The alternative most companies are actually weighing. Here is what it costs with loaded salaries and the tools on top, what it buys you that we cannot, and where the two are closer than they look.
Hiring is not the wrong answer. It is the right answer whenever the work needs judgement about your product that nobody outside will ever accumulate, and it is the only serious option when compliance keeps the data inside. What this page argues is narrower: that one person does not cover four systems, and that the first year costs more than the salary line suggests.
| Capability | an in-house team | FullGTM |
|---|---|---|
| What you're buying | ◐Headcount, and the tools they'll need on top | ✓The system itself, operated by us |
| Producing in weeks, not quarters | ✗Hiring, then onboarding, then ramp | ✓The system is already built and running |
| Four systems covered at once | ✗One person covers one well, or four halfway | ✓Outbound, content, digital PR and web operations |
| Output does not stop when someone leaves | ✗Holidays, sick days and resignations stop it | ✓The system runs regardless |
| More output without another hire | ✗Doubling output means hiring again | ✓The cost does not track the volume of work |
| Tools included | ✗Paid separately, on top of salary | ✓Ours, in the price |
| Sending infrastructure provisioned and warmed | ◐Your domains, and someone has to learn deliverability | ✓Our domains and mailboxes, warmed and rotated |
| Lives your product every day | ✓This is the real advantage of hiring | ◐We learn it in onboarding, not by living it |
| The knowledge stays in the company | ✓Judgement and relationships are yours to keep | ✗Ours stays with us; you keep the output and the data |
Salary figures verified against RepVue and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics as of July 26, 2026, and they are the same figures the rest of the site uses. Read every row as the common case: a team you build is exactly as good as the people in it, and that varies.
Outbound, content, digital PR and web operations are four different crafts. A single hire covers one of them well, or all four halfway, and the second outcome is the common one. The calculator below lets you price the honest version: how much of a person each system really gets.
See how it works →A job posting, a search, a notice period and a ramp is a quarter before the first real campaign, and that quarter costs the same as any other. The system is already built, so the clock that matters starts at onboarding.
See how it works →A publishing cadence held by one person is held only while that person is there. Holidays, sick days and resignations are not edge cases in a team of one, they are the schedule.
See how it works →Doubling what a team produces means hiring again, with the same search, the same ramp and the same risk. The cost of running a system does not track the volume of work it does.
See how it works →Set the systems you need covered and how much of a person each one gets. Salaries are loaded, which is the real employer cost rather than the base figure, and the tools are the cheapest option in each category. What the number does NOT include is the time of whoever hires, onboards and manages the team, so read it as a floor.
A working go-to-market motion needs all 4. An in-house team does 0 of them, and does them well. The other 4 do not disappear, you buy another tool and you hire someone to run it. Build the stack below and compare it against one number.
With these assumptions we come out $15,400/mo cheaper.
Break-even sits at about 10% of one person's time.
Their side: Salaries come from the same source as the rest of the site: median US figures from RepVue, loaded at 1.43x cash compensation per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The tools are the cheapest option in each category, which is the conservative read. What this does NOT count is the time of whoever hires, onboards and manages the team. For every system, we count a tool from that category plus the person, at the LOW end of each published range, the conservative read: A contact database and sequencer $49/mo; An AI writing tool $49/mo; A site platform and hosting $25/mo; An outreach and link building platform $210/mo. Operator cost: SDR / outbound rep, US salaries, Median US SDR base ~$60K, median OTE ~$85K. Cross-checked: ZipRecruiter $55K, Salary.com $70.4K. (RepVue, 2026-07-26). Private industry: benefits are 30.1% of total employer cost, wages 69.9%, so total cost is 1.43× cash compensation. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employer Costs for Employee Compensation, 2026-03). Note: our Press & backlinks is quoted per campaign, so it is NOT in our total, while their side does count a tool and a person for it. Our number is a floor.
It depends on how many of the four systems you want covered, which is why the calculator asks. The figure that surprises people is not the salary, it is the multiplier: the real employer cost is about 1.43 times cash compensation once benefits are counted, and the tools are still paid on top of that.
No, and the difference matters. Outsourcing hands the work to another set of people, so the cost still tracks headcount, theirs instead of yours. What we sell is the system those people would operate, which is why the cost does not follow the volume.
That is the most common shape, honestly. Someone inside owns strategy, the product story and the relationships, and the four systems run underneath without that person having to hold them personally.
You keep the output and the data: the content, the campaigns, the domains you own and every record we produced. What leaves with us is our system, which is what you were paying for. That is a real difference from hiring, and it belongs on this page.
When someone you already employ has real spare capacity below about one seventh of their time. Try it in the calculator: on a single system, even a quarter of a person you already pay costs more than our Pilot tier, and the break-even it prints sits near 14 percent of one person. In practice that borderline means the tool sitting unused, which is not hiring winning, it is nobody operating.
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