I'm Fed Up with my Development Agency, What Should I Do?

You’ve had a website and/or app built by a dev agency. It’s what you asked for, but maybe you’re not happy with it, or you find the agency too expensive, or maybe the communication wasn’t great. You have what you asked for, and it’s paid for, but what can you do now?

Sometimes, working with an agency can be quite impersonal. The person you’re talking to isn’t the person who will do the work, and you don’t know why things are taking so long. Or maybe, you don’t know if the developers understand what you want because changes or new features are not what you asked for when they appear. Or maybe after all the to-ing and fro-ing, you’ve not been given what you were expecting. Or maybe you just want a change.

Feelings such as these are very common when having something built by an agency. But what is the answer?

Sometimes, choosing another agency might be the answer. Maybe you were just unlucky. Maybe a different agency will be better, and you know what to look out for this time. The risk there is that agencies know what to say to get new clients on board, so while they might say all the right things at the beginning, maybe they’ll end up being the same as the people you want to leave.

An alternative is to hire a freelancer.

What is the difference between a Freelancer and a Dev Agency?

A Development Agency is generally a group of developers, with one or more project managers. You’ll tend to speak to a project manager, then they convey your wishes to the developer(s). The benefit of this kind of system is that you may have different types of developers, each with different expertise and knowledge, who can potentially create something amazing for you.

The Downsides of an Agency are:

• Poor communication
• Expensive
• Outcomes are not what you expected
• Not having any contact with the developer(s) doing the work

So, what is a freelancer? A freelancer is one person, a developer, who is experienced in the skills they offer and is comfortable planning their time and communicating with their clients one-on-one. In other words, you speak with the person who is going to be making the changes to your project. Because it’s just one person, that person may not have the breadth of experience of all the people in a large agency, but you may not need that. There are many benefits of hiring a freelancer too.

Benefits of a Freelancer:

• Better communication
• More affordable - paying for one person instead of lots of different people, often in an office
• More realistic conversations
• Outcomes should reflect the conversations

You know exactly who is doing the work, and they can tell you exactly what is happening with the project.

A freelancer is not for everyone. For people who have not been happy with how an agency has worked with them, and do not want to afford to pay the salaries of developer(s) by hiring them for their company, a freelancer or contractor is often the best course of action.

Next Steps

• What stage is your website or app up to?
• What are your priorities? What are the things you want to add next?
• If you are interested in learning more contact me.