“Freelancers are cheap and agencies are expensive” explains almost nothing about this decision. Good independents are not cheap, and small studios are frequently not expensive. What actually separates the two is continuity — what happens to the work when that person is not there.
Either can be an excellent choice. What matters is knowing which risk each carries and using the contract to cover only that risk.
Where the two genuinely differ
Working with an individual has obvious advantages: the person deciding and the person building are the same, so communication is fast and the context lives whole in one head. It also lives only in one head, which is why documentation and repository ownership matter most in this arrangement. The handover list from part five earns its keep here.
Working with a company buys continuity. Work carries on when staff change, and several specialisms come through one point of contact. In exchange, who is actually building it can become unclear and there is an additional step in every conversation. Asking “who will do this work, and how will we be told if that changes” before signing is the direct answer to that risk.
Choose on the checks, not the size
Whichever you meet, the things to look for are the same. Judge the way of working rather than the shape of the business.
Not one line on that list has anything to do with size. There are solo practitioners who write scope and exclusions immaculately, and there are sizeable firms that would rather start first and sort it out later. The judgement rests on documents, not on shape.
Using both
One arrangement comes up often in practice: the build with one supplier, ongoing care with another. Building is project-shaped work and maintenance is repeating work, and the people who are best at each are not always the same people.
It works on one condition: the handover has to have been done properly. With account ownership settled and documentation in place this arrangement runs very well; without them, responsibility blurs between the two. Part five is effectively the prerequisite.
We frequently occupy one side of exactly that arrangement — the original builder stays, and we take on the upgrade and optimisation work separately. Accounts stay in the client’s name and the work is recorded either way. Scope is on the optimization program page and the procedure on our process page.
Next part
The last part is about operating instinct. You do not have to read code to notice the signals of technical debt.