Freelancer vs Software Development Firm: It's Time to Choose the Best

It's one of the most obvious advantages. It is clear that you pay less to one person compared to a team. Freelancers don’t have to share their salaries with anyone else. Companies usually charge about 25% higher hourly rate. It can be explained by the fact that companies have a staff of non-developers but people like sales managers, marketers and so on. These employees don’t write code which means they don’t earn money directly, but their task is to attract more customers to a company. To these expenses, you can also add rent and advertising costs.

That’s right. You can find a person with fantastic resume and portfolio. You can also contact his or her customers and talk to them. It all guarantees that in the end, you’ll get a great quality of the written code. However, usually, these freelancers improve and develop their skills only in one area. Which is good, by the way. Because it gives a person a chance to become the best in a specific field. So, if you need to perform only one specific task, a freelancer is a great choice. In a case you are interested in a great individual professional and skilled freelancer, our advice is to search on Behance or Dribbble if you are looking for a UI or UX designer and GitHub if you need a developer.

It is much easier to deal with only one person than with a whole team. A freelancer can have a more flexible schedule. And if you need the job to be done fast it would be easier to manage this task with a freelancer.

If you don’t know where to find a vendor, try Upwork or Freelancer. There are many more online platforms where you can not only find the right person but also check his or her portfolio, rate and see the feedback from customers.

If you hire a team of developers, they will help you with lots of useful advice and tips. Usually, these people know how everything works from inside and can tell you what technologies and solutions would be better for your project. If you want to launch a startup, a team can also advise you the monetization strategy, how to target the audience, what analytical tools to use and what features would be great to add or vice versa exclude from the plan. If you hire a development team, you get a think-tank, full of ideas and energy to assist you. If it’s all new to you and it is your first startup, working with a team is the best solution for you ever. 

All companies are interested in hiring people who are ready to develop themselves and improve their knowledge. That’s why they also try to learn new technologies as fast as they can. It is needed to be competitive on the market. So, when you choose a team, they would be happy to offer you the latest tools and technologies. If you want to read the feedback about a company you like, try to find their profile on Clutch or GoodFirms.

It means that you will have less headache and worries working with a company. Especially if you hate management. But don’t think that hiring an agency, you get less interaction with the team members. You'll have the opportunity to communicate and change everything you are not happy with. But you won’t need to deal with every minor issue because a project manager would handle them. Such working model has more chances to meet deadlines.

One of the advantages, when you hire a development team or a company, is their desire to work legally. They usually have a lawyer who deals with all the contracts and documentation. If a company you contacted offers you to sign a contract it shows that they care about your rights and laws. Nevertheless, do not sign anything until you have double-checked everything at least twice.

If we take a look at the majority of development companies, we’ll see that they value their reputation. That’s why they care about the products they deliver and the overall satisfaction of customers. Such firms are interested in your positive feedback and will do their best to make you happy. You can replace a project manager or a developer you aren’t satisfied with another one within a company. At the same time, a freelancer you don’t like would be much more difficult to replace because no one likes to rewrite someone else’s code and you have all chances to stuck with a project halfway.

Every company wants to build long-term relationships with you. Such approach brings benefits to both parties. You always know that you have a reliable team to help you if something goes wrong and a company prefers working with one client and support products which they’ve built than to search for new clients all the time. It also gives teams a chance to focus more on the quality of a product.

The customer-oriented mobile app development services imply that you get support and maintenance even after the product release. It is connected with the fact that new operating systems are released almost every day, along with new devices. And I am sure you would want a product to be compatible with all of them. Moreover, during the product’s lifecycle, a product owner may want to add new features or to redesign his or her site, for example. It all leads to a need to hire a dedicated developer or a team and change the code. And it would be perfect if you hired a company who developed this product in the first place. Looking for a freelancer who built your product is much harder than a company, especially if you signed a contract for maintenance and support services.

If you hire freelancers, they rarely sign contracts. They can easily disappear without even starting your task. We are not trying to say that all freelancers are frauds, but you need to be very careful choosing a person for the job. Use online platforms, we’ve mentioned before, there is at least some information about a person with the comments about his or her previous jobs. Ask your potential candidates for the contacts of their customers, call those people and make sure you are making the right choice.

Modern companies use lots of project management tools, like Trello, Jira, Redmine and so on. They work well not only for a project manager but also for you. A product owner who has access to such system can see very clearly what task is being done right now, what has already been finished and what assignments are next. If you hire software developers from one company which applies Agile Methodology to the development process, you have a chance to participate in it even more and choose the tasks that should be done next and the ones which are irrelevant at the moment. However, this approach does not work with freelancers. You have to take it on trust everything they tell you while they can work on another project.

It is very important to protect your ideas from being copied or even stolen. That’s why the first step you have to do when you start negotiation with a freelancer or a company is to sign a non-disclosure agreement. If an individual developer refuses to do that, it is time to look for another one. Nevertheless, even if the treaty is signed, it is much more difficult to control it's implementation in a case of a freelancer. The development companies care about their reputation more than individual vendors and prefer the unconditional fulfilment of the terms of a contract. Not all freelancers do the same.

Again, we can’t say that about all freelancers but lots of them prefer speed to quality. To earn more money they need to do more tasks. Sometimes it means that the quality will suffer.

Not all freelancers are self-organized and are able to manage their own work properly. If you want to hire an individual developer, be ready to control everything by yourself, including such things as deadlines.

Companies charge more. It is obviously one of the brightest disadvantages compared to freelancers. Hiring a team, you need to pay for a team.