Almost every comparison of in-house versus outsourced ecommerce staffing is dishonest, in both directions. Outsourcing companies compare their monthly rate to a salary and claim a 70% saving. Agencies comparing internally forget that the salary is not the cost.
Here is the arithmetic we would use if we were on your side of the table, which — on this particular question — we are.
What a salary leaves out
Take a listing or marketplace operations specialist in the UK or US. Whatever you have in mind as the salary, the actual annual cost of that person includes at least six other things:
- Employer taxes and pension or benefits contributions — commonly 15–25% on top
- Recruitment cost, whether an agency fee or the time your own team spends screening
- The vacancy gap — the weeks between deciding to hire and someone being productive
- Ramp-up — three to six months before an ecommerce hire is producing at full rate
- Management time — someone senior spending several hours a week supervising
- Attrition risk — the whole cycle repeating, on average, every 18–30 months in this discipline
The last three are the ones that get left out, and they are the largest. A hire who takes four months to reach full productivity and leaves after twenty has spent a fifth of their tenure being trained.
What a managed team rate should include
On the other side, a monthly rate is only comparable if it genuinely covers the equivalent scope. Ask directly whether the following are inside the number or billed separately:
- Supervision and quality review — or is the person unmanaged?
- Cover for leave and sickness — or do you simply lose those weeks?
- Replacement if the specialist resigns, and how long that takes
- Training on your platforms and SOPs before they start on a live account
- Equipment, connectivity, premises and software licences
When in-house is genuinely the right answer
There are cases where it plainly is, and it is worth saying so. If the role requires being physically present — photography of stock, warehouse work, in-person client meetings — outsourcing is the wrong tool. If the work is deeply strategic and needs a seat in your leadership conversations, hire it. And if the volume is genuinely part-time and unpredictable, a fractional local contractor may beat a full-time anything.
Where the managed model wins is the large middle: skilled, recurring, procedural work that needs doing every day, to a standard, by someone who has been taught how.
A fair way to compare
Put both options on a three-year horizon rather than a monthly one. Include the vacancy gap, the ramp period, the management hours at a realistic internal rate, and one attrition cycle. Then compare. The gap is usually smaller than an outsourcing company claims and considerably larger than a salary comparison suggests.