Once you’ve decided to make your next web project a reality, you’ll soon realise that there are a number of different ways to go. Should you hire a web agency, go freelance or hire your own staff? There are pros and cons to all options and we’ll try to sort out some of them here.
Only you can decide which option is right for you and your needs. If you’re still in the start-up phase, hiring someone may not be an option at all, in which case one option may be to do the development yourself. If you want to start a simple news site or an e-commerce with a few articles, there are many solutions available today that even the least technically savvy can handle. However, keep in mind that if you want to expand in the future, it is smartest to have a stable foundation from the start that can be built on. Most clients we meet tend to start by developing a website themselves to build up initial capital and then hire someone when it’s time to expand.
What are your needs?
Once you’ve decided that outsourced labour is the way to go, you need to work out what your needs are, and to understand what you actually need, you can consider a few simple questions:
- What needs to be done?
- How big is the project?
- How much time do you have to spend on the project?
- How much can it cost?
- When should it be completed?
Once you have answered these questions, you will hopefully have a better understanding of the scope of your project – a prerequisite for explaining to an outsider what you need. When it comes to choosing a path, you need to be clear about the different options available and their advantages and disadvantages:
Freelancers
Advantages and disadvantages
Costs
Because the freelancer is self-employed, she doesn’t have the overheads of a large company and can therefore charge a lower price.
Expertise
Freelancers are often experts in a limited area and can therefore be a cost-effective option if you need help in a specific area. For example, if you need a new website design, there are many competent freelancers who can quickly give you the design that makes your website stand out.
Flexibility
When you hire a freelancer, you can decide how much help you need, how often and when you need it. The freelancer decides their own working hours and can therefore often help you even outside office hours.
Time
If you need help with a smaller and simpler task that you can clearly define to an outsider, a freelancer can often help you faster than anyone else. Because the freelancer does not have to take into account the processes of a larger company, they can get to work much faster. However, the freelancer’s capacity is limited for the same reason, and if you need a full-service solution, you will soon realise that the freelancer is not enough.
Disadvantages
You need to know what you need
When hiring a freelancer, you need to have a good understanding of what you actually need. There are many freelancers who are experts in different fields, so it’s hard to know who to hire if you don’t know what you really need. There is also a risk that the freelancer exaggerates their knowledge in the area you need help with, so be sure to take references so that you are sure that the person really has the skills you need.
Expertise
Precisely because the freelancer is often an expert in her specific field, there will also be areas where she has no experience. If you have a lot of time for administration and project management, one solution may be to hire several different freelancers who complement each other. However, keep in mind that it always takes a while for a new group to work effectively together and therefore it may be more expensive and take longer than it first seemed.
Reliability
There is always a risk that only one person has insight into your project. If your freelancer suddenly falls ill, goes on holiday or, in the worst case, takes another more profitable assignment, your project can quickly suffer. So be sure to draw up a contract that covers these events and guarantees the delivery you have agreed on. Also, be sure to clarify the division of responsibilities in the project. What happens when the freelancer has finished their work? If something doesn’t work after delivery, you need to be able to contact the person to get help with your problems.
No infrastructure
A freelancer often lacks the infrastructure that a web agency has worked out for a long time. A good infrastructure streamlines many of the processes that would have been very time-consuming for a lone freelancer.
Web agency
Advantages of a web agency
Affordable package solutions
Over the years, Webbyrån has worked on a wide variety of projects and has developed solutions to problems that they have then utilised for reuse in future projects. For example, in our e-commerce solution Qala, we have taken our customers’ most common requests and packaged them into a complete solution. With Qala, you get a solid foundation that you can quickly start using and build on with new features as needs arise. This way, we don’t have to spend time and money reinventing the wheel and can instead focus on the details that make your e-commerce a winner.
Experience
When you hire an agency, you get a breadth of expertise that freelancers or your own employees will find hard to match. Together, the agency’s staff have worked with a variety of clients and projects from all different industries and have built up a toolbox that they will bring to your project. The many different professional roles at the agency will add muscle to the project in their own way, whether it’s an architect, designer or project manager, they will bring perspectives and experience from previous projects.
Agile working methods
Today, many web agencies work with agile working methods. This means that the work is carried out in iterations where the first step is a “MVP”, a minimum viable product. An MVP is a working version of a new solution that provides users with sufficient benefit immediately when it is launched. By launching an MVP first, you can discover new needs as they arise and then build on them with new features. Often, these new features require expertise that may not have been on the team to begin with, and the agency can easily add a new person to the team to ensure that your project gets exactly the expertise it needs.
Be open to change
It’s the agency’s job to not only welcome new ideas, but also to make suggestions themselves on how your project can be improved and developed along the way. If you choose an agency that works with agile working methods, the process of working towards new requirements and goals will be quick and easy.
Support and operations
If you choose a web agency that also offers operations and hosting, your digital presence will always be in safe hands. New technologies and tools are developed daily in the web industry and therefore it is important that the post-delivery is also given great focus so that your website is constantly updated and cared for. When you hire a web agency, you get added value and overall responsibility that lasts long after your website is launched.
Disadvantages
Long process
If you don’t choose a pre-packaged solution, you can expect the project to take longer to complete than it would for a freelancer. The agency will spend a lot of time on the groundwork to get things right from the start and can thus avoid having to go back and fix errors and workarounds that were made to get a quick result.
Cost
Because a web agency has the breadth that they have, it also means many more employees, which in turn means higher overheads and more administration, which ultimately leads to a higher price for you as a customer. However, remember that behind the price tag lies many years of experience from successful and less successful projects that have been converted into lessons learnt and knowledge that the agency will bring to your project.
Hiring your own staff
The benefits
Full focus
When you hire your own staff, you get a team that will give your project full focus during all working hours. Because they work for you and no one else and are always on site, your project will be their only priority and after a while they will gain an understanding of your business and your needs that a freelancer or an agency will have a much harder time understanding.
Sustainable
Hiring in-house staff is the most sustainable option if you’re running a large business that will be expanding for a long time to come. A strong in-house technical department with a wide range of skills and roles is superior to a freelancer or agency. You’ll essentially have an in-house web agency that’s there for you and can solve your problems as soon as they arise, without prioritising any other client.
Disadvantages
The cost
Hiring new staff is expensive, especially if you want a workforce that’s broad enough to take on all the tasks of a new project. Either you need to hire a few senior people with broad knowledge or a larger number of people who are more specialised in their field.
Hiring process
No matter how many people you decide to hire for your project, you will need to go through a hiring process and all that it entails. Just finding the right people can be difficult and then there is the whole process of onboarding the new hires so that they eventually become productive.
Varied workload
When developing a new project, there is usually a lot of work to be done until the solution is launched. After launch, the workload quickly drops and your employees will instead focus on maintenance, operations and updates. However, once you have hired people, they will be on your payroll regardless of whether you have work that needs to be done or not.
To summarise
If you have a small business in the start-up phase, you can probably manage on your own or with a freelancer who can help you get started. After a while, when you have built up some capital, you can turn to a web agency to provide you with a stable, end-to-end solution that can grow and then hire your own staff to maintain and update your website with products and content. Whichever route you choose, the most important thing is that you first find out what you really need, it is only when you have defined your needs and goals that you can feel confident that the path you chose was right for your project.