Building Your Dream App: Hiring a Dedicated Development Team vs. Freelancers

When you want to establish your business in a digital space, you have two primary alternatives- either hiring a dedicated team or hiring freelancers. Both these options have their benefits & drawbacks.

It can become confusing to choose between these two alternatives. Once you’re clear with your requirements, you can quickly pick a suitable hiring model.

However, we are here to assist you with ‘which one to choose- dedicated developers or freelancers?’ Let’s understand both models in detail so it gets easier for you to choose the most suitable one.

What is a Dedicated Development Team?

A group of dedicated developers who can manage long-term project development for startups, mid-size companies, and enterprises. They work for your company on a full-time basis and aren’t freelancers.

In other words, a dedicated development team is quite similar to an in-house team but working for you from a different location. They will help you build and manage your business software when you hire them.

The dedicated development team comprises of:

• UI/UX designers to create responsive, simple, and interactive UIs
• Full-stack/Front-end/Back-end developers to develop the app
• QA engineers for ensuring bug-free app delivery
• DevOps engineers to coordinate with operations, testing, and development
• Business analysts for assessing user data, project requirements, etc.
• Project managers for managing project plans, track progress and eliminate risks from the projects

Who are Freelance Developers?

Freelancers are professionals who have the freedom to choose their customers, projects, and working hours, and make themselves versatile and adaptable.

Such developers can specialize in particular technologies or languages and can be hired for shorter periods for smaller assignments. They can work on a contract or temporary basis for different clients simultaneously, or work with a single company.

Freelance developers do not have a specified team structure, they might work alone or with your in-house team. You will not get a full team to work with like a dedicated team of developers.

Dedicated Development Team vs Freelancers- Pros and Cons

Each coin has two faces. Let’s see the pros and cons of both hiring dedicated teams vs hiring freelancers.

Dedicated Development Team Benefits

• Easy QA and simplified project management-

Companies have optimized project management strategies. Dedicated managers help with team collaboration and monitoring. Moreover, dedicated project managers provide QA benefits to ensure the quality of your software.

• More reliability-

There are chances of freelancers disappearing overnight, companies are registered by the local governments. They also serve long-term partnerships for decades or even multiple years.

• Huge talent pool-

When you hire a dedicated team from a popular agency, you can access the mixed technical knowledge of different development experts.

• Increase/decrease the team as per your software requirement-

When you choose a dedicated team, you get flexibility to scale up or scale down the team. When the project requirement changes, you can cut down or add more professionals.

Drawbacks

• Higher expense-

Dedicated teams generally have higher costs than freelancers, as they need to deal with overhead costs.

• Difficult team changing-

When you decide to change the project to another dedicated development company, it can be tiresome.

• Can’t hire in-house developers-

Hiring dedicated developers for your in-house team can cost more. So, these developers working remotely will be the best option.

Freelancers Benefits

• Simplified in-house hiring

Businesses usually choose to hire freelancers permanently who do well over a longer period.

• Cost-effective

The freelancers do not charge any overhead expenses. So hiring freelancers is more cost-effective than well-established agencies. However, lower rates don’t mean that your project is more cost-efficient. In case your project gets delayed, or has poor quality, the final project development cost gets higher.

• Easy scaling of the team

Employers have a lot of freelance platforms to help you with the hiring process of freelancers.

Drawbacks

• Management issue

It can get challenging to manage a large team of freelancers, especially when each member is working remotely and has different time zones. Allowing them to work remotely looks great, but it is challenging to manage them constantly.

• Work overload

Freelancers work for different customers simultaneously. It might cause work overload and ultimately affect the project build quality. So, there are chances of delay in project delivery if its quality isn’t satisfactory.

• Communication barrier

As your team of freelancers will be spread across the world, they will be working from different time zones. So, communicating with each one of them is time-consuming and can generate difficulties.

Dedicated Development Team vs Freelancers- Key Comparison

Here are the key factors of comparison between Dedicated Teams and Freelancers:

Long-term partnership

• Dedicated teams are usually preferred over freelancers to maintain a long-term partnership for developing business projects.
• On the other hand, freelancers are preferred for specific projects or for comparatively shorter timelines.

Availability and Dedication

• Dedicated team members are committed to working exclusively for your project. They are reachable for communication within the decided working hours. And their work dedication is similar to an in-house team.
• On the other hand, freelancers work within their preferred working time and it might not coincide with your preferred working hours. So, it might create communication barriers.

Development Costing

• Dedicated developers will receive a monthly salary from the employer just like their full-time employees. Hence, it is easy to predict the approximate cost of hiring to make financial planning for your project.
• Freelancers generally get paid on an hourly basis. So, it may be cost-effective in certain situations.

Communication and Collaboration

• The outsourced team allows direct & continuous communication. Employers can easily integrate the team into existing communication channels and tools.
• Meanwhile, communication practices may vary with freelancers, and it requires more effort to establish effective collaboration and communication channels.

Project Timeline

• A dedicated team is more suitable for long-term and ongoing support for your project. In projects where consistency and reliability matter, a dedicated hiring model is a boon.
• While in smaller or specialized projects that don’t require any long-term dedication, freelancers are perfect.

When to Choose Dedicated Teams vs When to Choose Freelancers?

Choose dedicated development teams while:

• The project has a wider scope, multiple frameworks, and languages
• The project should have sharper risk management
• Dedicated project managers are necessary to deal with the project
• Higher complexity

Choose freelancers when:

• Limited core features
• No requirement for essential scaling
• Minimum requirement for risk management
• You can handle project management yourself
• The project has less risk

In a Nutshell

Hiring a dedicated team of freelancers will depend on the project’s requirements. Certain project needs freelancers and vice versa.

So, before deciding on whether to choose the dedicated team or freelancers, you need to focus on multiple factors like software scope, project complexity, future scaling, accountability, future scaling, etc.

In case you aren’t satisfied with your choice in the initial phase, do not hesitate to shift to a new agency or freelancer. It will help you minimize your losses and you can focus on the project and get it back on track. For more updates, bookmark us. Happy reading!