Nowadays, many people prefer to buy things and look for information online, so it is important for any business owners to develop a website for their business to grow, because a business without a website is like having a house without its roof; you wouldn’t know if your business can grow or not. By having a website, you can reach more customers on both desktop and mobile, because if you can increase your website’s visibility, you can gain more traffic to your website and this can increase your possibility to gain more real customers. On the other hand, without a good website, your business is likely to miss out on many customers, which is why many small business owners decide to build a website or improve on an existing one. Building or improving a website requires a good developer who has good insights to a website’s responsiveness and quality. However, a question often comes up to our mind when it comes to hiring a web developer, is it better to hire a freelancer or bring in a full-time web developer for your business? The answer would depend primarily on your business’s specific needs. So, if you are a small business owner, you need to read the following explanation. Hopefully, after reading the explanation, you can discover whether you need in-house or freelance web developers.
Freelance Web Developers
Some people would rather hire a freelancer, since they work on a project –to-project basis, this makes freelance web developers are ideal in some situations. For example, you can see from some drawbacks of outsourcing your work to a freelancer. Generally, freelance developers usually make a project proposal, or bid on projects. Therefore, typically the client will first screen, interview, and vet freelancers, and then ask for a project proposal.
You will find that some freelance platforms will use a bidding process, in which the freelancer reviews the projects requirements and user stories, and then quotes a price for their services to complete the project. So, make sure you bid the right amount of money, because if you pay below market price for your software, then you may end up getting below the industry standard. A major benefit of freelance web developers is that they can look for their next job through doing your jobs. This means that they are going to do a good job on your website as they are looking to build reputation to get future contracts. This makes most of professional freelancers willing to go above and beyond what a salaried employee would be willing to do, since their reputations are based on word of mouth.
In terms of wages, generally freelancers will either charge per hour or by project, with a range from $15 to more than $150.
In-house Web Developers
If this is your first time making a website and you don’t know what kind of website or platform you would need, then in-house developers are the best to choose for business looking, especially on large web projects that will require constant upkeep and maintenance. By hiring an experienced developer, you can guide a business owner through the decision making process and ensure everything is running smoothly once the project is finished. Furthermore, you can ensure that you won’t have to handle any maintenance issues, if you hire an in-house developer. Besides, developer agencies usually have a more visible brand, reputation and quality that make it easier to identify.
If you are planning to hire developer agencies, there will be some processes that you have to do:
Dev Agencies:
- Search/internal
- Review testimonials
- Review Portfolio
- Speak to project manager/representative
- Discovery phase
- Project pitch
The cost of web developers will vary based on things like job history, position and overall experience. In general, their cost would be more expensive than hiring a freelance developer. Therefore, many business owners usually hire a web developer agency when they have a large project or if they want to build a website right from the beginning.
Conclusion
From the explanation above, we can conclude several things, as follows:
- Freelance developers would be good to handle small projects, like updating or adding new elements to a website, changing different design elements, or building new pages.
- In-house developers/ web developer agency would be best for managing bigger projects and complex programming, since they can be present for constant upkeep.
- Reputation terribly matters for freelance web developers.
- Web developer agencies are basically the same as salaried employees. Therefore, they are only worried about being productive enough not to get fired most of the time.
So, which one suits best with your needs? Is it In-house developers or freelance web developers? Remember that you have to understand your project scale first, before hiring web developers. In fact, by knowing your needs, you can employ the right person to do your job. Good luck!