AutoHive Agentic Digital Marketing sells three monthly packages for South African companies, positioned mid-market: not the cheapest, never the most expensive. Every engagement includes a once-off setup fee for Google and Meta account architecture, a paid-media management fee of twenty percent of advertising spend, weekly advert reporting, and a monthly detailed analysis that names what will change next month and why. Clients own every account and asset from day one.
Packages & pricing
Not the cheapest. Never the most expensive.
Cheap marketing is the most expensive thing you can buy. You pay twice: once in fees, once in the customers it failed to bring. Premium-agency pricing mostly buys their office. We price where serious SME work actually costs, and we publish the numbers, because a supplier who hides pricing is negotiating against you.
Three ways in
Monthly packages, built for South African companies.
For the owner-run business getting its digital foundations right for the first time.
- Google Business Profile managed: posts, photos, review responses
- Reputation monitoring on your brand searches
- One social platform managed: the right one, chosen honestly
- Monthly report in plain language
- Your own self-hosted CRM, wired to your enquiries
The core package: for the SME ready to buy attention and measure what it returns.
- Everything in Hive Start
- Paid advertising managed on Google and Meta (fee: 20% of spend, see below)
- Two further platforms managed where they fit your buyers
- Content published on your own Ghost blog: here is why Ghost
- Weekly advert reporting: what ran, what it cost, what it returned
- Monthly deep analysis ending in a named list of changes for next month
Full agentic operation for companies where marketing is a growth engine, not a cost line.
- Everything in Hive Growth
- Monthly video and short-form production cadence
- Podcast guesting strategy via The Think Tank studio
- CRM fully wired: source-to-sale attribution on every deal
- Quarterly brand review against your guidelines
- Priority access to your named strategist
Audited against the market
Where these fees sit in South Africa: checked, not guessed.
We benchmarked our pricing against published South African agency rates (2025 to 2026 pricing guides from Syte, The Weblab, Digital Hippo, Growth Pulse Media and Chilli Media, checked August 2026). Full multi-channel retainers in South Africa run roughly R10 000 to R50 000+ per month; specialist agencies typically quote R25 000 to R45 000; household-name agencies reach R80 000. Basic social-only management runs R3 500 to R15 000. Our packages sit deliberately in the middle lane, and this table shows what each rand actually buys at each level of the market:
| Option | Typical monthly cost | What you actually get | Reporting | Who owns the accounts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freelancer | R2 500 to R6 500 | Content posting on one or two platforms; one person's hours and one person's skill ceiling; no cover when they are sick or leave | Ad hoc | Varies, often unclear |
| Boutique agency | R7 500 to R15 000 | Social management plus light ads; account reviewed weekly at best, monthly in practice | Monthly summary | Sometimes the agency |
| AutoHive (this page) | R8 500 to R38 000 | Agentic system reads results and corrects daily; named human strategist; content, ads, reputation and CRM in one operation; refusals when ads would waste your money | Weekly advert report + monthly named-changes analysis, verifiable in your own CRM | You, from day one, in writing |
| Specialist agency | R25 000 to R45 000 | Strong strategy and production; account managed by a team; pace still set by the monthly meeting cycle | Monthly deck | Usually you; check the pixel and audiences |
| Household-name agency | R50 000 to R80 000+ | Big-brand creative and media buying power; SME accounts serviced by the most junior team; you fund the office view | Monthly/quarterly | Contract-dependent |
Positioning check, honestly stated: Hive Start (R8 500) sits above basic social-only packages because it includes reputation management and your own CRM, not just posting. Hive Growth (R18 500) sits in the lower-middle of the full-retainer range while reporting weekly instead of monthly. Hive Swarm (R38 000) sits inside the specialist band, below the household names. Not the cheapest. Never the most expensive. Exactly as promised.
