Outsourcing company or local freelancer?

The article is a part of Code Inspiration’s software development outsourcing Knowledge Base.

Surely, local freelancer will always be easier to communicate with, there is a possibility to have meetings with him in the office, he/she will be in your time zone and there for sure won’t be any language barrier. However, product launch always has a deadline, and the risk that the developer might get sick or simply might change plans, or find another client and would be no longer interested to proceed on client’s project, is however high. Freelancer will never offer documentation for the project a company will do. And what’s more, a freelancer cannot ensure fast project development in case the project got investments and one needs to scale quickly. In most cases no one does freelancer’s code review. And not excluding a freelancer may be a good developer; there were many cases when a good product with bad code couldn’t scale up according to requirements because proper architecture had not been applied initially.

A contract signed with a Company will guarantee delivery on time, even if there would be a necessity to replace a developer for any reasons. The main benefit here is the customer doesn’t need to deal with such organizational problems. Different time zones may cause inconvenience, however practically always there are some hours that would match working time. For example Code Inspiration team works on the project for a customer from the USA. And when it is morning in the U.S., there is 2nd part of the day in Belarus, and we have 4 hours that match working time in both offices. Company always provides a client with a detailed budget and timeline estimation. A company is interested in long-term cooperation and is capable of your project’s maintenance and support because a company aims at regular ongoing activities.

Surely, everyone has different business approaches. And customers who prefer personal contact and constant face-to-face meetings most likely will choose to work with a local freelancer. Non-technical clients, and those who just don’t want to go into development details because of a lack of time or any other reason most likely will choose outsourcing software development company. Based on Code Inspiration experience many clients pay attention to the following:

The article is a part of Code Inspiration’s sofware development outsourcing Knowledge Base.