The right model is the one with the lowest cost per published post at your volume, including the hidden cost of coordination. Retainers and salaries on their own will lead you astray. This post gives you a five-line formula and shows where agency, in-house and hybrid each tend to win as you scale.
TLDR: Add up every cost of social for one month, divide by posts published, and compare the three models on that number plus turnaround and control. Agencies tend to win on spiky volume, in-house on steady volume, and hybrid when strategy must stay inside but production flexes.
Mydrop pricing check, September 2026: the entry paid plans of the eight tools most often compared with Mydrop run from $6 per channel (Buffer) and $25 a month (Later) to $99 per user (Hootsuite) and $79 per seat (Sprout Social), read on each vendor's pricing page. Mydrop is free to start, then $19 a month flat, not per seat. Full table on Mydrop's compare pages.
The five-line cost formula
Fill this in for your current model first. Use one month and one brand group.
| Line | What goes in |
|---|---|
| 1. People | Salaries and benefits for time spent on social, prorated |
| 2. Outside help | Agency retainers, freelancers, per-asset fees |
| 3. Tools | Scheduling, design, reporting, asset storage |
| 4. Coordination | Hours spent briefing, reviewing and re-doing work, valued at a loaded hourly rate |
| 5. Posts published | The count of posts that actually went live |
Cost per post = (lines 1 + 2 + 3 + 4) divided by line 5. Leave paid media out, so you're comparing production, not ad budgets.
Line 4 is the one that gets missed. Agency work usually carries more briefing and review hours. In-house work carries more management time. Measure it honestly and the ranking can change.
When an agency model wins
An agency is strong when your need is uneven or specialised: a launch quarter, a video series, a new platform you have no skills for. You pay for capacity only when you use it.
It gets weaker as volume becomes steady, because you're paying a margin on work you could do repeatedly in-house. It also adds handoffs. Turnaround SLAs and contract language matter more here, because delays hit your calendar directly.
When in-house wins
In-house tends to win with steady, high volume and deep brand knowledge. The team already knows the voice, so briefing time per post falls over time.
The risk is capacity. One designer is a cost until a campaign needs three. When your calendar swings by more than a third between months, in-house can mean idle time in quiet months and missed deadlines in busy ones.
When a hybrid model wins
Hybrid works when strategy, voice and approvals stay inside and overflow production goes outside. It's often the best fit for multi-brand teams, because the in-house team holds the standards and the agency flexes.
The condition is clarity about who owns what. Put these three items in writing:
- Who sets the brief and who approves the final post.
- Which asset types go outside (for example video and regional adaptation).
- How outside work enters your calendar and approval flow.
Without them, hybrid gives you both models' coordination costs.
Where tooling changes the maths
Tooling doesn't replace people, but it shrinks line 4. When approvals, comments, schedule and assets sit on one post, there's less rework and less waiting. Mydrop's workspaces and approval workflows let in-house staff, agencies and freelancers work in the same calendar with separate access. AI captions and bulk creation reduce the hours spent on repetitive variants.
Tool price structure matters too. The check below was read on each vendor's pricing page.
Per-user and per-seat plans grow with every agency or freelancer you add. A hybrid model with several outside collaborators feels that most. For a side-by-side at five seats, see Sprout vs Hootsuite vs Mydrop.
Run the formula on your three scenarios
Work out cost per post for your current setup. Then rerun it for the other two models with realistic quotes, and add a column for turnaround time and control. Compare at your current volume and at double it. If a model only wins at one volume, note the volume where it flips. That crossover is your decision point. For market ranges to sanity-check your inputs, what social media management costs is a good reference.
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