Is direct manual outreach still cheaper than paying agency marketplace markups?

When we started doing link outreach we expected radio silence. Instead site owners replied surprisingly fast, and pitch prices were a fraction of what middleman marketplaces charge.

The unexpected issue was operational handling hundreds of active email conversations, confirming live mentions and tracking terms completely overwhelmed our workflow. The hard part wasn't getting the reply it was managing the inbox traffic afterwards.

If you run outreach in house what workflow or setup keeps your team from getting stuck in reply threads all day?