12 people on your project.None of them can ghost you.
Freelancers are great — for a landing page over a weekend. When it's a site your revenue depends on, you need a team: designer, frontend, backend, copywriter, SEO, QA, PM. A contract with a legal entity. A warranty in writing. Code in your GitHub from day one.
6 stories you've probably heard.
Or lived through. This isn't a smear on freelancers — these are real scenarios we see every month when clients come to us for a rescue project.
Vanished with the deposit
Paid 30% upfront. Week one — responsive. Week two — silence. Week three — blocked on WhatsApp. Legally getting your money back is unrealistic, because the contract was “verbal.”
Finished 80%, stopped replying
Site is almost done, but without payment integration / CRM / something critical. You can't launch yourself — you don't have the passwords. Finding a replacement with the same stack — a month of searching.
Launched and refused support
“That's a separate fee” — the standard reply to any request after handoff. Every text edit — from £50. After 3 months, they stop replying entirely.
Each of these 6 isn't an exceptional story. It's a typical pattern. 12 of our 47 projects are rescues after a freelancer or another agency. If you recognize yourself — talk to us. The free 30-minute consult will tell you straight what's salvageable.
When NOT to hire us.
Not every project needs a studio. Here are 4 situations where a £500 freelancer is objectively the right call. If you're here — we're not the fit, and that's fine.
A landing under 5 pages with no integrations
Budget under £1,000 — a freelancer for a week. Studio overhead here is overpay.
An MVP landing “over a weekend” to test an idea
Speed > quality, a freelancer ships in 2 days, we ship in 2 weeks. Beta phase = freedom to break things.
Personal blog / portfolio without business logic
Tilda or a freelancer for £300. Nothing for a studio to do here.
Experimental project with an uncertain future
If you don't know whether v2 will happen, investing in a studio is premature optimization.
If your project is on this list — go hire on Upwork. We have a list of vetted freelancers we can refer you to. No jokes — we're for honest fit.
Freelancer vs Code-Site. Honest, fact-based.
Not “we're better than everyone.” Here's where a freelancer wins, and where we do — based on 47 projects and 12 rescue cases.
| Criterion | Freelancer | Code-Site |
|---|---|---|
| Starting budget | £300–2,000 | £1,000–14,000 |
| Team size | 1 person | 4 in-house + 8 partners |
| Specializations | 1–2 (usually “just code” or “just design”) | 6+ (design, frontend, backend, copy, SEO, QA, PM) |
| Process | flexible, informal | structured: brief → design → dev → QA → launch |
| QA / testing | self-review, sometimes none | 60-point QA checklist before launch |
| Documentation | usually none | full, handed off with the code |
| Contract | verbal / on WhatsApp | legal entity, contract, rebate clause |
| Warranty | “I'll fix it if I have time” | 1 year, in the contract |
| Post-launch support | charged separately or vanishes | 1 year included |
| Replacement when something goes wrong | search for a new freelancer from scratch | handoff inside the team in a day |
| Speed | 1 person = 1 stream | 12 people = parallel tracks, faster |
| Disappearance risk | high — no legal obligation | none — the contract breaks, not the person |
Who's actually on your project.
A core in-house team of 4 + a vetted network of 8 partners we bring in by role. No account managers between you and the people writing the code.
Core team
Tech Lead / Founder
Project architecture. Technical decisions. Direct client contact at brief.
Senior UI/UX Designer
Design mocks, prototypes, project design system.
Senior Frontend Developer
Translating design to code, performance, cross-browser.
SEO / B2B Marketing Strategist
SEO structure, technical optimization, content strategy.
Vetted partner network (brought in as needed)
Backend Developer
Custom APIs, complex logic, CRM/ERP integrations.
DevOps / Infrastructure
Complex architecture, multi-environment, CI/CD.
Copywriter (UA)
Homepage copy, service descriptions, SEO articles.
Copywriter (EN)
EN localization, English landings.
QA Engineer
Pre-launch — 60-point checklist + regression.
Project Manager
Large projects with complex scope.
Motion / Video Designer
Animations, video cases, hero motion.
Illustrator
Custom illustrations, icons, graphic scenes.
Want to talk to a specific person on the team? Say so at brief — we'll arrange it. There are no layers between you and the executor.
The price gap isn't the hourly rate.
A freelancer charges £30–60/hr × 80 hours of work. We charge more. Here's what for — besides the hours:
Process
Brief → design → dev → QA → launch. With a freelancer it's often “let's start and see.” With us — a structure your project moves through even if someone gets the flu.
60-point QA checklist
Before launch the project runs through 60 verification points: performance, accessibility, SEO, responsive, cross-browser, forms, analytics. Freelancer does self-test (often none).
1-year warranty
This isn't marketing — it's a contractual obligation. A bug in our code 11 months later, we fix it free. Freelancer: “that's a separate fee.”
30% rebate clause
We miss the deadline — we pay back 30% of the project price. This isn't an empty promise; it's in every contract. With a freelancer, deadline risk is on you.
Contract with a legal entity
Sole proprietor or LLC contract. Closing acts. Tax-deductible. Disputes resolved in court, not via “please don't block me.”
