tier and our listed Full Page.

Column one, the monthly figure. Full Page arrives with its range filled in. Manage gets its number on the call, and you ask for it in writing afterwards so both cells fill.

Column two, what changes it. Manage covers editing plus titles, captions, scheduling and posting on one or two platforms, with a monthly report. Add a third platform and you have left Manage.

Column three, what ends it. Ask for both answers in the same email, so neither tier leaves that cell blank.

Then the comparison works. If the plan needs every platform within a year, pricing Manage plus the platforms it does not cover can land close to Full Page, with less strategy attached.

If one or two platforms really is the whole plan, the quoted tier wins, and I say so.

That is the whole trick. Compare the twelve-month total for the scope you need, never the headline for the scope on the page.

I wrote a longer version of that method in how social media management is priced, including the four pricing structures and which one each agency is probably using.

Step 5: The contract clauses that turn a quote into a price

A quote becomes a price the day it is written into a contract with the three lines intact.

Line one becomes the fee clause: the figure, the billing date, and whether it is fixed or a range. You want to know which one you signed.

Line two becomes the scope and change clause: the deliverables per month, the platforms managed natively, and the rate for anything above that.

If the contract says "additional work quoted separately", that is the quote escaping back out of the contract.

Line three becomes the term and exit clause: minimum months, notice days, and who holds the account logins and the source files on the last day.

I covered the full set, including account ownership and the clause that lets you leave without a fight, in the contract clauses to check before signing a social media agency.

But I will admit the obvious.

I sell both sides of this comparison, and a post about comparing them is a post that keeps you inside our tiers. Read it with that in mind, then run the three lines on us and on anyone else.

The short version

Ask any quoting agency for three lines in writing: the monthly figure, what changes it, what ends it. Treat a listed range as a floor and a ceiling, and ask for the scope inside it. Compare the twelve-month total for your scope, never the headline on the page. Refuse any contract where extra work is "quoted separately". Check who holds the logins and the files on the last day. Run the same three lines on the tier with the listed price too.

VALORAE Media lists Full Page and quotes Edit and Manage on the call at valoraemedia.com.