Every quote has two numbers, and only one is a fee
The first number is the management fee: what you pay a person or an agency for their time, their tools and their judgement. The second is the ad budget, which goes to Google or Meta and buys clicks or impressions. They are not interchangeable, and a quote that blurs them is the first thing to question. Ask a prospective provider which of the two their figure refers to, and whether they take a percentage of your ad spend. I do not: budget goes from your card to the platform, and my fee is separate and fixed.
For SEO, web development and automation there is no second number, only the fee and any tool or hosting costs you own directly.
SEO
My SEO packages run in three monthly tiers: Starter at USD 500 a month for a single-location business with one product line, Growth at USD 900 a month for the multi-city, eCommerce and B2B work that makes up most engagements, and Enterprise quoted after scoping for multi-market or enterprise sites. A standalone audit is quoted on request, and it is a sensible first step if you are not ready for a retainer.
What moves the number: how many locations, languages or product categories need their own pages; whether the site has technical debt that must be cleared before content is worth writing; whether you need content written or only briefed; and how competitive the market is. A trekking company competing with international OTAs needs more work than a clinic competing with three local clinics.
Google Ads
Management is priced in three monthly tiers: Starter at USD 500 a month for a simple single-campaign Nepal account, Growth at USD 900 a month, and Enterprise quoted after scoping for multi-region accounts with significant spend, Shopping feeds and several campaign types. On top of that, the ad budget: Nepal campaigns need roughly NPR 30,000 to 50,000 a month before smart bidding has enough conversions to learn from, and international campaigns typically need the equivalent of USD 1,000 to 2,000. Below those levels the account still works, but optimization is slower because there is less data.
Use the budget calculator to turn a lead target into a spend figure from your own cost per click and conversion rate.
Meta Ads
Facebook and Instagram management sits in the same range as Google Ads, and the ad budget is usually lower for the same number of leads in Nepal because clicks are cheaper. The complication here is payment rather than price: Meta bills in USD, and many Nepali businesses cannot pay it directly. Under Nepal Rastra Bank rules an individual prepaid dollar card is capped at USD 500 a year, an April 2026 amendment lets banks set their own prepaid-card limits, and registered IT and communication businesses can hold cards for online services of up to USD 3,000 a year, or USD 5,000 where they earn foreign currency. Where a card is not workable, the boost service runs the budget through an agency account and invoices you in rupees at cost.
Websites
A WordPress build for a service business, with the pages planned around search intent rather than a template dropped on top, is a project fee rather than a monthly one; the range is on the packages page and depends on page count, whether content is written for you, and whether the site needs eCommerce, multiple languages or custom functionality. Ongoing care plans cover updates, backups, monitoring and small changes.
The cheapest quotes in this market are usually a purchased theme with demo content replaced. That is a real saving on day one and an expensive problem later, because the pages exist for the theme’s layout rather than for anything a customer searches. Ask what the page structure is based on before comparing two website prices.
Automation and AI
Automation is priced per build rather than per month: a lead-routing workflow costs less than a CRM implementation, which costs less than a set of internal tools. Most engagements also carry a small monthly amount for the platform itself, paid by you to n8n, Make, Zapier or whoever hosts the workflow. The honest constraint here is again payment from Nepal, which I check for your bank and card type as part of the setup rather than assuming.
If you are outside Nepal
International clients are invoiced in NPR, USD, EUR, GBP, AUD, CAD or AED, typically 40 to 60 per cent below comparable agency rates in those markets, for senior work rather than a junior account manager. That gap is a cost-of-living difference, not a quality discount, and it is the reason roughly half my work comes from Australia, the UK and North America. See how international clients work with me.
Why the cheapest quote is usually the most expensive
- No tracking. A NPR 5,000 a month Google Ads engagement rarely includes conversion tracking, which means nobody knows which half of the budget worked. Fixing it later costs more than including it.
- Content by word count. Pages bought by the word get written to a length rather than to a question, and they do not rank.
- Ad spend markup. A percentage-of-spend model rewards spending more, not earning more.
- Shared account ownership. If the provider owns your ad account or your Google Business Profile, you cannot leave with your own history. Insist on your own accounts with the provider granted access.
Five questions to ask any quote
- Is this figure a fee, an ad budget, or both together?
- Do you take a percentage of ad spend?
- Who owns the ad account, the analytics property and the Business Profile?
- What is set up in month one before anything is spent or published?
- What is the notice period, and what do I keep if I leave?
If you want the answer for your own situation rather than a range, the contact page takes about a minute and the reply includes a number.
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