3D SaaS vs agency vs in house: three ways to get models

There are three ways to get 3D models of your products. They differ less in price per model than in what happens after delivery. We sell one of the three, and we have described the advantages of the other two as well.

Option one: an agency project

You brief a studio, they quote per model or per batch and deliver the files. You pay, and the project closes.

Advantages. You get exactly what you commission and have no commitment beyond the invoice. For a launch, a campaign or a single hero product that has to look exceptional, an agency is often the right choice and gives the highest quality. Good studios employ people who will spend three days on the stitching of one cushion. If that level of detail matters to you, it is worth paying for.

Disadvantages. Revisions have to be negotiated. Your catalogue keeps changing, so every new fabric, finish or product means a new scope and a new purchase order, and eventually the procurement work costs more than the modelling. Six months later you may need a small change to a file and find that the person who built it has moved on. The cost is also capital expenditure, so in the budget round it competes with things like new warehouse racking and usually loses.

Best fit. Fewer than about thirty products, a stable catalogue, or a one-off campaign.

Option two: an in-house 3D team

You hire one or more 3D artists, buy the software and build a pipeline.

Advantages. You have control, and changes are quick. A product manager can walk over and ask for one. Knowledge builds up over time. Your artist learns your materials, your lighting and the quirks of your range, and after a year the models come faster and look more consistent. An in-house team pays off if 3D is central to your product development as well as your marketing.

Disadvantages. You have to solve a hiring problem before you can produce any 3D. A single artist takes holidays and will leave one day, and the knowledge of the pipeline leaves with them. Two artists are a significant salary cost. You also pay for software and for hardware that can render, and someone has to spend management time keeping a small specialist team busy. Utilisation is the hardest part. Catalogue work arrives in bursts around product launches, so an artist who is fully loaded in March is underused in July.

Scope also tends to grow. Once you have a 3D artist, everyone in the company has a request, and product page models end up queued behind the trade fair animation.

Best fit. Large catalogues, continuous new product development, or a business where 3D feeds design and manufacturing as well as marketing.

Option three: a subscription service

You pay a monthly fee per product or per model, and the provider builds, maintains, hosts and updates the assets.

Advantages. The cost is operating expenditure, so it goes through a different approval and can be signed off at a lower level. Maintenance is included, and it matters more than most people expect. Platform requirements change, formats get stricter and a fabric supplier changes a weave, and someone has to keep the files current. Capacity follows your launch calendar, so you don't have to change headcount.

Disadvantages. You commit to a term. Our own Basic plan starts at 10 dollars per product per month on a 12-month term with a minimum of 100 variants, and Value starts at 20 dollars per model per month on a 24-month term, with Enterprise quoted. Over a long enough period, a subscription costs more than buying the same models once. The fee pays for maintenance, hosting and the freedom to change things later. If your catalogue never changes, you don't need those and can save the money.

You also depend on a provider. Ask for the source files and the delivery formats in writing before you sign, so that you are able to leave.

Best fit. A hundred products or more, ongoing variant churn, and no appetite to run a specialist function in house.

The three options compared

Maintenance after delivery

Maintenance is the part people most often underestimate. A product model is never finished, because the platforms keep changing their requirements. Shopify documents GLB and USDZ as the supported formats, automatic optimisation above 15 megabytes and roughly 4 megabytes as a sensible target. Google's Scene Viewer asks for glTF 2.0 or GLB with a practical ceiling of 100,000 triangles and 10 materials. Apple's AR Quick Look wants USDZ, and has added material variants and an HTML `model` element in Safari on visionOS 26.

Someone has to keep track of each of those requirements. With an agency you pay for the update. In house the work goes to your artist. On a subscription the provider does it, and that is a large part of what the monthly fee buys.

How to choose between them

Count your products and your variants, and estimate how many will change in the next two years. If very few will change and the catalogue is small, commission an agency. If they change constantly and 3D also feeds your product development, hire. If you have a lot of products and variants and your team does commerce and has no wish to run a studio, subscribe.

Our clients chose the same way. Sweef already had internal 3D resources and needed them turned into something customers could use. Contura had CAD files from manufacturing and a range with many models and options. MELIMELI sold online first and found content production expensive.

Before you commit to any of the three, have one model made and look at the result on your own page. Send us one product and we'll build it for free. The model is yours to keep whichever option you choose. Everything we build is described on solutions.

Sources

• Shopify, 3D e-commerce.
• Google, Scene Viewer documentation.
• Apple, AR Quick Look.