Transcription Outsourcing Benefits + Features To Look For

Transcription is a critical task in a range of industries. From legal and medical to media and government, countless professionals rely on getting quick, accurate write-ups of meetings, interviews, depositions, and more. 

For many in these fields, that has traditionally meant hiring in-house transcriptionists to produce these essential resources. However, the rise of human and AI-powered transcription services has led many organizations to consider outsourcing these tasks, leading to one important question: Can transcription outsourcing pay off? 

Here’s a look at the pros, cons, and how to decide if going to a third-party transcription company is right for your business.

What Is Outsourcing Transcription?

Transcription outsourcing involves hiring a service provider to create full written versions of audio or video files. These third-party services may use AI automation, human transcribers, or a combination of both to produce fast and accurate transcripts and provide them to their clients via a secure cloud-based server.

This approach is especially common for legal transcription outsourcing and in other fields that rely heavily on written records of interviews, meetings, or other proceedings. Journalists, physicians, marketers, and film producers are just a few examples of professionals who can benefit from outsourcing transcription work.

Transcription Growth + Future Outlook

The market for transcription services is growing quickly. In the U.S. alone, the transcription outsourcing market was worth $30.42 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow at a rate of 5.2% per year.

This growth is being driven by remote work, virtual meetings, and the rising demand for searchable, accessible content. Industries like healthcare, law, insurance, media, and education increasingly rely on transcription to support compliance, content creation, and internal documentation — often at scale.

Looking ahead, hybrid models that combine AI with human review are likely to dominate. While automation handles volume, human oversight ensures the accuracy and security required in high-stakes environments. 

Transcription Outsourcing: Pros and Cons

Outsourcing transcription services can offer numerous advantages, but it’s not the right choice in every situation. Here are some of the biggest pros and cons to consider.

Pros of Transcription Outsourcing

Using a third-party transcription service offers several benefits, including:

• Cost savings: Outsourcing transcription gives you greater control over your spending. Rather than dedicating salaries and overhead to in-house staff, you can pay per project or per minute to get exactly what you need — and nothing more.
• Speed and accuracy: Unlike your in-house team, dedicated, specialized third-party services are focused solely on the task of transcription. Whether you need complex medical transcription outsourcing or simple summaries of your marketing meeting, a combination of AI and human transcription services can get it done quickly and with extreme attention to detail. 
• Compliance: Top providers like Rev offer complete compliance and security assurance, with HIPAA, GDPR, or SOC 2 compliance and certifications. That’s one fewer detail for your in-house team to worry about.

Cons of Transcription Outsourcing

There are a few downsides to taking transcription outside your company. For instance:

• Less control: You won’t have as much direct visibility into the process as you would with in-house transcription. Some services don’t allow you to edit the final transcript, which can be a red flag for quality assurance.
• Customization limits: Some vendors may have more limited customization options, making it more difficult to set up niche formatting or strict compliance standards without custom agreements.
• Service variability: Not all third-party transcription services offer the same level of speed and accuracy. It’s critical to vet any provider to ensure their results fit the outcomes you’re looking for. 

In-House Transcription: Pros and Cons

In-house transcription also has its advantages and disadvantages. Here are some of the biggest pros and cons of handling speech-to-text conversion yourself. 

Pros of In-House Transcription

Keeping transcription in-house offers a number of benefits, such as: 

• Greater control: You maintain full oversight over how transcripts are created, formatted, stored, and shared. This can be especially important in highly regulated industries like law and healthcare.
• Direct communication: In-house transcriptionists or staff are part of your team, making it easier to clarify unclear recordings, manage revisions, and ensure consistency.
• Customization: Internal teams can tailor transcription output to your exact needs — whether that means applying unique formatting, inserting case- or client-specific terminology, or aligning with internal documentation workflows.

Cons of In-House Transcription

Despite the benefits, in-house transcription comes with some significant disadvantages. For example:

• Costly and time-consuming: Hiring, training, and retaining transcription staff is expensive, especially for specialized work like legal or medical dictation. Transcription also pulls internal resources away from higher-value tasks.
• Limited scalability: In-house teams may struggle to handle volume spikes or tight turnaround times, leading to backlog or burnout. This becomes a bottleneck during busy periods like trials, audits, or content production pushes.
• Complex internal processes: Managing transcription internally adds layers of workflow complexity, from secure storage and file sharing to compliance oversight and quality control. Without dedicated (and costly) infrastructure, efficiency and accuracy can suffer.

Is It Time For My Team to Outsource Our Dictation Needs?

The right time to outsource transcription jobs isn’t always obvious, but there are some clear signs that show it’s probably the right move. If your current staff can’t keep up with the transcription backlog — or they’re unable to get to more important tasks because they’re stuck transcribing — that’s usually a good sign that it’s time to outsource. 

