Finding a person, or a company to design or develop your project can be difficult, and very frustrating because you have so many choices. One of the biggest issues people have, is making the decision of hiring a freelancer or an agency.
There are hundreds and hundreds of freelancers out there to help you, and majority of them charge less than an agency would. But, that should never be your deciding factor. If you want a successful end product, you have the work with only the best.
If you’re in the middle of making this decision, here are some pro’s and con’s that may help you.
PROS OF HIRING A FREELANCER
A huge pro of hiring a freelancer is that they are easy to find.
There are some great communities for vetted freelancers, such as Toptal, Upwork, Crew.co, and Gigster. Each community has a large number of freelancers at different cost points, and with different skill levels, so you’re bound to find one that fit your needs.
But is that enough? I don’t think so.
I have no doubt, that a freelancer can be much more cost effective than hiring an agency for your project. However, when it comes to freelancers, the phrase “you get what you pay for” is generally true.
If the price is right, you have to make sure that the quality is still there. Quality should be your number one deciding factor when making this decision.
CONS OF HIRING A FREELANCER
When you hire a freelancer, you only have access to that one person. On the other hand, when you hire an agency, you have a specialized person working on each part of your project.
Throughout the lifecycle of a freelance project, the same person is doing all of the strategy, UX, UI, and development. How good could they possibly be at all of those things?
An agency has a specialized person doing the strategy, a goal-driven UX designer, a focused UI designer, and so on.
Timelines are usually not as achievable through a freelancer. A lot of freelancers are not full time, and do not have the ability to add extra resources to your project, so an 80-hour project, could take up to 6-7 weeks.
On the contrary, an agency can add additional resources to a project at any time to speed up the timeline.
In the extra time that they do have, they usually have a handful of projects that they are working on, that are all being worked on in their ‘spare time.’
This can also be a problem when you need to make changes after the development is completed. Who knows if they will have time to spare for your old project.
CONCLUSION
So, should you hire a freelancer or an agency?
The answer is still up to you. Hopefully this blog has given you more to think about than just cost. Your end goal should be to end up with a perfect product that best represents your business. Choose an agency that can do just that for you and your team.