Documentation and handoff
Code is delivered with full documentation. If we vanished tomorrow, any next developer understands your project in a day. Freelancers usually skip documentation.
Sanity Studio for self-edits
After launch, you edit content yourself. Without us. Freelancer is usually “message me, I'll fix it — from £50.”
Continuity
If someone on the team is out, the project doesn't stop. Handoff in a day. With a freelancer: one person vanishes = the whole project vanishes.
You edit the site yourself. Without us. Without a freelancer.
The biggest freelancer trap is post-launch dependency. Want to swap a paragraph? £50. Recolor a button? £30. Three months later they stop replying, and you pay the next person to figure out the codebase. We give you Sanity Studio — a full admin where you do it all yourself. From your computer. Or your phone. Free for teams up to 5.
6 things you do without a developer
Drag-and-drop blocks
Drag sections onto a page — text, image, form, testimonials, FAQ. Every block has rules, so you can't break the layout.
Edit from your phone
Actually. Not “responsive admin for emergencies” — full editing on mobile. Heard your competitor's pricing on a call — update yours from a café in 2 minutes.
Create new pages yourself
No developer needed. Click “new entry,” pick a template, fill the fields, publish. 5 minutes from idea to live.
Multi-language built in
Every field has UK and EN versions. Translate, it renders. No plugins, no extra fees.
SEO without plugins
Every page has title, meta-description, OG-image, schema.org fields. Fill them in — Google sees them. No Yoast, no subscriptions.
Free for teams up to 5
Your marketer + assistant + copywriter + editor + you — zero dollars per month. Paid tier starts at editor #6.
Sanity Studio is open-source. If you decide to leave us in 5 years, the Studio stays with you and content exports to JSON. No vendor lock-in. No freelancer will give you that.
12 of our 47 projects — rescues after a freelancer.
Not an outlier. A typical pattern. Here's what we see on a typical rescue:
Typical situation
- Client paid a freelancer £1,500–3,000 for a landing or site
- Freelancer finished 60–80% and stopped replying
- Site works, but without payment integration / forms / CRM
- No code access — the freelancer never handed it off
- Finding a new freelancer with the same stack — 1–2 months of searching
What we do
- Day 1: free audit — what's there, what works, what doesn't
- Week 1: rewrite the broken parts, hook up integrations
- Weeks 2–4: if the stack is rough, migrate to our custom code
- Weeks 4–6: launch + 30 days monitoring
Typical outcome
- Live in 4–6 weeks instead of 1–2 months hunting for a new freelancer
- Site is finally functional, with documentation and warranty
- Client's total spend: freelancer (already lost) + our rescue = on average 1.5–2× more expensive than if they'd come to us first
The conclusion is obvious: a cheap freelancer is often more expensive than a studio from the start. If you're at “deciding — freelancer or studio,” re-read section 03 (when a freelancer is the right call). If you already tried a freelancer and it didn't work out — let's talk.
What we don't do.
Even for serious projects, we're not for everyone. Here's when we'll say no:
Sites under £300–800
Our minimum is £1,000 for a landing. Physically can't go lower at our quality standard.
Launch by tomorrow
Our minimum is 1 week even for the simplest landing. If it's urgent, hire a freelancer for the night.
A site “like this one but different” without a brief
We don't clone other people's designs. If you need a point-and-shoot copy site, that's Tilda over 2 hours.
Your relative can do it cheaper
Seriously, if you have a developer in your network with a real portfolio — hire them. We're not better than a specific good freelancer — we're better than the average of freelancers as a category.
If your case is on this list, we'll be honest and pass on the project. Better to say no now than disappoint you later.
What's cheaper: freelancer or studio?
On paper — freelancer. Over 12 months of ownership, often the opposite. Let's look honestly:
Scenario 1: Landing for a clinic
| Line item | Freelancer | Code-Site |
|---|---|---|
| Development | £1,500 | £3,500 |
| First-year support | £50/mo × 12 = £600 | £0 (included) |
| Critical bug fixes (2/year) | £200 + £300 = £500 | £0 (warranty) |
| SEO retrofit at 6 months | £400 | £0 (done at launch) |
| Disappearance / rebuild risk (15%) | £1,500 × 0.15 = £225 | £0 |
| Total year 1 | £3,225 | £3,500 |
Difference: £275. That's the base risk premium. By year 2, the freelancer route can be 30% more expensive.
Scenario 2: Small-business e-commerce
| Line item | Freelancer | Code-Site |
|---|---|---|
| Development | £4,000 | £5,500 |
| Support | £80/mo × 12 = £960 | £0 |
| Integrations (CRM, payment, shipping) | £1,200 | £0 (included) |
| Bug fixes | £600 | £0 |
| Rescue project risk (25% for e-commerce) | £4,000 × 0.25 = £1,000 | £0 |
| Total year 1 | £11,760 | £5,500 |
Difference: freelancer is 2.1× more expensive in year one on a typical e-commerce build.
What people ask most
Let's launch a website that works for your business
Book a consultation and we'll go through your project: structure, functionality, timeline, and budget. We'll explain what you need and where spending money won't pay off.
