Why you shouldn’t hire freelance developers for your app development project

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Guest author Mehul Rajput is the CEO at Mindinventory.

As business tactics are transforming, you have to take a smarter and accelerating approach for reaching out the wide range of audiences. So, congratulations! You have made the decision to build a mobile app for your business.

However, you probably now have to make the most vital call. Guess what? Well, to be honest, it is about the hiring of an app development firm that will be catering your project. You, of course, have a few options available.

  • The first option is availing the services of an app development company
  • In the second case, you can hire the services of a freelance app developer at your own risks

Yes, it’s true; hiring freelancers to develop your valuable project can prove risky. If you conduct some deep research and take the experts opinion, they would recommend contacting a proper app development agency instead of employing a freelancer.

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You can argue that hiring freelance app developers is cost-effective, but you may have to compromise with the quality of work and also there is no surety whether they can complete the project within the set deadline or not. So, let’s first analyze a few reasons why you should not approach a freelance app developer.

End up paying more than what was expected

So, maybe, in the beginning, you will be satisfied with hiring a good individual app developer who has a good rating and saves you some money! However, this game is not as simple as it seems to be. Don’t think that freelancers will give you any concession; they are not your relative.

In most cases, the individual app developer will charge on the per hour basis. Therefore, at the end of the day, you might realize that you have ended up paying much higher cost than your estimated budget. Moreover, freelancers often do not provide you with an exact ballpark figure regarding the total project cost. You mostly remain uncertain on the cost factor when working with freelance app developers.

On the other hand, an app development agency will send you the exact quotation based on the specific app requirement. There are no hidden costs here as companies try to maintain transparency when dealing with the clients. In fact, you can also hold discussions with the app development team and inform them that you have a tight budget and you are not willing to spend more. Accordingly, they would set the details of the project.

No assurance over the quality of work

When you are hiring the services of a freelancer, you can’t be assured that you will be delivered quality work. Each of the individual app developers has their own pattern and idea of working on the project.

So, you can find that actually, you have to incur a loss because the quality of the work assigned has hampered. This is one possibility of the scenario which you can’t control. You are also not certain if they are doing the project on their own or have hired someone to do it on their behalf.

For example, in most of the cases, clients have absolutely no clue about how the codes of the apps are written optimally. Therefore, they cannot check if the programming language is correct or not. The coding must be done very carefully and freelancers do not have much patience and time to rectify the mistakes.

This is one of the most crucial areas where the app development firms outshine individual developers by a large margin. If you ask entrepreneurs, most of them have no trust in freelancers and say they are not reliable.

Freelancers do not have adequate support

The freelance app developers do not have ample support and guidance when they are undertaking projects. Most of these developers work individually and as such, they don’t have a team.

As a result, whether it is app development or designing, each of these tasks is performed by a single person. Furthermore, if they get stuck in the project, there is nobody to help them out. In most cases, they take support from online video tutorials, which do not help their cause. They may be well experienced, but making decisions all alone can make a big difference.

On the contrary, the app development company have an entire team to work on a project. There is a project manager who leads the team like a captain from the front. In addition, you have separate UI and UX designers, backend developers, and app testers for testing the app towards the end.

The risks of communication gap

There remains an apprehension regarding the issue of the communication gap with the freelancers. It is not possible to stay in touch with them as they often do not have any fixed time or schedule of working.

This is risky as it can spoil your project. For instance, if the app developer does not comprehend your app idea well or there is some sort of misinterpretation or confusion, it is you who has to suffer in the end. There will be instances when they won’t be available when you need them the most.

However, this is another area where an app development agency is better suited. They have fixed working hours and each of the team deals with separate projects. You can easily approach them and even convey your app ideas properly in a face-to-face interaction. Thus, you remain completely aware regarding the whereabouts of your project.

Choosing the wrong person for the job

Another problem that crops up with entrepreneurs availing the services of a freelance app developer is that he chooses the wrong person to do the job. This can become possible if you select the individual in a hurry without scrutinizing his profile properly.

In such situations, you may face a number of problems because afterward, you find that the developer does not possess adequate skills for development that you were probably looking for. It also leads to unnecessary wastage of time and money. In fact, you do not get much time to interview the developer and check his portfolio before assigning him the task.

You don’t face any such issues while hiring the app development firm. It is because each of the professionals employed there has gone through an interview and other skill tests before being hired.

The problem with deadline issues

It’s been indicated previously that you will have to tackle problems related to work quality when freelancers are involved with your project. However, another issue that is closely connected with it is regarding not completing the project within the proposed deadline. One can cite some genuine reasons for it:

  • Firstly, the app developer is not very serious and focused on his assignment and has a very casual approach towards it.
  • Secondly, he may miss the stipulated deadline because he was busy with other projects and couldn’t find time to complete yours.
  • Thirdly, maybe he’s finding the project too complex to deal with. However, in any case, your business has to suffer.

Hiring an agency will give you assurance about the on-time delivery. You don’t keep on knocking the door frequently urging to complete the project on time. With freelancers, you have to keep pushing them and also constantly keep an eye on the progress of the work.

No post-release support

If you have hired an app developer to build an app, you expect him not just to support your business before the app launch but post-release of the app too. This is something or a quality that remains absent in most of the freelancers. Once their job is done and your app is created, they turn strangers and do not help if you face problem during or after app publication.

This is one area where the app development firms are highly committed. They understand their sense of responsibility and also offer support to their client if he faces problems in app post-launch.

The fuss over payment issues

This is a major disadvantage of hiring the freelance app developer. He might create a lot of fuss over the payment issue, which can be troublesome to deal with at times. He might ask you to pay on the weekly or day-to-day basis, which is again a problem and leaves no time to review his work. Another issue is regarding the amount paid. He may demand more than what was actually fixed in the beginning.

Since app development companies maintain the transparency factor, so there cannot be any misunderstanding or dispute regarding the payment. The budget tends to remain fixed.

Information is not secured

You have an exclusive business idea which you share with the app developer. There is no problem in doing so. However, the crisis begins when your innovative and unique business idea might not be a secret and it gets shared across the dais.

This threat looms large if you have a freelancer on the board adopting an unethical practice by sharing it with your competitors. In addition, other information also does not remain safe such as your business resources, card details, and passwords etc.

However, as far as the agency is concerned, it does not leak out any single app idea or information and so you can genuinely trust them to share your ideas.

Conclusion

When you go out there looking to develop an app for your business, you will find a couple of options. The first is freelance app developer and the second of course, is a professional app development firm.

In all instances, the views and aspects of using the services of a professional app development company are far better and superior in comparison to the freelance app developers. However, the final choice is yours as ultimately you have to decide to which route you want to take.

Last Updated on July 31, 2019.

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