Rand for rand
What each package actually buys you, side by side.
| You get | Hive Start R8 500/m | Hive Growth R18 500/m | Hive Swarm R38 000/m |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile managed (posts, photos, review responses) | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reputation monitoring on brand searches | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-hosted CRM, yours to keep, wired to enquiries | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ full source-to-sale attribution |
| Social platforms managed | 1 | 3 | 3+ where they fit your buyers |
| Paid advertising on Google & Meta (20% of spend) | Not included | ✓ | ✓ |
| Content published on your own Ghost blog | Not included | ✓ | ✓ |
| Advert reporting | Monthly | Weekly | Weekly |
| Monthly deep analysis with named changes | Not included | ✓ | ✓ |
| Video & short-form production cadence | Not included | Not included | ✓ monthly |
| Podcast guesting via The Think Tank studio | Not included | Not included | ✓ |
| Quarterly brand review against your guidelines | Not included | Not included | ✓ |
| Named strategist | Shared | ✓ | ✓ priority access |
If the numbers don't fit yet
Too early for these fees? The hive still has a place for you.
Some businesses genuinely are not ready for R8 500 a month, and selling it to them anyway would break our own first rule. If that is you, we would rather route you honestly than lose you politely:
The Bee Agencies. Through the BeeHive Business Network, we refer smaller businesses to vetted partner agencies and specialists in the hive who work at earlier-stage budgets. You get a warm introduction, they get a client who has read this site, and when your business grows into our packages, you come back knowing exactly what you are buying. The hive keeps the work moving, and you with it.
And if even that is too early: the education on this site is free by design. Start with the glossary, claim your own Google Business Profile using the reputation page, and come back when the numbers fit. We will still be here, and you will be a sharper client.
The mechanics, without small print
Four rules that apply to every package.
Once-off setup fee: R12 500
Google and Meta architecture done properly once: ad accounts in your name, pixel and Conversions API, conversion events that mean something, Google Business Profile claimed and completed, and a baseline audit of your website speed and conversion path. If the audit says your site will waste ad money, we say so before you spend it: the site-speed gate explained.
See the ownership standardPaid media: 20% of ad spend
Our management fee for paid advertising is twenty percent of what you spend. The incentive maths is deliberate: we only earn more when spending more is working, and the weekly report is where we prove it. When spend stops returning, we tell you to cut it, and our fee falls with it. An agency on a flat retainer has no such pressure.
Read the advertising mechanicsWeekly advert reporting
Every week you receive, in your CRM and your inbox: what ran, what it cost, what it returned, and what the agents changed. No login-to-a-dashboard homework, no quarterly surprise. If a week went badly, you read that too, and you could verify it yourself anyway.
See how you verify itMonthly deep analysis
Once a month your strategist writes the analysis a deck usually hides: what worked, what did not, what the data killed, and a named list of what changes next month and why. Adapt what works, adopt what is proven, change what the data kills, on a schedule, not in a panic.
Read how we adapt on scheduleFair questions
Asked before you had to ask.
Is there a long contract?
Month to month after the first ninety days. The first ninety days are committed because paid platforms need a learning period before judging results is fair, to you or to us.
What happens to my accounts if I leave?
They were always yours. Every account, pixel, audience and creative file is owned by you from day one; we hold manager access only. Off-boarding is documented at onboarding: the full ownership standard is here.
When would you refuse to sell me advertising?
When your website is too slow to convert the clicks, when there is no working conversion path, or when your Google Business Profile would leak the trust the ads build. We fix the leak first; sometimes that means our web division before our ads. Selling you ads before that would be taking money to pour water into a cracked bucket.
Why are you not the cheapest?
Because the work is daily, human-supervised, and reported weekly. The cheapest quote you receive is priced for an agency that looks at your account once a month. We would rather lose the comparison on price and win it on the reporting.
One clear next step
Ask for the honesty check first.
Free, before any package: we audit your site speed, conversion path and Google Business Profile, and tell you plainly whether ads would work yet.
Request the audit