With the rapid technological advancements, the entire world is experiencing a significant growth spurt in eCommerce business and online marketing companies.
Today majority of the companies around the world are leveraging digital marketing for their business purposes.
Most of the small and mid-sized companies have monetary limitations and cannot hire that many permanent professional employees to do different kinds of tasks hence they believe in outsourcing people from the industry to do these tasks ranging from web designing, advertising, marketing, and so on.
Here comes the crux of the matter: Whom to hire? A digital agency or a sole freelancer?
Businesses need to make the right decision depending upon their resources and requirements.
Let us throw some light on this topic for better understanding and comparisons between the two for making the best decision suited for your business.
Table of Contents
What is Freelancing?
A freelancer is a person who works solely on various projects as a qualified professional for clients that require various kinds of digital marketing services for running their businesses. He acts as an independent marketing consultant who most likely had corporate world work experience in the past, but is self-employed presently.
Freelancing offers the liberty to make his own choices and a freelancer inarguably works on his own terms without any company pressure and is not bound by any commitments.
Advantages of Freelancing
- Affordable
- Flexible
- Suited for short-term projects
Disadvantages of Freelancing
- Lacks credibility and security
- Chances of deadline crash
- Lacks managerial working skills
- Limited expertise
What is Digital Agency?
A digital marketing agency comprises a larger team of highly experienced digital marketing professionals with a well-established set of skills and is managed by an authoritative system.
The agency does not permit the digital marketing professionals working under it, the liberty to pick any project on their own, instead, the projects are assigned to different professionals according to their caliber by the authority and are committed to following work deadlines.
Each digital agency functions differently from others and has a set rate for the services offered.
Advantages of Digital Agency
- A large team of highly experienced professionals
- A broad range of expertise
- Committed to working deadlines
- Suited for bigger projects
- Legal and official guarantee
- Professional technical support
- Dependability
- Credibility
- Adapt to latest technologies
Disadvantages of Digital Agency
- Quite Costly
- Lack flexibility
You can also read “Benefits of Hiring a professional Professional Web Design Company“
Digital Agency vs Freelancer
Both Freelancer and digital agency have their own pros and cons. Let us learn the major differences between the two options at a length.
SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE:
Most freelancers have only a limited set of specialized skills. Beginner freelancers are capable to offer a larger range of services, but the reputed and well-established freelancers who have been in the business for several years tend to have a niche which implies you can find the exact skills you require for a particular project or task with a freelancer.
The flipside is to find a freelancer who can perform a wide range of activities along with maintaining high-quality standards can be very challenging. To do that you will need to hire two or more freelancers instead of one which ultimately increases the amount of time spent on finding suitable candidates, onboarding them, and checking in with them.
On the other hand, a digital agency has a full-fledged team of highly experienced professionals who have the skills and expertise in offering a wide range of projects. Digital agencies are easier to find and have good industry knowledge and experience thus serving to be the best option for the businesses.
PRICE:
Hiring a freelancer for your work turns out to be quite cheap and affordable. Typically, freelancers determine a rate based on the assignment, which could be project-specific it can either be a fixed rate or on an hourly basis. You can get a freelancer for any assignment at almost any price you desire – of course, paying more will get you much better quality.
The digital agencies have high overheads accounting for higher operational and infrastructural costs making them an expensive choice. Despite the fact that digital firms are more expensive than freelancers, they are still less expensive than traditional agencies because no office space is required.
In some cases, engaging an agency is more cost-effective than hiring a freelancer in the long run. This is due to the fact that you will not have to devote as much of your personal time to the project.
FLEXIBILITY:
Freelancers are more flexible considering they are sole individuals and are not bound by rules. They have flexible working hours and are free to take up projects as per their will. They become a great option in case of crisis. However, they often have other project commitments also as they have the liberty to take up any number and kinds of projects at the same time. This means they can be available only for certain hours of the day which might not even suit your business hours, especially if you’re in different time zones.
Alternatively, a digital agency can always assign people under them to take up your project as they have a large team of digital professionals working under them thus, they can offer greater flexibility.
COMMUNICATION:
Freelancers tend to be excellent at communicating and making sure the project fulfills all your requirements as he is the sole person and can be reached anytime regarding better understanding, modifications, up-gradation, and improvement and needed for the project.
