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Freelancer vs agency? It’s not a fight. It’s about common sense.

You won’t catch me slating agencies. I’ve worked in them. I’ve learned a lot. Survived the Slack channels, the Monday morning “stand-ups”, the 42-tab pitch decks. Some are genuinely sound.

But if you’re a small to mid-sized business trying to choose between an agency or someone like me - here’s the thing:

This isn’t about who’s better.

It’s about what actually works for you, your budget, and your sanity.

Agencies are fine… if you’ve got money to burn and time to waste

Let’s say you’ve got:

• A brand and marketing team in-house
• A six-month roadmap with five rounds of sign-off and a stakeholder called Clive
• A chunky budget and a love for Gantt charts
• A requirement of having a team available to support at 2am when Jeffrey's card gets declined for his £15 t-shirt order
• And a need for 8 people to nod in a meeting before anything moves forward

Then yeah, go agency. They’ll give you structure, process, pitch decks, meeting invites, and a project manager called Simon who says things like “we’re just aligning on the timeline”.

You’ll get something decent. Eventually. After 19 emails and a progress call with 6 people. At 4.45pm. On a Friday. They might even deploy your change request at 4.45pm. On a Friday. shudders

But if you just want something that works? You don’t need the big machine

You need someone who can:

• Design it
• Build it
• Tell you what’s worth doing and what’s a waste of budget
• Actually give you answers without “looping in the dev team”

Someone who can spot a plugin conflict in five seconds instead of sending it to QA, then dev, then support, then Simon from PM who’s still polishing his PRINCE2 certificate.

Someone who’s not going to charge you £5k to “customise” an off-the-shelf theme from ThemeForest, slap Elementor on it, and call it a build... and if you're reading this and in your head thinking "that is a build", drop me your IP address so I can put you on the deny list. We do things proper 'round these parts.

Here’s what you don’t get with me

• A bloated WordPress install running Elementor, WP Bakery, and 14 plugins that hate each other. Genuinely, we've seen the error logs.
• A mystery team of juniors building your site behind a wall of Slack channels
• “Just a few tweaks” that require three meetings, two rounds of feedback and a mood board
• A proposal longer than a BBC box set (this doesn't include you, Peaky Blinders, my love)
• A developer who panics if you ask for something outside of a page builder

What you do get

• A senior-level dev who actually understands business goals
• A fast, clean, secure site built properly - whether it’s WordPress with ACF or a full bespoke Laravel build
• Strategy, UX, design, dev, hosting advice - in one brain, not five email chains
• No drag-and-drop disasters, no “template tinkering” pretending to be custom
• Real conversations. Straight advice. No jargon.
• An extension of your team that will tell you "no", when you really need to hear it
• A guy in a black t-shirt, covered in tattoos, drinking energy drinks and building websites that work.

You get the experience of an agency with the simplicity of a freelancer.

...And yes, I’m using my tagline again. Brand consistency, innit.

Final word

This isn’t "agencies bad, freelancers good". That’s lazy thinking.

But the truth is, for a lot of small to medium-sized businesses, agencies are overkill. You end up paying for polish, process, and project managers named Simon - when what you really need is someone who just gets on and builds the bloody thing.

So if you’re fed up of:

• Sites that fall apart the minute you update a plugin
• “Custom” themes that still say “import demo content”
• Endless rounds of sign-off on a button colour
• Or Simon CC’ing 12 people into an email about a heading change

Then maybe it’s time to do it differently.

Let’s work together. No fluff. No faff. No fake custom builds.

Just proper websites. Built properly... Maybe this should be my new tagline. 🤔