Four ways to get marketing done — an agency, a hire, a stack of AI tools, or an all-in-one platform — laid out next to one flat-price department that ships nothing without your approval. No spin: here is what each actually gets you, side by side.
| Marketing agencyretainer | Hire a marketerin-house | AI toolsJasper · Copy.ai · Writesonic · Surfer | HubSpotall-in-one platform | Deptzythe whole department | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | $3,500–$5,000 / mo | $60,000+ / yr, fully loaded | $29–$999 / mo each, per-seat or meteredJasper ~$69/seat · Copy.ai $29→~$1,000 · Writesonic ~$399 · Surfer up to ~$999 | $800–$3,600 / mo + $3,000–$7,000 onboarding | One low flat monthly price — no per-seat, no per-post meter |
| Who does the work | An account team you rarely see | One generalist, stretched across everything | You — the tools speed you up, you still operate them | You, plus whoever you hire to run the platform | The department drafts; you approve |
| What it covers | Whatever's inside the retainer scope | As much as one person can juggle | Mostly writing — you assemble the rest | CRM + tooling; content & strategy still on you | Audit, SEO, content, social, email — the whole desk |
| Setup | Onboarding & ramp, weeks | Hiring & ramp, months | Sign up per tool, wire them together yourself | Paid onboarding, $3k–$7k | We stand it up for you |
| Control | Hand-offs, approvals by email | Depends on the person | Total — it's all you | Total — it's all you | You approve everything before it ships — nothing auto-publishes |
| Built for | Mid-market budgets | Companies that can carry a salary | Hands-on operators who like tools | Teams with a budget and an admin | The small business everyone else priced out |
Competitor prices are public 2026 list prices and are directional — plans, seats and add-ons vary. Deptzy does the audits, drafts and scaffolding; a human approves anything before it goes live. We don't auto-publish, and we don't invent results.
Every draft, email and post waits in the Approval Queue for your one-tap yes. The department does the work; you keep the judgment. That's the whole difference between a tool you operate and a department you approve.
Software that does the everyday jobs of a marketing team — audits your site and scores it 0–100, rewrites SEO titles, meta and schema, writes on-brand content, turns it into per-channel social drafts, and drafts your newsletter and follow-ups. It handles the drafting and scaffolding; a person reviews and approves before anything goes live. It's not a magic auto-publisher — you keep the final say.
It depends how you buy it. An agency retainer typically runs $3,500–$5,000/mo. One in-house marketer is roughly $60,000+/yr fully loaded. AI tools run about $29–$999/mo each, per seat or metered (Jasper ~$69/seat, Copy.ai $29→~$1,000, Writesonic ~$399, Surfer up to ~$999). HubSpot lands around $800–$3,600/mo + $3,000–$7,000 onboarding. Deptzy is one low flat monthly price for the whole department, with no per-seat or per-post meter.
Those tools accelerate a marketer you already have — you still sign in, prompt them, and assemble the output into a campaign. Deptzy is the department itself: audit, SEO fixes, content, social drafts and email drafts as one scheduled pipeline, handed to you as a queue to approve. With the tools you're the operator; with Deptzy the work arrives drafted and you're the approver.
No. Nothing publishes, sends, or spends without your explicit approval. Every draft — a page, a post, a newsletter — waits in the Approval Queue for your one-tap yes. Approve it, edit it, or skip it. The department drafts; you decide what ships.