In-house vs agency vs freelancer vs staffing

The four options side by side

Most comparisons stop at agency vs in-house. Here are all four, on the six things that decide it.

The in-house cost uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics median for marketing specialists, $78,760 in May 2025, divided by 0.70 to add benefits. BLS says benefits were 30% of total compensation for private-industry workers in June 2026. Agency figures come from HeyOrca’s 2026 survey of almost 100 social agencies and Ahrefs’ survey of 439 SEO providers.

When each one wins

Each model is the right call somewhere. Here’s where.

• Freelancer. A project with a clear end: a site rebuild, a brand kit, an ad account audit, a launch video. Also any steady need under about 10 hours a week, where a full-time person would sit idle.
• Agency. A campaign or test that needs several specialists at once for a quarter, senior strategy you can’t hire yet, or one channel you want run at low volume without managing anyone.
• In-house U.S. hire. Your marketing leader, roles that need to be in the room with customers or partners, and jobs where deep company context matters more than cost.
• Managed global staffing. Ongoing, daily execution you’d otherwise give a full-time hire: running channels, shipping content, building reports. You want one dedicated person without carrying payroll.

Where we’re the wrong call: we don’t place part-time or project hires, and the roles we place are hands-on roles in one function, like social, email, or growth. If the work stops in eight weeks, hire a freelancer. If you need a VP to set strategy, hire them in-house and let us fill the execution seats under them.

What each model costs beyond the invoice

The monthly number is only part of it. Each model has a cost you pay in time or risk.

• In-house: the recruiter fee, a 39-day median wait to fill the seat (SHRM), and the cost of starting over if the hire doesn’t work out.
• Agency: your account team can change, and work outside the contract scope turns into change orders.
• Freelancer: the hours you spend screening, briefing, and checking work, and the risk they’re booked when you need them next.
• Managed staffing: you still manage the work every day. A marketer through us is a teammate, so you set priorities, give feedback, and run the weekly check-in, the same as with any hire.

Where managed global staffing fits

Managed staffing sits between a hire and a vendor. The marketer works full-time on your team, like an employee. We carry the employer side: payroll, benefits, and HR. Here are our terms, the same ones on our pricing page:

• About $4,000 a month for a full-time marketer, billed every two weeks through Stripe
• Month-to-month, with 30 days’ notice to end it
• A replacement guarantee for as long as you’re a client. Our replacement rate is about 5%.
• A buyout if you want to hire your marketer directly, at six months of the rate
• Talent in Latin America and the Philippines, full-time for one client, working your time zone
• About 3 weeks from agreement to start date, with a 90% first-pair success rate

Agencies use it too. Demand Curve, a startup growth agency, hired a full-time Growth Marketer through us so its senior media buyer could stop doing execution, and it took on more clients. Read the Demand Curve case study.

It’s also where teams land after freelancers. Telltale’s founder had tried Upwork freelancers and found reliability and quality uneven. After she hired a full-time global marketer through us, client revisions dropped by 50%. Read the Telltale case study.

How to choose in four questions

• Does the work end? If it has a finish date inside a few months, use a freelancer or an agency. If it repeats every week, you need a person.
• How many hours a week? Under about 10, a freelancer. Close to 40, a full-time hire, in-house or through managed staffing.
• Is it leadership or execution? Leadership and strategy roles belong in-house. Execution across channels is where managed staffing saves the most.
• Who should carry payroll and HR? If you’d rather not run payroll, benefits, and HR for a global hire, an agency or managed staffing does it for you.

Still unsure? Cost it out. Our guide to what a marketing team costs runs the numbers for a first hire, a three-person team, and a five-person team, and what a social media manager costs prices a single seat.