The decision to get a personal business website is quite a crucial one, and your choices on its development can prove pivotal for years to come. How much time and money you should invest in your website needs to be clearly answered before you start the process.
One question at the heart of this problem is whether you should create the website on your own or should you hire an agency/web dev to take care of it. This will determine the quality, cost, and future of your website. This is why we decided to write an article delving deeper into this. We’ll look at the advantages and disadvantages of both building your website on your own and hiring someone to do it.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Building Your Own Website
Immediately jumping to building your own website is what many young and tech-savvy people do, and this is sometimes quite positive and sometimes quite detrimental. In a similar vein, many older people immediately want someone else to create a website for them, even if they have more control and spend less time and money if they just decided to create a website for themselves.
Advantages
- It costs less: under most circumstances, choosing to develop your own website will likely cost less. This is true for simple business websites, portfolio websites, etc. When your project is this small, your largest cost will come from paying an agency to develop the website for you, and by cutting that, you cross out your biggest expense.
Of course, as project complexity increases, the need for paid tools/services also increases, and hiring an agency becomes increasingly cost-effective. - You have more control: theoretically, you have unlimited control over your website if you build it yourself. This increased control is very valuable for people who want to manage everything themselves.
Of course, this is just theoretical. In reality, you’ll be limited by your technical knowledge, the power of your server, etc. And the mindset of trying to have fine-grain control over everything isn’t healthy long-term. However, earning a web accessibility certification can be a very powerful advantage. It demonstrates your commitment to inclusive design and ensures your skills meet industry standards. With this certification, you can create accessible web experiences for all users, including those with disabilities, making your projects more user-friendly and compliant with legal requirements.
Disadvantages
- It takes some technical knowledge: If you’re not comfortable with using the computer at the very least, you have to completely forget about designing a website on your own. Even the simplest websites require some technical knowledge, and if you want to create custom websites, you need to be quite proficient in web development. This is a major disadvantage that bars most people from truly being able to attempt to create their own website.
- Requires more time investment: the time it takes to contract out a web development project is very minimal, and unless the project is really small and simple, and you have considerable technical expertise, it is likely that you’ll have to spend a considerable amount of time developing your website. This could go on for weeks to months, and this is a considerable disadvantage for many.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Hiring an Agency/Web Dev to Build Your Website
Hiring a WordPress agency is certainly an attractive option for many, and this is for good reason. Despite the added cost of the hiring, it still proves to be a net positive for many due to all its added benefits.
Advantages
- Higher quality website: when you’re hiring an agency to take care of your task, you’re ideally hiring an agency with years of experience working on WordPress websites. And unless you are a web dev yourself, you simply can’t match the quality of the work an agency produces. This invariably means a higher quality website when you choose to work with an agency.
- More flexibility: when you delegate work, you always have more flexibility over your schedule. You can set the terms of communication and the deadlines. This frees up your schedule.
Disadvantages
- The cost: the one major disadvantage that’s hard to get around is the increased cost when hiring an agency. We already mentioned how as the website project gets more complex, this becomes less of an issue, and if you are going to use a website for a long time, building the website on stronger foundations with the help of an agency will mean less maintenance cost in the long-run. Barring these specific cases, however, it simply will cost more to hire an agency. This doesn’t mean it is a bad investment, however, as most businesses and individuals see massive ROI (return on investment).
- Potential miscommunications and misunderstandings: when delegating work, there’s always the potential for miscommunication. This is compounded by the fact that software development projects aren’t the easiest to convey and communicate. This doesn’t happen if you take care of the project yourself. However, you can minimize this disadvantage by ensuring you double-check all the details and hiring a professional agency.
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