UGC agency comment keyword replies: cost per creator (2026)

A UGC agency can put one comment keyword, with its public reply, DM and link, on every creator's account from a single admin, priced per creator instead of per contact. BetterSocials is our pick for agencies running brand campaigns across many creators: its Agency plan costs $29 per creator a month and applies one keyword template to the whole roster. Manychat is the better fit for multi-step flows or WhatsApp, and Meta Business Suite sends basic Instagram and Facebook keyword messages for free.

Three ways to get a campaign keyword live on every creator

BetterSocials, Manychat and Meta Business Suite each price the same launch-day job differently. The job: a campaign keyword has to be live on twenty accounts before the first creator posts.

Manychat's prices on this page are the ones it listed in October 2026, billed monthly.

The plan for an agency is short. Invite your creators by email so each one connects their own accounts. Write the keyword once as a template and apply it to the roster. Then read keyword triggers, DMs sent and link clicks per creator and per campaign.

Leave it to each creator instead, and some posts go live with no keyword at all.

What the BetterSocials Agency plan buys per creator

BetterSocials is an AI social media manager for local businesses, creators and small agencies, and its Agency plan launched on 2026-11-05 as a fourth plan beside Creator, Pro and Team. The price is $29 per creator a month, shown on the pricing page. Signing up starts with a conversation through Talk with us, not a self-serve checkout.

Each creator you add by email keeps their own BetterSocials account. That account comes with 4 social accounts, 1,000 AI credits a month, link click tracking and analytics. Every creator added gets a 14-day free trial, and logins for the agency's own team are free.

The bill grows with the roster, one creator at a time. Contacts are unlimited on every plan, so a creator whose post takes off costs the same that month as one whose post stalls.

The agency can add, edit, pause and delete every keyword on a creator's account, including the reply, the DM and the link. It can also change the creator's account settings.

Creator permissions without shared passwords

Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Facebook accounts get connected by each creator from their own BetterSocials login, through each platform's own sign-in screen. The agency never needs a creator's password to any of them.

What the agency sees is the work: keyword DM triggers, DMs sent, links clicked and posts published. What it never sees, in the Agency Admin or through a connected assistant, is a creator's messages, comment threads, who they talked to or their inbox. The agency also cannot write or send a reply for a creator. The creator answers their own comments and DMs.

One exception covers a creator who leaves. The agency can change the email the account signs in with to an address the agency controls. The account keeps its connected accounts, keywords and history, the creator is signed out and told by email, and the agency can hand the account to a new creator later. Whoever holds that login can open the whole account, inbox included.

One keyword template, twenty different DMs

A keyword template in BetterSocials holds four things written once: the word, the public reply, the DM and the link. You apply the template to as many creators as the campaign needs. Edit it and apply again, and every creator gets the new version.

Three fields fill in per creator: {first_name}, {name} and {code}. The {code} field is that creator's own code. One template applied to twenty creators sends twenty different DMs, each with the right name and promo code, and nobody writes twenty keywords.

Creator setups handle new joiners. A Creator setup is a campaign, its keyword templates and the settings a new creator starts with when they accept the invite.

The keyword itself works the way a single account's does, as covered in How to set up comment-to-DM with a public reply. Someone comments the word, the account replies in public, and the link goes out.

Which platforms send a DM and which post a public reply

Instagram and Facebook are the two platforms where a BetterSocials keyword sends a real DM. Everywhere else, the keyword posts a public reply under the comment with the link in it.

TikTok sets the hardest limit. A TikTok comment cannot trigger a private DM on BetterSocials or on any other tool outside TikTok's limited rollout in Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. Can ManyChat send a DM from a TikTok comment in 2026? walks through the same rule from the Manychat side.

YouTube has no DM API for any tool, so the link rides in the public reply where other viewers see it too. Those public replies count as replies, not DMs, in the agency's numbers.

Manychat on a creator roster: per-contact pricing

Manychat meters active contacts. Pro is $39 a month with 2,500 active contacts. Each extra contact costs $0.10 on Essential, $0.05 on Pro and $0.025 on Business, billed monthly.

On a roster, that meter runs per creator audience. A creator whose post takes off raises that month's Manychat bill through extra contacts.

Manychat works on Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and TikTok. If your campaigns need multi-step sequences in a flow builder, or a WhatsApp channel, Manychat is the better pick. BetterSocials covers YouTube, Threads and LinkedIn Company Pages comments as well, and does not offer WhatsApp.

For a single keyword, a reply, a DM and a promo code pushed to every creator at once, the BetterSocials template is less work.

Reporting clicks back to the brand

Agency Admin numbers in BetterSocials come for each creator and each campaign, where a campaign is a brand the agency runs creators for. You pick 7, 14, 30 or 90 days.

• Keyword DM triggers, the comments that matched a keyword
• DMs sent
• Links clicked, counting real people only and leaving out the automatic checks apps run on links
• Click rate
• Posts published, with their views, likes, comments, saves and shares

Link tracking is always on for a creator on a roster. A link in a public reply on TikTok, YouTube, Threads or LinkedIn Company Pages is not click tracked, so plan the brand's click goal around Instagram and Facebook.

Client reports come out three ways once you pick a campaign and a date range: Save as PDF, Download CSV with one row per creator, or Get a client link. The client link is a read-only page that stays up to date and needs no account. Your agency chooses whether creators show by name or as Creator 1, Creator 2, and the report carries the agency's own logo and color, never a creator's email address.