Why “agency vs freelancer” is the wrong starting point
Most web budget conversations still start with the same binary: should we hire an agency or a freelancer?
For a lot of business and marketing websites in the €10k–€50k range, neither label is very helpful. Agencies cover everything from three-person studios to multi-country organisations. Freelancers range from students building their first portfolio site to senior specialists who are effectively one-person agencies with all the responsibility and none of the overhead.
If you are a German Freiberufler, you even have a legal reason to avoid calling yourself a “company” in the classic sense. You are still operating like a specialist partner, not an anonymous marketplace profile.
So instead of “agency vs freelancer”, the more useful comparison is between a solo design agency and a traditional multi-person agency. Both can deliver solid work. The real question is which model matches your project size, risk tolerance, and way of working.
This article focuses on business and marketing websites, not e-commerce platforms or mobile apps. The examples apply to businesses that need a strong online presence, predictable lead flow, and a site that feels like it belongs in 2025 without becoming a multi-year transformation project.
What a solo design agency actually looks like in practice
A solo design agency is essentially a senior specialist who has decided to stay intentionally small. Instead of building a team around them, they combine roles: strategy, design, and development for a focused set of projects each year.
From the client side, the experience looks different from both a large agency and a classic freelancer setup.
You talk directly to the person doing the work instead of navigating through account managers.
You have a single point of accountability for strategy, design, and implementation instead of separate teams.
You know exactly who is in the project Slack or email thread because it is the same person who writes the code and designs the layouts.
The trade-off is obvious: you are relying on one person. The upside is that decisions move faster, context is never lost in hand-offs, and there is no moment where your project gets quietly reassigned to whichever junior happens to be free that week.
For projects in the €10k–€50k range, this concentration of responsibility is often a feature, not a bug.
How traditional agencies typically handle similar projects
Traditional agencies spread the work across multiple roles and often multiple teams. A typical project might involve a strategist, designer, developer, project manager, and possibly a QA person or copywriter.
That structure has advantages. Larger teams can run multiple workstreams at once. There is always someone available for a call. Internal hand-offs mean individuals can go on holiday without stopping the project.
But the structure also introduces overhead that is very visible in a mid-sized project:
Every idea and change request passes through several people before it reaches code or design.
Project management time becomes a real cost component instead of a tiny overhead line.
You may spend the first part of the project teaching the team about your business while different roles join and leave the thread.
For big projects with many stakeholders, that overhead is acceptable. For a focused business site, it can feel like using corporate procurement processes to buy a bicycle.
The article on freelance developers vs agencies dives into the cost side in more detail. Here, the focus is on how these models behave when you are the one trying to get a site shipped.
Communication, meetings, and decision speed
Communication is where the difference between models becomes very real very quickly.
With a solo design agency, most communication is direct and compressed. A 30-minute call can move through strategy, UX, and technical feasibility because the same person is responsible for all three. Decisions are made with full context, not reconstructed from meeting notes sent between departments.
With a traditional agency, communication tends to be structured. You have scheduled status calls, clear responsibilities, and a project manager keeping everything organised. That can feel reassuring, especially in larger organisations where documentation matters.
The subtle cost is in the time it takes to move from “we should adjust this” to “it is live”. Every extra person in the chain adds a small delay. Over a three-month project, those delays add up.
In other words:
If you value short, focused conversations with quick decisions, a solo agency will feel natural.
If you need formal updates, stakeholder summaries, and multiple approvals, an agency project manager might be worth the overhead.
Neither is inherently right or wrong. The model just needs to match your internal reality.
Cost, overhead, and where your budget actually goes
On paper, a solo design agency and a traditional agency might quote similar totals for a €25k project. The difference is in where that money flows.
When you hire a solo partner, most of your budget goes directly into the work: research, design, implementation, and testing. There is very little room for internal meetings that do not move the project forward because there is nobody else to meet with.
In an agency, part of the budget pays for coordination and internal communication. Some of that is essential: planning, QA, managing timelines. Some of it is the inevitable cost of having more people involved than the bare minimum necessary.
The article on web development cost comparison between freelancers and agencies walks through external benchmarks. The important takeaway is that for mid-sized projects, a solo agency often delivers more senior attention per euro simply because there are fewer layers between your budget and the work.
Risk and reliability for €10k–€50k web projects
Risk is often the first objection to working with a solo partner: what happens if they get sick, disappear, or are suddenly too busy?
That concern is reasonable, but it needs context.
In a traditional agency, the risk is not that the entire company disappears overnight. The practical risk is that your project loses its champion. Senior people are heavily booked, juniors come and go, and priorities shift when bigger clients need attention. Your project still exists, but momentum slows and hand-offs multiply.
With a solo design agency, you have the opposite profile. If the person is in, they are fully in. They usually run a small number of projects at any given time because there is no team to hide behind. Their reputation is tied to every single outcome.
Mitigating risk with a solo partner is mostly about due diligence:
Check how long they have been working in this model, not just how long they have been coding or designing.
Look at how they talk about process, not just portfolio screenshots.
Ask what happens if timelines slip or something unexpected happens on either side.
For business-sized projects, that clarity often matters more than the theoretical safety of a bigger logo.
Which model fits common project types
It can help to map models to concrete project shapes instead of keeping the discussion abstract.
If you need a custom business or marketing website, a clear service narrative, and a performant implementation without heavy content production, a solo design agency is usually a strong fit. That includes many B2B sites, local or regional service businesses, and lean product companies that already have their own copy and brand direction.
If your project involves a full rebrand, photo and video production, multiple language markets, and a large content team that needs coordination, then a traditional agency starts to make more sense. The same applies when your internal process requires a vendor with specific structure or certifications for procurement.
If you are unsure where you fall, the article on how to hire web developers as a business leader is a good companion read. It focuses on evaluation frameworks rather than models, which pairs well with the perspective here.
Choosing the model that matches your way of working
At some point, the question stops being “solo or agency” and becomes “how do we prefer to work for the next few months?”
Some teams want a partner who feels almost like an embedded colleague: someone who joins strategy discussions, adjusts details quickly, and keeps the project moving with minimal ceremony. That is the native environment of a solo design agency.
Other teams need strict structure because of internal realities: multiple departments, legal review, several rounds of stakeholder alignment. In that context, an agency with project management, account roles, and clear division of responsibilities will probably feel safer.
Neither choice is a life sentence. Many companies work with both models for different kinds of projects. A solo partner for focused web initiatives, an agency for broader campaigns.
Stepping into the next project with more clarity
If this article did its job, you should have a clearer sense of which model aligns with your next website project, especially if you are somewhere in the €10k–€50k range and focused on business or marketing outcomes rather than sheer feature lists.
If you want to explore what a solo design and development partnership looks like in more detail, the services overview gives a high-level view of the kinds of projects that are a good fit. For a deeper comparison that includes hard numbers, you can pair this article with the freelance vs agency cost analysis and your own internal constraints.
When you are ready to talk about a specific project, sharing details through the project brief will give you a more precise sense of how a solo setup compares to your previous agency experiences in practice.
