AI Writer vs B2B Content Agency: Compare Total Cost and Work

An agency sells you writing done by people and still needs your product knowledge and your approval. An AI writer sells you a fast draft and still needs your product knowledge and your approval. The invoice is the smaller part of the difference. The larger part is how many of your own hours each article takes, and that is the number to compare.

This page does not quote market prices, because any "average agency rate" would be a guess about your market, your industry and your scope. It gives you a formula and the list of quotes to collect so that you can fill in real numbers.

The work inside one published article

Whoever you pay, these jobs exist. Write a name next to each one for every option you are considering.

1. Choosing a topic a buyer searches for
2. Research and finding sources
3. Getting product facts from someone who knows them
4. Writing
5. Checking every fact, number and link
6. Images, title, meta description, internal links
7. Loading it into the website
8. Technical review by an engineer or product owner
9. Final approval and publishing

Jobs 3, 8 and 9 always stay with you. No supplier of any kind knows your tolerances, your lead times or what you are willing to put your company name on.

What each option needs from you

	Content agency	General AI chatbot, used by you	AI writing workflow
Topic choice	Theirs or yours. Ask what data they use	Yours	Depends on the tool. Some recommend topics from your data
Product knowledge	A briefing per article or per batch, plus answers to follow-up questions	You type it into the prompt each time	You answer questions or upload facts. Ask whether the tool keeps them
Fact checking	Ask who checks sources. Your product facts still need your confirmation	Yours, line by line	Depends on the tool. Ask what is checked and what is left to you
WordPress	Ask whether it arrives as a document or as a draft in your site	Yours	Depends on the tool
Review burden	Revision rounds on technical accuracy and tone	The heaviest. You are editor and fact checker	Every draft still needs a technical read
Turnaround	Set by their schedule and your briefing. Get it in writing	A draft is fast. Making it publishable is your time	A draft is fast. Review is your time
Commitment	Ask for the minimum term and notice period	None	Check the plan terms and whether unused allowance carries over

On review burden for AI drafts: Google's guidance on generative AI content says it is critical to manually fact-check and review all AI-generated content for accuracy before publishing. Budget for that time. An AI option with no review time in the calculation is not being compared fairly.

Where each one fails

An agency fails when:

• The writer has never seen your product and fills the gap with general statements a buyer already knows.
• The briefing call is skipped after the first month, and articles drift toward whatever is easiest to research.
• Technical review falls on your engineer anyway, in long revision rounds.

A general AI chatbot fails when:

• It states a specification, standard or statistic that sounds right and has no source.
• Nobody on your side has time to check, so the draft is published as it came.

An AI workflow fails when:

• It is set to publish automatically and nobody reads the result.
• It produces ten articles a week and your team can review two.
• It has no way to take in first-hand knowledge, so the output is correct and generic.

Both fail when the person who knows the product has no time for the article. That is the constraint to plan around. If your engineer can give thirty minutes a month, the question is which option turns thirty minutes into the most accurate content, not which one produces the most words.

Calculate your own cost

Use one formula for every option, so the comparison is like for like.

Cost per published article = (fee ÷ articles actually published) + (your hours × your hourly cost) + (expert hours × the expert's hourly cost)

Where:

• Fee is everything you pay for the period: retainer, subscription, per-article charges, setup, and any SEO tool the option requires.
• Articles actually published means articles that passed your review and went live. Do not use the number delivered or the number the plan allows. Unpublished drafts are cost with no output.
• Your hours covers briefing, answering questions, reviewing, correcting, formatting and uploading.
• Expert hours is the time of the engineer, quality manager or owner who confirms the technical content.
• Hourly cost is what an hour of that person costs the company. If you have no figure, use salary and employment costs divided by working hours.

Fill in the worksheet with your own numbers:

Line	Agency	Chatbot, DIY	AI workflow
A. Fee for the period
B. Articles published in the period
C. Your hours per article
D. Your hourly cost
E. Expert hours per article
F. Expert's hourly cost
Cost per article = A ÷ B + C × D + E × F

You will not know C and E in advance. Measure them. Run each option for two or three articles with a timer, and write down the minutes spent on every job in the list at the top of this page. The first article always takes longer, so use the second and third.

Which quotes to collect

For an agency, ask in writing:

• The fee per month and exactly how many articles of what length it covers
• The minimum term and the notice period
• Who chooses topics and from what data
• Whether the writer interviews someone at your company, how often and for how long
• How many revision rounds are included
• Whether sources are cited, and who checks them
• Whether delivery is a document or a WordPress draft, with images and metadata
• One sample article written for a manufacturer, with the brief that produced it

For an AI tool, find out:

• The plan price and how many articles it covers. Divide to get the fee per article
• Whether unused allowance carries over
• What it checks on its own, and what it leaves for you
• How it takes in your product facts, and whether it keeps them for the next article
• Whether it can publish without your approval, and whether you can turn that off
• Whether you can test it on one of your own topics before paying

Then run the same topic through each option you are seriously considering and time your side of the work. One real article tells you more than any feature list.

Our own numbers

We make an AI writing workflow, so read this section as a supplier's statement. Blogo recommends a topic from your site and Search Console data, asks you questions before it writes, checks statements against sources, and creates a WordPress draft that a person on your team has to review and publish. It does not publish for you.

Our pricing page lists Starter at $39 a month for 100 credits, Growth at $79 for 300 and Premium at $149 for 600, and one new article costs 10 credits. Checkout is not open yet. The product is in a free, invite-only pilot, so today those figures are published prices and not something you can buy. Whenever you use them, put them on line A and still fill in lines C to F, because your review time is part of the cost of every article.

A way to decide

• If nobody at your company can write or edit and you have budget, a good agency with a real briefing process is the safer choice.
• If you have one marketing person who can review but cannot produce enough, an AI workflow with enforced review gives that person more output for the same hours.
• If you publish rarely and the product is complex, write the few articles yourself with your engineer. Use any tool only for the first draft.
• In every case, set the publishing pace by how many articles your expert can review properly. An unreviewed technical article costs more in buyer trust than the article was worth.