Deptly

Free Interactive Tool

AI Department ROI Calculator

Calculate the fully-loaded annual cost of hiring a full marketing, sales, front desk, and bookkeeping team for your small business. Adjust each role's salary to match your market and see the total in real time.

Your hiring scenario

Toggle each role and adjust the annual fully-loaded cost (base salary plus ~25-30% for benefits, taxes, and overhead).

$typical: $55,000–$110,000
$typical: $50,000–$105,000
$typical: $32,000–$55,000
$typical: $45,000–$75,000
Total in-house cost
$245,000 / year
$20,417 / month · 4 roles
AI-managed services market range

Typical AI-managed services covering equivalent functions price at 10–30% of full in-house cost, depending on volume and which departments you deploy. Pricing for Deptly is custom-scoped per business in a 15-minute strategy call.

Get your Deptly quote

What this comparison is — and isn't

  • Is: A rough sanity-check on what comparable in-house hiring would cost.
  • Isn't: A Deptly-specific quote. Your real number depends on volume, which departments you deploy, and your industry.
  • Hiring costs include: Base salary plus 25-30% for benefits, payroll taxes, basic overhead. Excludes recruiting, training, management time, and turnover risk.

Methodology

Default annual costs are US 2025 mid-range fully-loaded figures — base salary plus approximately 25–30% for benefits, payroll taxes, and basic overhead. They draw from public BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook data for Marketing Managers (BLS), Sales Representatives (BLS), Receptionists (BLS), and Bookkeeping Clerks (BLS), plus salary aggregators (Glassdoor, Indeed, Payscale) for small-business hires.

Costs excluded from the hiring side: recruiting fees, training time, owner management overhead, turnover risk, and the productivity dip during onboarding. These are real costs but vary significantly by business — the calculation is conservative without them.

The “AI-managed services market range” (10–30% of full in-house cost) represents typical pricing for managed services covering equivalent functions, drawn from public competitor pricing pages. It is nota Deptly-specific quote — Deptly’s pricing is custom-scoped per business in a strategy call.

What this calculator is for

This is a sanity-check tool, not a quote. Use it to:

  • • Understand the order-of-magnitude cost of staffing each function in-house.
  • • Compare against the typical price band (10–30%) of AI-managed alternatives.
  • • Decide whether a managed service is worth a deeper conversation for your specific situation.

For a Deptly-specific quote, the next step is a 15-minute strategy call. Deptly’s pricing is custom-scoped per business based on volume and which departments deploy.

Get a Real Quote

Book a 15-minute strategy call. We'll learn how your business operates, recommend which departments to start with, and walk through what scoped pricing would look like.

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