Web design agency vs freelancer

One person is one point of failure: an illness, a bigger client or a new job, and your half-built site stops with them. Protect yourself with any hire: a written plan with dates, a preview you can watch grow, and the domain and hosting in your own name before work starts. We work that way, with a live preview from the first week.

Many agencies put a salesperson, an account manager and a project manager between you and the people who build the site, and their time is in the price. Each hand-off is also a place where what you asked for gets lost. The same people stay with your project the whole way through, with no account managers, and nothing is bundled into the quote.

Whoever holds the accounts, and some developers register the domain and host the site in their own name. Then leaving means asking for your own business back. Put it in writing before work starts, with a freelancer or an agency: the domain, the hosting and the code in your name. With us the code, the domain and the accounts are yours.

Ask this before you hire anyone, because the answer decides who you call on a Saturday when the booking page stops working. Get it in writing: who answers, how fast, and what it costs. When the code is yours, any developer can take over if the first one cannot, so a missing freelancer or a slow agency never leaves you stuck.

A freelancer usually costs less and talks to you directly, but one person is also a single point of failure. An agency covers more skills and has cover when someone is away, and its price carries the people who manage the work. Pick by the job: a small brochure site suits a good freelancer, and a site with booking, payments and search work suits a team.

Freelancers usually price by the hour or by the project, and agencies by the project with their team's time built in. Compare what each quote covers as well as the total: the scope in writing, what is excluded, and who owns the result. We send a fixed quote with a plan and a start date within one business day, and nothing in it is bundled.

An agency is a team with separate people for design, code and search; a freelance designer usually does it alone. The difference shows in cover and range: a team keeps going when someone is out and handles more kinds of work, while one person is simpler to deal with. Whichever you choose, ask who will do your work, by name.

Hire a freelancer for a small site with a clear brief; hire an agency when the site needs booking, payments, search work or regular changes. Get the scope and the dates in writing either way, along with who owns the site. If you are unsure which you need, send us the brief, and the fixed quote that comes back says what we would build and when.

A marketplace freelancer works well for a defined, short task, such as fixing a page or adding a form. For a whole site, check what you would check with anyone: past work you can visit, a written scope, and the domain and hosting in your name. The platform handles the payment; arranging who owns the site is still up to you.

It is better for work that spans several skills at once, such as a site, search and ads that have to work together. A freelancer is often the better choice for one skill done well. Check the same thing with both: whether the accounts, the ad spend and the data stay in your name. With us, ad spend is never marked up and the accounts are yours.