Content is an integral part of the internet. Estimates put the size of the internet at over one billionweb pages, and every single one of those pages needs some form of content. That could be audio or video, but in most cases, the majority of the content is text.
Great content is the difference between successfully getting noticed and making money on the internet or fading into obscurity, and that’s where content production agencies like WordAgents and Textbroker enter the picture.
Here’s what you should know about how each of these agencies fares in the WordAgents vs. Textbroker debate.
Company Introductions
WordAgents, founded in 2014, is a premium content writing service that offers 100% American writers and manages several hundred of them to provide scaling content production on demand. They specialize in web content, including blogs, permanent page content, SEO, and advertising material for products.
Textbroker content writing service was founded in 2007 with an emphasis on blogs, SEO, copyrighting, and press releases. However, Textbroker offers services at different pricing levels with varying quality levels, which is ultimately the standout point in the Textbroker vs. WordAgents debate.
Quality vs. Cost
WordAgents aims to provide consistently high-quality content to all clients, and you can see this in their pricing model. We’ll talk more about actual prices later in this review. However, if you look on WordAgents’ website, you’ll see that the actual content delivery at their different levels is fundamentally the same.
The main reason for different pricing at WordAgents is the amount of content you’re ordering, not its quality. They aim to provide consistently excellent material at any price point, which is one reason they’ve become increasingly popular.
Textbroker, in contrast, offers a variable pricing model that also comes at the expense of quality. They rate writers by internal metrics and assign them a star rating, ranging from two to five stars. Lower-star writers generally produce lower-quality work but also cost much less.
Four-star and five-star writers on Textbroker are the best, but five-star writers, in particular, are expensive compared to WordAgents if you’re ordering in bulk.
In short, WordAgents is usually more expensive than Textbroker but also provides consistently higher-quality work. In a world where content is king, quality matters the most, so the main decision in the WordAgents vs. Textbroker debate is figuring out how much you want to invest up-front.
Editorial Processes
WordAgents uses a comprehensive editing process, which is a significant part of the reason for their pricing model. Each article goes through one of the company’s trained editors, who checks it against the order instructions to ensure it meets all criteria. They’re not afraid to reject or even reassign work as necessary, which is a crucial part of the high quality of their work.
WordAgents also limits direct communication with writers so they can focus entirely on writing. That means you’ll be dealing with their customer support staff, who are generally pleasant and actively help resolve problems.
Textbroker offers a choice between managed services (for orders of $2500 or more) or self-serve, where you choose the author yourself and work directly with them. Essentially, they ask you to pay a lot for convenience or spend a lot of time finding the correct author for your needs.
You can get high-quality work on Textbroker; however, it’s a bigger task to put together the right team.
WordAgents handles all of the writer selection on their end, although you can request that they assign work to a specific writer who worked with you in the past. Ultimately, this means that both writer selection and editorial quality are simpler through WordAgents for most customers.
Pricing
WordAgents offers a variable pricing model, with costs changing per word. They also offer a discount for recurring monthly orders, which is convenient if you need lots of content over time.
For their one-off purchases, WordAgents charges $0.12 per word for a 1000-word order. This scales down to $0.06 for orders of 20,000 words or more, and they offer additional bulk discounts for orders of up to 2 million words. If you sign up to their mailing list, you will often receive additional promotional offers to purchase large word packages. New customers also normally receive some sort of a perk. When we initially signed up, we received 1,000 words for free. At the time of writing this piece, there’s a 30% off discount on all packages (up to 10,000 words) for new customers.
Textbroker has a somewhat more complicated pricing model. Open orders are posted to the public board, and anyone can take them, with costs ranging from $0.015 per word for a two-star writer to $0.072 per word for their five-star writers. Direct orders to individuals or teams start at $0.027 per word (the four-star writer rate) but will usually be higher than that, as the prices are set individually by the writers themselves. Textbroker occasionally sends out coupons (normally a modest $7, once a quarter) to their email subscribers.
In short, WordAgents is more affordable than Textbroker if you’re ordering a lot of content and want it to be high-quality, and Textbroker is more affordable if you’re willing to accept lower-quality work, perhaps for your supporting websites and not the main site.
Delivery Times
WordAgents aims for a 7-day delivery period for every ten thousand words you order. They can assemble teams for large orders, but those do take some time to arrange, so especially large orders can take several weeks to finish. In these cases, they usually deliver content as it’s done, rather than having you wait until the very end.
Delivery times are more variable for Textbroker. Public orders may get snatched up quickly, or they may linger if no writers are particularly interested in the work. However, it can take a lot of time to make orders for many pieces of content, which can affect delivery times.
Textbroker does not guarantee specific delivery times. Instead, they recommend that you put a delivery time in your instructions if you have a particular deadline. We usually ask in the order instructions only for immediately available writers to pick the order, so it isn’t picked and held with someone for days.
Most articles on Textbroker aren’t delayed for too long, but you could see several writers pick up an article, then abandon it before someone completes it. That can significantly extend the delivery times.
Other Notes
While WordAgents is generally more of a premium service, offering better content at a higher rate, there is one area where the two companies diverge sharply.
WordAgents is an English-only service with exclusively native speakers hired from America. This means they’re great at producing content in American English but not as good in other regional dialects (like British or Australian English), nor do they offer services in any other languages.
Textbroker does have translation services in both its managed and self-service options. You can either hire people to write in that language or use an AI-based translation system that gets polished up by a native speaker. That’s not as good as content originally written in that language, but it is relatively fast and affordable.
Ultimately, Textbroker is the better service if you need content in languages other than English. As with their other content, though, you’ll need to make some fairly large orders if you want to get the full benefits of their managed translation services, and even Textbroker’s writers may have trouble with especially niche topics.
If you need content in other languages, make sure to research various translation services. We previously reviewed One Hour Translations, and that might be a good alternative solution for you.
WordAgents vs. Textbroker Summary
WordAgents is generally a higher-tier service for several reasons. Chief among these is the fact that they offer consistently high-quality writing thanks to a robust editorial process, as well as no need to find the writers yourself. All you have to do is deliver the instructions, and their team will take care of the rest.
WordAgents’ higher price point is generally appropriate for the content they provide. If you’re consistent, web content will earn back its cost over time, as long as you have a good website and a solid business plan; and better content will earn back its cost faster. That means greater long-term profits, so making the initial investment in quality content is quite literally worth it.
Textbroker is more affordable than WordAgents, but doesn’t have the same editorial processes to guarantee quality content and will probably force you to spend more time revising material. That can be good if you have more time than money, but it’s a much harder sell if you’re short on time. However, Textbroker is the bigger veteran company, with solid investments and back-office UI, and is better for getting content in multiple languages.
