Three ways to outsource a build. Only one of them is cheap by accident.
An outsourced web development company sells hours and hands the specification problem back to you. This is the other shape. One specialist, one narrow kind of build, a fixed number agreed before anything starts.
The three models
Pick the one that matches what you actually have
None of these is better than the others in general. They fail in different places, and the deciding factor is usually whether you have a technical lead with spare hours.
- The offshore dev shop
- Twenty to two hundred people, sold by the hour against your specification. Cheap per hour and expensive per outcome, because the specification is now your job and so is every gap in it. Works when you have a technical lead with time to run it. Most agencies do not.
- Staff augmentation
- A contractor inside your process, your standups and your backlog. Sensible when the work is ongoing and you know exactly what you want built. You are buying hours, so the coordination cost stays with you permanently.
- One specialist, one artefact
- A fixed deliverable at a fixed number, scoped once and handed over finished. Narrow by design. It only works when the vendor has built the same shape of thing repeatedly, which is why it cannot cover everything.
Right call when
- The build is generated from data rather than typed page by page
- The page count runs to thousands and hand-building has stopped being viable
- Nobody in house has done data acquisition or reconciliation before
- You want an artefact your client owns, not an ongoing dependency
Wrong call when
- Application features, dashboards, subscription billing, ecommerce
- Anything under a few hundred pages, all written by hand
- WordPress, themes and plugin architecture
- A backlog that needs a person in your standups every day
For any of those four, an agency-side developer or a general dev shop will serve you better and cost less. Saying so on the call is cheaper for both of us than finding out in week three.
The risk nobody puts in a proposal
Where your money sits while the work happens
Most vendors at this level ask for forty percent up front. If the project stalls at week three, that money is somewhere else and you are negotiating to get it back.
Here nothing is billed in advance. Each phase is invoiced after it is live on staging and you have looked at it, and no phase runs longer than two weeks. Your exposure at any moment is a fortnight of work you have already seen.
The repo and the database live in your client’s accounts from the first commit, not in mine. There is no handover moment where leverage changes hands, because it never sat with me.
Pricing
A number, not a rate
Where the work is continuous rather than one project, it is a seat. $8,000 a month, six month minimum, and you set the priorities each month. That is the third model on this page, and it is the one most agencies end up on once they have run a build.
For a single project, fixed price. Static from $5,000, Core $12,000, Full $22,000, decided by page count and how many sources have to be reconciled.
FAQ
Questions agencies ask
Why outsource web development to one person rather than a company?
For this narrow kind of build, a company adds a project manager, an account manager and a specification round trip, and the actual work is still done by one or two engineers. Removing the layers removes the cost and most of the misunderstanding. It also means there is no bench to reassign me to.
What happens if you are unavailable?
That is the real risk of buying from one person and it is worth saying plainly. It is mitigated by arrears billing, two week phases and everything living in your client's accounts from day one. It is not eliminated. If a vendor cannot be a single point of failure for your project, hire a shop.
How do you price against an offshore quote?
Badly, on hourly rate. The comparison that matters is total cost to a working result, including the specification work an hourly vendor pushes back onto you and the second attempt when the first one misses. If you have a tight spec and a technical lead to run it, offshore is genuinely cheaper.
Do you take fixed price or time and materials?
Fixed price only. Time and materials makes my slowness your problem, which is the wrong incentive on a build where I control the architecture.
What is the payment structure?
Four payments of 25% for a full build, two of 50% for a static one, each raised after that phase is live on staging and you have reviewed it. Net 7. Nothing is ever billed for work that does not exist yet.
Do you sign an NDA?
Yes, and a non-solicit. Send yours or use mine, before the scope call if you prefer.
Where are you and how do the hours work?
Athens, on EET. Mornings overlap the US working day, calls get scheduled to your hours, and everything else runs async by default.
Next step
Send the specification you have
Thirty minutes, and bring whatever exists, even if it is three bullet points. I will tell you which of the three models this project actually wants. If it is not mine, you will get told that on the call rather than after a proposal.