Freelancer vs. Agency in Egypt 2022, Which to Hire?

Whether you are going to create a website, market your business online, or develop a software application, you need a professional to do the technical part. Choosing the right partner is hard and you may come to the stumbling block of whether to hire a freelancer or an agency.

In this era of modern advancement and with Egypt moving toward a Digital Nation, a lot of companies are starting to pay attention to their online presence and their competitors (I mean their keyword niche search competitors, will explain that in a different article about SEO). So choosing the partner that propels you forward is a must not only a convenience.

Both freelancers and web development agency have their own merits and choosing either one of them will come down to your needs and judgment. So the question will escalate to (on what basis should I hire a freelancer or an agency?).

To be able to answer the freelancer vs. agency question, we first need to know what are the pros and cons for each of them and break down our needs and limits and match them with the best to do the job for us. So let’s get started

Freelancer

They are responsible for managing their time and they mostly work in service-based industries, here are some of the common freelance jobs:

• Graphic Design
• Website development
• Content creation
• UI/UX Design
• Digital Marketing
• Data Analysis
• Copy Writing
• Photography

Benefits of hiring freelancers

1- Specialized

Meaning they tend to be more professional in certain aspects that will definitely help on the side of specific job requirements.

2- Cost

And I guess I don’t need to explain that freelancers tend to be less expensive than web agencies by about 30% or more
depending on the region, their level of experience, and the work needed.

3- Flexibility

Starting from the interview (phone call, video calls, emails, or face-to-face interview) to their working hours,
where they don’t have them and can be totally fine working outside normal working times. they are definitely the ones
that win in this part of the debate.

4- Save time

The process of negotiating a price and terms of the contract can take up an awful lot of time when signing an agreement with
a web agency. which totally does not exist with freelancers as they are mostly about, what you want? and when to deliver?

Cons to hiring a freelancer

1- Limitation

When it comes to unexpected changes or modifications that may be out of the freelancer’s expertise, sometimes problems can happen and it may lead to complications with the project.

2- Security

I hate to say it as I am myself a freelancer but sometimes the problem exists, where a freelancer work mostly without a binding contract or they get jobs outside of secured platforms (such as Upwork, Freelancer, Guru, Mostaql, PeoplePerHour, Toptal, etc…), which may lead to some ditching the job when problems arouse or when they quarrel with clients.

Web agency

Benefits of working with a web agency

1- No limitations

That concept applies to any type of scope expansion and modifications you need to implement to your project (provided that you can afford the extra cost that comes with it).

2- Adopt the latest trends

To keep up with the market competition, web agencies tend to keep up with the new and adopt the trends to be
able to attract more customers and not be behind the times. Freelancers do catch up with trends but to be totally
honest here, they don’t implement them that often and sometimes they stay one-way track-minded.

3- Organized & Diverse

That result in faster delivery timing and more efficiency due to dividing the project into several parts that may work parallel to one another. where diverse here means that they do BRAINSTORMING while totally requires more than one person (freelancer) and result in a bunch of ideas to filter and choose the best of each.

4- Legal guarantee

As a legal entity that is already established, they have a reputation to maintain and bolster, so they are very specific when they do their part and also do a legal agreement (contract) with their clients.

Cons of working with a web agency

1- Cost

I bet you expected it. Yes, they are definitely more costly than freelancers, as they have more mouths to feed you know (just
kidding), it is because they have more experts for each field the project phases run through.

2- Lack of flexibility

They are company employees at the end of the day, so they have work hours and may not work outside of it (it matters a lot for different time zone clients), so you may not see your suggestions implemented until the next day!.

3- Communication

If you ask about the progress of your project, you may get something along the lines of, your contact asking around where your project progress is and then asking the person in charge of the said phase (where are you at in this phase?) and it passes back the same route back to you. complicated huh?

Let’s wrap it up for you

If you have a limited budget and own a small business or when you need a specialist for a specific task at hand then you should go for freelancers.

If you are on a hard deadline, busy, and don’t always have time to check on your project progress or have a complex type of project in mind to implement then I suggest you contact an agency.

Let me finish by mentioning a real fun fact. Sometimes agencies tend to hire freelancers for the short term to help take care of certain projects when they have a busy schedule and their team is still involved in dealing with other projects that they don’t have free time to work on any other ones.

So have you decided yet? Will you hire a freelancer or an agency? let me know down in the comments. Also if you need a freelancer, feel free to contact me.