Missing deadlines is another key indicator. Whether you’re facing court timelines, story deadlines, or in the midst of a critical medical review, falling behind on transcription can slow down essential tasks and cause your whole team to fall behind. You might also notice costs creeping up as you spend valuable labor hours transcribing speech to text. 

The big idea? It’s time for your team to outsource your dictation needs when you’re always behind, overspending, or simply too bogged down on menial transcription work to get more important tasks done. 

Features of a Good Transcription Service

If you decide the time is right for outsourcing transcription, you’ll want to be sure you get the full benefits of bringing in a third party. Before handing off this critical task, vet your transcription service to verify it has the following features:

• Transcription accuracy: Third-party services should be as good or better than your in-house team at providing accurate transcriptions. Rev, for instance, guarantees 99% accuracy for human transcriptions and 96%+ for AI transcriptions.
• Turnaround times: Choose a service that offers flexible delivery options, including same-day or next-day transcripts, to meet your project demands and deadlines.
• Security and compliance: Make sure the service you choose complies with standards like HIPAA, GDPR, or SOC 2, depending on your industry. Encryption for file transfers is also vital for preventing data breaches.
• AI and human collaboration: Look for services that combine AI transcription with human review to ensure high accuracy. Or, even better, they include an option for human-only transcription where necessary. This is especially important for complex or industry-specific language (e.g., legal testimony, medical dictation, or technical interviews).
• Industry-specific capabilities: Look for providers with experience in your sector — legal, medical, academic, etc. — who understand your terminology, formatting needs, and confidentiality requirements. Many providers also offer multilingual support, should you need it.
• Strong user reviews: Never just take a company’s word for it. Read reviews (especially from others in your industry) to find out if their claims of accuracy, speed, and security hold up.

There are quite a few transcription services on the market, and each has its own set of advantages and disadvantages. It’s worth comparing software like Otter.ai, Trint, GoTranscript, Rev, and Scribie to see which one is strongest in all of the above features.

Rev in the Wild: Hear From Our Customers

If you’re looking for an affordable transcription service that delivers fast, reliable transcripts every time, Rev is one of the best solutions on the market. But, like we said, you shouldn’t take our word for it. Here’s what a few of our customers had to say.

“I am a freelance copywriter and journalist, which means I am regularly conducting interviews with experts on a wide range of topics and across numerous sectors. I use Rev to record and transcribe all interviews and am impressed with its general accuracy, even with more niche or complex topics. It has made a big difference in efficiency compared to the days past in which I would have transcribed by hand!”

– Ellie S., Rev user

“I like that Rev is a subscription service so that I don't have to pay per minute of transcribed audio like I previously had to do. That adds up after having many minutes of audio, like we do, that needs to be transcribed. My team and I also really like the AI features such as summary and main points, which allows my team members without any previous knowledge of the subject matter to understand things very quickly opening the transcript in Rev. I also really love how I can easily share a transcript with one of our clients if we need to. I've also had very positive experiences with Rev's helpful and friendly customer support.”

— Brian U., verified Rev user on G2

“We were in trial this week and had a real-world opportunity to utilize Rev in a high-stress environment. I was able to use Rev to successfully cross-examine witnesses by leveraging the transcripts, video synced with transcripts, and various other features to effectively impeach testimony. While it's possible to do this with other technologies, it's much harder and requires a gazillion more hours of prep. Rev is a very cool product for trial lawyers.”

– Adam Levin, Criminal Defense Attorney at Swingle Levin

“Transcription used to be the bane of my existence. Rev took away my dread and procrastination of transcribing and allowed me to write the articles instead. I like the quick turnaround and the transcription is very accurate, typically needing only minor edits, usually for misspelled names. They also have great customer service! I also like having an archive of the actual interviews recorded. Cost is affordable and consistent, too.”

– Ian, Rev user

“I work as a paralegal and the Rev AI transcription feature has been SUCH a huge time saver. The transcripts make it easy for me to run keyword searches to find the documents I should focus on without billing for useless hours. I also appreciate all the ways to edit/personalize the transcript (adding speaker names, for instance). I have recommended Rev to several colleagues and will absolutely continue to use it in the future. I've also had the opportunity to provide input to the Rev team who seem genuinely invested in creating and maintaining helpful products.”

— Megan W., verified Rev user on G2

Free Up Your Resources With Transcription Outsourcing

Transcription is too critical a task to skip or do poorly. Fortunately, those aren’t your only options, and outsourcing services offer a better way. With the right provider, you can combine speed, security, and accuracy while freeing your team up for more important tasks. You’ll have access to all the information you need, without the headaches and hassle of organizing it yourself.

Rev offers more than a one-to-one tradeoff. Our human transcription services have superior accuracy, security, speed, and savings compared to traditional in-house transcriptions, and our AI prompting and multi-file insights make it that much easier to review and cross-reference multiple transcripts to pull together key points for your case or project. 

Ready to see Rev in action?