There are three usual ways to get a website built for a small business: hire a freelancer, hire an agency, or hire a studio. Each can produce a good site. Each fails in its own predictable way, and the failure is almost never the one the owner was worried about going in.
Our comparison page sets the options side by side in a table. This is the longer version, with the reasoning behind each row. Umber is a studio, so read the third section knowing that, and hold us to the same questions as everyone else.
A freelancer
One person, doing the design, the build, or both.
What a freelancer is good at. A small, well-defined project with a clear end. A five-page site for a new business, a landing page for a campaign, a tidy-up of an existing site. A good freelancer is direct, quick to respond, and costs less because there is nothing between you and the work.
Where it tends to break down. Continuity. If the freelancer takes a full-time job, gets busy with a bigger client, or goes quiet, you may be left with a site nobody else understands. Range is the second risk: a strong designer who cannot write, or a solid developer whose sites all look the same. Neither is a character flaw. One person cannot be good at everything.
How to protect yourself. Get code and domain ownership in writing before any work starts. Ask for handover notes as part of the job. Know who you would call if they disappeared tomorrow.
An agency
A team with departments: account management, strategy, design, development, and sometimes marketing.
What an agency is good at. Ongoing work at volume. If you have a marketing team, a retainer budget, and a steady stream of campaigns, landing pages, and creative that has to stay consistent, an agency's process exists for that.
Where it tends to break down. The overhead is in the price, and the person who pitched you is rarely the person who does the work. Changes travel through an account manager to a developer, often as billable tickets. Discovery and approval cycles stretch timelines into months. And ownership varies more than owners expect: some agencies keep the code, license the assets, or host the site in their own account. Our answer on who owns your website when an agency builds it covers what to look for.
How to protect yourself. Ask who, by name, will design and build the site. Ask how changes are billed after launch. Read the ownership clause twice.
A studio
Somewhere between the two: a studio where the people you talk to are the people doing the work, without account managers in between.
What a studio is good at. Projects where design, writing, and development have to agree with each other, which describes most sites that need to bring in leads. Direct contact with the people making decisions. Usually a flat fee for a defined scope, instead of hours or a retainer.
Where it tends to break down. Capacity. A studio takes on a limited number of projects at once, so the start date may be weeks out. Specialization is the other limit: a studio built around lead-generating sites for service businesses is the wrong hire for a mobile app or a large online store, and a good one will tell you so.
How to protect yourself. Ask what the studio does not do. Ask to see work in your industry, or at least work that solves your kind of problem. Get the same ownership terms in writing that you would ask of anyone.
The questions that decide it
Whichever way you lean, ask every candidate the same six questions:
- Who will do the work, by name?
- Who owns the domain, the hosting account, the code, and the design files at the end? The right answer is you.
- Who writes the words? If the answer is you, plan for it, because content is the most common reason a launch slips. Our answer on who writes the content for a website explains the options.
- What happens after launch, and how is it billed?
- What is not included? A good quote says so before you ask. See what is in a website quote.
- What would make you tell me not to hire you? The answer tells you more than the portfolio does.
Matching the project to the option
- A small, defined project, a trusted referral, and a written agreement: a freelancer.
- Ongoing creative work, a marketing team, and a retainer budget: an agency.
- A site that has to bring in calls and bookings, built properly once, with the people doing the work on the calls: a studio.
If you are in Toronto and weighing a local shop against everyone else, we wrote separately about hiring a web agency in Toronto and whether it matters that they are local.
Umber works owner-direct, on a flat fee, with no account managers, and it starts every engagement with a free written audit. If the audit shows your project is a better fit for a freelancer or an agency, we will say that in writing. What a rebuild with us involves is on web design for small businesses.