Cropsly vs In-House Team
Ship in weeks vs. hire for months
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Cropsly | In-House Team |
|---|---|---|
| Time to start | 1-2 weeks (discovery → build) | 3-6 months (hiring, onboarding) |
| Cost (year 1) | $50K-200K per project | $400K-800K+ (2-3 AI engineers + benefits + tools) |
| AI specialization depth | Cross-domain AI team (NLP, vision, edge, agents) | Limited to who you hire |
| Infrastructure | GPU cluster, K8s, CI/CD included | Must build and maintain |
| Scaling | Scale up/down per project | Fixed headcount, slow to scale |
| Knowledge retention | Documented, transferable codebase | Retained in-house (if they stay) |
| Attrition risk | Company-backed, no single point of failure | Key person risk — AI talent turnover is 25%+ |
| Long-term ownership | Full IP transfer, can transition to in-house | Full internal ownership from day 1 |
Pricing Comparison
Cropsly
Project: $25K-200K+ | No hiring, no benefits, no overhead
In-House Team
Salary: $150K-250K/engineer/year + benefits + tools + GPU costs
Building in-house makes sense once you have 3+ concurrent AI projects. For 1-2 projects, Cropsly is 60-70% cheaper in year 1.
Who Should Choose What
Choose Cropsly if:
- ✓ Companies with 1-2 AI projects to start
- ✓ Non-tech companies adding AI capabilities
- ✓ Teams that need to ship in weeks, not months
- ✓ Projects requiring specialized AI (edge, voice, custom models)
Choose In-House Team if:
- • Companies with ongoing, continuous AI development
- • AI-first startups where AI is the core product
- • Organizations with 3+ concurrent AI projects
- • Teams with existing ML infrastructure
Frequently Asked Questions
Can we transition from Cropsly to in-house later?▼
Yes. We design for handoff. All code is documented, tested, and transferable. We can even help interview and onboard your in-house AI team.
What about long-term maintenance?▼
We offer retainer agreements for ongoing support. Many clients start with a project, then move to a monthly retainer for iteration and maintenance.
Do we lose control by outsourcing?▼
No. You get full visibility via shared Linear board, weekly demos, Slack access, and code review. You own all IP on payment.
See Why Teams Choose Cropsly
Talk to our team and get a custom proposal for your AI project.
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