Hiring a Freelancer vs Agency for Software Development

Hiring a Freelancer vs Agency for Software Development: What is the Best Choice?

When certain tasks arise, the company’s management board would have to cope with the fact a new development project needs suitable human resources like professional software developers and system designers. For every ten businesses, there are fewer than two businesses that can afford an in-house IT development team, or as the clients would humorously name them “tech guys”. Therefore, the decision normally goes to either recruitment of freelance developers or recruitment of a software development team or company.

Freelance developers – Plus points

1. Economical

The low-cost criterion is the outstanding decisive factor of this option. The majority of freelancers would inform their hourly or daily rate depending on the length and complexity of the project and customers’ specific requests. This enables business owners to save a lot more than outsourcing an entire software development company. A greater number of fresh and associate-level developers graduate from their tertiary education every year, fuelling the competition among developers and thereby, cutting down the average cost of hiring one.

2. Suitable for seasonal and short-term projects

At some point in business operation, a specific project in which the need to launch a new product or add new features to a product is inevitably raised. Since freelancers have to take up all ranges of projects, they adopt really high tolerance and adaptability to new requirements. Since seasonal and short-term projects would only show up a few times a year, such projects are perfect matches for freelancers who are not professionals yet actively earn a lot of experience in each particular field.

3. Bureaucracy free

This means less hassle in labor contract drafting and fewer labor conditions. Oftentimes, a company’s human resource (HR) department has to draft compensation and benefits for every staff member in their company, considering each individual would require different labor conditions. For example, an expectant female worker is entitled to three months of paid maternity leave if she is under a full-time contract with the company. However, this would not be a problem when it comes to hiring a female freelancer for a six-month project. Less paperwork means more productivity for the HR department’s internal affairs and staff members’ daily support.

4. Freedom of recruitment choices

There are huge pools of choices of freelancers to select from reputational websites like Toptal, Upwork, and Fiver. Freelancers’ short commitment to their assignments tends to increase their availability to new projects proposed by businesses every day. In add, to make it in the freelancing work is to become efficient in multitasking and quick response to customers’ feedback. A quick Google research with specific requirements and work terms with a future partner in a product development project and you are great to go.

5. Time Efficiently

Usually, the recruitment and selection could be arduous and lengthy, from job posting, candidate screening, and job interviewing to hands-on training and probation time. Choosing to hire a remote developer will save you from hours of candidate search, job training, and performance evaluation for a specific project, helping you to recruit personnel.

Freelance Developers – Downsides

1. Only suitable for small projects in small-scale businesses

Since the commitment of a freelancer to a temporary project is tied to their project management skill and limited quality assurance, the recruitment of temporary workers is only recommended for small projects that are not the centerpiece of a business’s overall strategy.

2. Limited skill set

Freelancers are chameleons. This is both their strength and weakness. This means they are both quickly adaptable to a new project and lack in-depth skills when it comes to a specific profession. Their working hours are split into multiple freelance projects at the same time, so their practice for one aspect of software development could not be as intensive as their fellow developers who commit to only one genre of product development.

Did you know…? By the end of 2018, these companies were recorded to equip 100% remote employees:

Toptal is a freelancing platform that connects businesses with software engineers, designers, and business consultants on a global scale.
Zapier is a workflow platform that connects all of your chosen applications.
Trello, a web-based project management application.
Basecamp is a real-time communication tool that puts all teams on the same page.
Groove is a communication platform that enables communication with accounts, tracking results, and making data-driven decisions.
Ghost is a publishing platform that allows you to run your own platform and publish your content.

In the US, 36% of workers (57.3 million) are freelancers who work remotely or from home.

Software Development Company – Plus Points

1. Full-time engagement

Since software development companies tend to aim at maintaining a positive and long-term relationship with a client, not a project, they invest remarkable resources in improving the quality of a project for the sake of customer satisfaction. In a customer-centric approach, a software development company would rather build a foundation of trust and credibility with a customer which later on would benefit their branding and strengthen customer loyalty to the company.

2. Offering better maintenance and support plans

Having attained a wide variety of work experience in wildly different projects in the past, software development services tend to impress their customers by offering innovative ideas, modern technological solutions, and high standards along with positive working ethics. This would be accompanied by a greater maintenance plan and a lifelong support plan that ensures customer loyalty and positive brand awareness when they could deliver excellent customer support and positive feedback user experience from clients.

3. Higher assurance in project completion and overall satisfaction in project completion

Freelancers are gone once the project is done. However this is not the case for software development companies. A long line of developers is highly engaged in one project at a time, from the early days of the project, through stages of product consultation, market research, mock-up creation, user experience testing, and support after launching. The company would assign a team of developers to closely monitor the development project at every step of the way, reassuring you with great comfort and consistently effective communication.

Software Development Company – Downsides

1. Not suitable for small businesses and solo-entrepreneurs

For obvious reasons, it might not be ideal to outsource a group of software developers from a company if you are running a small business like an online store or in need of actualizing your idea through an application or a website. We would recommend an experienced freelancer who is experienced in developing and designing software that requires not too complicated expertise if you wish to find one.

However, the decision of whether to hire a freelance designer or developer or not depends on the complexity of the project. Assuming that your project does not require too much software development expertise – a website consisting of basic features or a mobile application, we recommend you look into the profiles of freelancers before deciding to choose one and communicate the very last details of your project prior to execution.

2. Off-budget for small projects

Outsourcing expertise from a software development company would guarantee a long list of benefits -a strong sense of creditability, commitment to catering to high-quality software, uninterrupted customer service, top-quality technologies, and unlimited skillsets. People at Designveloper offer some advice on how to pick the right software development company here.

Yet, such a business move could cost a business much higher cost, which is why people at Designveloper would be sincere in offering consultation and mapping out plausible options for both small and large project owners before deciding to embark on the execution of the project. At the end of the day, it is delivering top-quality product development in cost-efficient conditions that keep a business alive and thriving.

Conclusion

So, software development company or freelancer? We hope that you can know how to choose the right one after reading “Hiring a freelancer vs agency for software development”.

This depends on your call of judgment as a leader to evaluate the complexity and the requirements of the project, the budget allocated to the project, and the availability of outsourcing resources while listening to your instinct as a business owner.