While communication with a digital agency is quite different. As u have to communicate mainly with the owner of the agency or the concerning head regarding the project. You may also have to conduct regular meetings with the project head and other members of the team to discuss the progress of the project. This technique is preferred by some business owners, while others want to have more direct interaction with the project manager.
DEPENDABILITY:
Freelancers are not bound by any rules and are free to juggle between multiple projects at the same time. Timely project delivery is something to worry about and this entirely depends on his work ethic and commitments. There have been many cases of non-commitment where they fail to deliver projects on time or suddenly disappear midway from the scene without informing. So, the Non-dependability factor concerning freelancers becomes a major issue for the companies seeking on-time project deliverance.
On the contrary, digital agencies are responsible enough and are considered a dependable service option for businesses looking out for timely project execution. Even if anyone from the team leaves the project, other professionals working under the agency can make up for his absence and work together for the timely delivery of the business project.
QUALITY:
Quality becomes quite a big problem in case you pick up a random and non-reliable freelancer at a cheaper rate. Not all freelancers are equipped with the right knowledge, skills, and expertise to deliver high-quality outputs.
As far as digital agencies are concerned, they are committed to providing quality projects with the help of their team as they need to maintain their reputation and credibility in long run.
You might like to read “How to start an e-commerce business in India?“
MANAGEMENT:
Sometimes, bigger projects require the need to hire more than one freelancer where communication, coordination, and communication can become quite a headache for businesses.
While an agency is very organized and requires minimal project management. They can easily manage and handle different tasks to achieve the end goal.
CHOICE:
With freelancing, you get the liberty to choose the right freelancer appropriate for your work which very much depends upon the skills required for the project. Many small business owners prefer to handpick candidates according to their needs and demands.
But when you hire an agency, you do not get to choose desired persons to work with. As it is entirely an internal decision of the agency and they are the ones making the final decision for assigning professionals for the projects. Having said that, many agencies are cooperative enough in asking for a change, in case the business owners are not happy with the project and can assign other professionals for bringing in the improvements in the business project.
SCALABILITY:
Both the digital agency and the freelancer are scalable enough. With freelancers, it refers to searching the candidates all over again. While with an agency, it implies requesting more time.
| Criterion | Freelancer | Digital Agency |
| Experience | Limited | Highly experienced |
| Expertise | Limited | Broad Expertise |
| Flexibility | Highly flexible | No flexibility |
| Price | Cheap | Costly |
| Type of project | Small | Bigger |
| Dependability | Non-dependable | Highly dependable |
| Credibility | Low credibility | High credibility |
| Management | Poor | Good |
Why Digital Agency is better than freelancers?
Digital agencies are professional organizations that are committed to providing exceptional services because they are aimed towards maintaining their reputation and credibility in the long run.
Moreover, they can offer high-quality services for the projects pertaining to their large spread of highly experienced team that too within time deadlines, which makes them an immensely credible and dependable choice. But a user solely must thoroughly research the available options on the web and compare their merits and demerits wisely before outsourcing like the best web development company in Jaipur and choose the most feasible option based on their requirements and benchmark criteria.
On the contrary, freelancers are comparatively cheap and affordable provide great flexibility, and are best suited for small businesses who have financial limitations and cannot afford the high charges of a digital agency.
Conclusions
Choosing between a freelancer or a digital agency for your business needs is a rather tricky question.
Small-scale limited-term projects are good enough for any freelancer to handle while complex and larger-scale projects that require a set of skills and knowledge a digital agency can turn out to be the best option considering their highly professional team with extensive knowledge and expertise.
Freelancers are mostly hired for specialized tasks, while a professional digital agency is best at delivering complete digital solutions.
Freelancers are more flexible with their time, but agencies do not offer any kind of flexibility. Plus hiring freelancers turn out to be pocket-friendly as compared to costly agencies.
To make a choice between working with a digital agency or a freelancer depends on many factors such as business needs, budget, flexibility, time, and many more. However, expertise, industry knowledge, and availability are key factors in making the final decision when choosing between two of them.
Therefore, we can conclude, that the choice between the freelancer and the digital agency depends on multiple factors like your company’s needs, jobs, money, flexibility, credibility, dependability, and many more.
In the end, Digital agencies turn out to be the winner among the two which offers an array of advantages for the businesses with the virtue of their credibility, dependability, and expertise.
