What is better for your software project? Hiring a company or a freelancer?

When trying to come up with a new website or app, you most likely will have numerous questions. The most common one could be whether to hire a freelancer or an IT company for software development. While both a freelancer and a software design company have their own pros and cons, being confident of this decision is necessary in order to produce a high quality finished product. By making sure you are ready to make this choice, as well as listing the pros and cons of both options, this article will tell you everything you need to know.

Before you start, you must first decide what exactly you are looking for. In order to achieve this, make sure you can answer the following questions: Do you need someone who can answer all of the questions you may have, or do you have enough technical experience? Are you ok with video conferences and distant conversations, or do you prefer face to face meetings? Is your project meant to be done relatively quickly, or would it take months to? Will you need more work done even after it is completely finished, or is it much simpler? After you are certain of these, you must then take into consideration your budget and deadline.

However, while budget should be taken into consideration, it should not be the defining factor. Both software development companies and freelancers will most likely charge different rates, so it is important that you do not automatically assume that you should hire a software development company on a large budget, or that you should hire a freelancer on a small budget. As for the deadline, you should always consider the size of the project, as well as decide how much time you have to work on it. While all this may seem like a lot, you need not to worry. In this article, we will try to clear up these common questions, hopefully making the decision between a freelancer and software design company seem easier.

Software Development Companies:

For extremely large projects and major companies with a large budget, it may be best to hire a well-known software development company. With that being said, it is not always clear, and there are many issues that factor into the overall decision. Here are some of the pros and cons of hiring a development company:

Pros:

1. Plenty of Experts.

From web developers, to project managers, to software testers, the experts in companies usually have many experts. Each of them has their own unique experiences with many different projects and software. Because of this, it can sometimes be easier to hire a company for very large projects.

2. Software Maintenance service.

Many software companies are focused on building continuous relationships with their clients, meaning they will most likely be able to troubleshoot problems, maintain the software, and help to develop future updates as well.

3. Complete package when it comes to development companies.

They offer diverse services. From consulting, to business analysis, to developers. A large company tends to have a specific team on hand for most projects and problems that might occur on large sites. They will usually allow you to monitor reports, contact the manager with any concerns, and get many updates regarding small changes.

Cons:

1. Expensive

Hiring a company is more suited to professional businesses with a large budget, as the cost won’t be a big deal for them. You have to pay a big cost, because development companies have a large team of employees, as well as many more office expenses compared to the freelancers.

2. No Flexibility

As a large company, many development businesses are not flexible and have strict hours to work on a project. For example, if your project needs an unexpected fix, you would most likely be required to pay for overtime. Whereas with a freelancer, you can hire someone to fix the project, usually with no extra cost.

3. Hard to Find.

While reliability issues occur in both companies and freelancing, a good development company with reasonable prices and proper management could be much harder to find than a reliable freelancer.

Freelancers:

With coding becoming more common, more beginner freelancers are starting to show up, and it is becoming easier to find self-employed freelancers and developers on many web sites. With this, it is important to do plenty of research in order to find good, well-qualified freelancers who are well equipped to help in your project. For many of the smaller projects, hiring a freelancer could be the best option, in order to get your projects done as quickly and efficiently as possible without any extra cost. With this, here are some of the Pros and Cons of hiring a freelancer.

Pros:

1. Flexibility

Freelancers are usually hired for many projects, and hence they are motivated to get a project done as quickly and effectively as possible. When you work with a qualified freelancer, they will usually provide enough support to fix an issue at any time, even outside of usual working hours

2. Less Expensive

When you need the same service for multiple occasions, freelancers are much less expensive than what the companies are. Freelancers often require much less money, especially considering they tend to work more hours and get the project done much more quickly.

3. Easy to find, with a large choice of specific experts.

Unlike many companies, most freelancers will allow you to cancel the employment contract and get a refund if needed. There are also many websites available that will provide you with a decent choice of experts in any field. Every freelancer has a lot of experience in at least one field, therefore they are best suited for completing small assignments in a decent timeframe.

Cons:

1. No Continued Support.

While freelancers are good for quick projects, most of them do not continue to update after completely finishing the initial project. Because of this, assuming you only hired the developer for one project, you will have to hire another freelancer to continue with updates and fixing bugs.

2. Possible Organization Issues

Some freelancers might miss thee deadlines, when they take up more projects than what they could deal with at once. This may distract them from working on your project, and they could be situations that cause them to cancel the business contract without a proper warning. However, most experienced freelancers try their best to avoid this.

3. Security

While freelancers are required to sign employment contracts unless you sign a non-disclosure agreement with new freelancers, the security could still be an issue. However, these problems could be avoided by signing the agreement before hiring a new freelancer.

Conclusion: Freelancers are better for simple projects and sites, whereas software development companies are better for large business projects. Both have their own share of are Pros and Cons. It all depends on your specific needs, as well as what you are looking for in your project.