Should startups hire a marketing agency or freelancers from a talent marketplace?

When it comes to sourcing external talent, there’s a time and a place for every type of hire. Learn how Craze stacks up against popular marketing marketplaces like MarketerHire, Superside, Upwork, and Toptal.

Whether they’re one year into their startup journey or 10, startups generally have to do a lot with a little. For marketers on the team, that can often mean hiring on external talent or contractors. After all, marketing is a wide-ranging field — spanning everything from content creation and email marketing to photography and event planning. Most early-stage startups simply don’t have the full-stack team they need to expertly carry out all of their marketing needs.

To fill that gap, many startups today turn to marketplaces.

Online marketplaces have popped up in recent years as a way to fill companies’ talent vacuum, connecting internal managers to freelancers and contractors. Marketplaces can either offer specialized services (such as design or content writing) or offer more general access to contractors overall.

If you’re at the growth stage where you need a little outside assistance with your marketing, you might be wondering whether you should opt for a marketing marketplace or a full-stack marketing agency like Craze.

Our (biased but honest) answer? It really depends on your marketing needs and what you’re looking for.

Below, we run through a few of the top marketplaces out there and explain how they differ from Craze and when each might be a better fit for your business.

Craze vs. MarketerHire

Approach

MarketerHire runs a marketplace of pre-vetted marketing experts, letting companies hire in freelance, part-time, or full-time marketers onto their team. When you join MarketerHire, you’re asked to explain your goals, and then MarketerHire will help you hire the perfect expert (or three) to suit your needs. Marketers on MarketerHire are usually experts in unique channels and might be CMOs, paid ad experts, or content marketers.

At Craze, we hire channel experts internally, and then make all of those experts available to our clients depending on their needs. We take a holistic approach when it comes to working with our clients, which means we start by listening to your goals and challenges, then we custom-build a solution for you — whether that’s running paid ads, rolling out content marketing, or launching an event. You don’t have to hire a separate expert for each need; we take care of it all for you, from strategy to execution.

Pricing

The freelancers you hire on MarketerHire set their own rates on the marketplace, which means pricing can vary. Hourly rates generally start at $80/hr, though, and full-time rates generally cost between $2,400 and $4,800 a week.

If you need to hire multiple channel-specific experts, you have to hire each individually and can expect your costs to go up in turn.

At Craze, our pricing starts at $5,000 a month. This allows our clients to get full-stack services — which can include a mix of anything from content production and social media management to videography and copywriting — for the price of a single hire per year (around $60,000).

Craze vs. Superside

Approach

Superside is a design subscription service that allows companies to get designs turned around in a short amount of time. Users can expect fast turnaround times and professional designs, every time. Superside is a great option for larger enterprises that have very specific design needs (paired with a big design budget) and who already have a strong creative direction set internally.

Pricing

Superside users have several options when it comes to pricing. For $3,000 - $15,000, you can choose a basic design package from Superside that will buy you a certain number of design hours each month to have their team work on basic graphic design, landing pages, and presentations for you. To include options like brand identity work or motion design, expect to pay between $8,000 and $30,000 a month.

Alternatively, for a full-stack Concept and Creative plan, you can expect to pay between $20,000 and $80,000 a month. These plans include creative strategy, direction, and execution from the Superside team.

At Craze — even if your plan costs just $5,000 a month — we pair you with a dedicated Marketing Manager, work with you to set the strategy, and work with our full-stack team to deliver all creative assets. (Read more about how our team operates here.)

Craze vs. Upwork

Approach

Having been around for over 20 years now, Upwork is one of the original freelancer marketplaces. It allows you to hire contractors across multiple different industries, including legal, IT, finance, admin, customer support, and marketing. 

When you post a job on Upwork, freelancers send you proposals for the gig. After reviewing, you select the right freelancer for the job and kick things off.

Since freelancers set their own rates on the platform, Upwork can often have a wider range of pricing than MarketerHire, Superside, or even Craze, and you can find contractors willing to take on projects for cheaper prices. This is great for one-person companies or those with tiny budgets, but it also means you have to vet talent yourself and have very specific instructions for each project to ensure success.

Pricing

Since freelancers set their own rates on Upwork, pricing really runs the full spectrum — from very cheap to very pricey. Depending on the contractors you hire and what your needs are, your costs could be quite low or quite pricey. Either way, they’ll likely be variable depending on your needs each month.

At Craze, we aim to provide stable pricing for clients month to month, even as their needs change. Since we work strategically with you to find the perfect solution to your pain points and goals, we may work on different projects over time — but we strive to keep pricing affordable and predictable.

Craze vs. Toptal

Approach

Similar to Upwork, Toptal helps connect businesses to freelancers across a wide variety of industries — including healthcare and life sciences, financial services, industrials, technology, and communications and media.

Toptal claims to hire only the top 3% of applicants in the industries they work with. Clients are allowed to have a trial period with up to three freelancers for each position they post, allowing clients to work with a few freelancers for each position first before they select the top candidate. This means it’s up to the client to vet the freelancer for the role.

Pricing

Toptal requires a deposit of $500 before hiring, which is then applied to your first invoice as a credit if you do move forward with a Toptal hire. Toptal doesn’t include information on its costs in a pricing or FAQ page, but according to Betterteam, hourly prices range from $60 - $250, while full-time pricing can cost between $2,000 and $8,000 a week per freelancer.

Scale your marketing with a full-stack agency

Freelancer marketplaces can be a good resource when you’re looking to fill a very specific talent gap or you have a project with really clear, delineated needs. Many early-stage startups, however, have murkier pain points or goals. 

You may know that you want to reduce customer churn, improve customer loyalty, or grow by 20% month over month — but you may not know the best way to do so. That’s where Craze shines: we work as your strategic advisors, and then use our talented in-house experts to deliver on your goals. If we need to pivot plans or hit new goals, you don’t need to pivot to new talent: we have everything from content experts to videographers in house, so we grow with you.

Ready to make our in-house talent your outsourced solution? Get in touch for a free consulting call to see if we’re a good fit.

‍