Outsourced desk vs your own designers.
Your team can redraw customer art. The question is whether it's the best use of the most expensive hour in the shop — and what it does to your production queue.
Redrawing in-house feels free because the salary is already paid — but every logo your production designer cleans up is a layout, a separation or a press check they aren't doing. Loaded at a typical $45–$75/hour, a 30–60 minute redraw costs $25–$75 in labor before overhead, pulled straight off billable work. A fixed $15–$150 outsourced redraw (from $15) with a 100% remake guarantee is usually cheaper per usable file and keeps senior time on the work only your shop can do.
One Tier-2 logo, two ways.
A 4-color logo that needs separating for screen print. In-house cost assumes a $60/hour loaded designer rate — wages, taxes, software and overhead.
Illustrative loaded-cost model · adjust the hourly rate to your shop
What actually differs.
| For your shop | VectorWiz · outsourced | In-house redraw |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per file | Fixed {{perJobRange}}, known up front | $25–$75 loaded labor, hidden |
| Senior designer time | Freed for billable work | Spent on low-value cleanup |
| Production queue | Untouched — runs in parallel | Conversion competes with jobs |
| Turnaround | 24 hr standard · 12 hr rush | Whenever the desk is free |
| Consistency | One spec, every file | Varies by who's free |
| Capacity at peak | Elastic — scales instantly | Capped by your headcount |
| If it fails on press | Free remake | Your time & material |
Honest take.
In-house makes sense when…
You have spare design capacity, convert only occasionally, and the file is part of a larger creative job your team is already doing.
Outsourcing wins when…
Conversion is steady volume, your designers are your bottleneck, and every hour on cleanup is an hour off the billable production work only your shop can do.
The real math
"Free" in-house labor is the most expensive hour in the building. Price the opportunity cost, not just the wage, and the desk usually wins on steady volume.
Honest answers, including when not to use us.
Is it cheaper to redraw vectors in-house or outsource them?
Per usable file, outsourcing usually wins. An in-house redraw is loaded labor — $25–$75 for a 30–60 minute job at a typical $45–$75/hour — pulled off billable production. Outsourcing to VectorWiz is a fixed $15–$150 with a remake guarantee, and it never occupies your most expensive production hour.
What does an in-house redraw actually cost me?
More than zero, even on a salaried designer. At a loaded $45–$75 an hour, a 30–60 minute rebuild is $25–$75 before overhead, plus revision time and the occasional bad-file surprise — and that hour comes off a layout, separation, or press check the shop bills for.
If I outsource, do I still charge my customer for it?
Yes. The outsourced price is your cost of goods; you charge your customer your normal rate on top. The markup stays with you, minus a fixed, predictable cost — see the guide on what to charge to vectorize a logo for the full math.
How does outsourcing affect my production queue?
It takes the redraw off your internal queue entirely. Standard turnaround is 24 hours (Rush 12), so file prep runs in parallel with your production instead of competing for the same designer's time and pushing back paying jobs.
Where this links.
Across · head-to-heads
Down · proof
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