Agency, consultant, or do it yourself: how to compare website help
Updated
Short answer
Compare on three things: cost, how often updates happen, and who decides what to fix. Agencies suit rebuilds and complex development, consultants suit overall strategy, and doing it yourself suits small ongoing improvements. Each has trade-offs, and you can combine them. This is our general view, and it varies by company and contract.
Hiring an agency
Good for redesigns and new features. If even small edits need a request and a quote, you may end up asking less often. If you decide what to fix and simply ask them to do it, the thinking stays with you.
Hiring a consultant
The strength is thinking through your business with you. It tends to cost more and moves at the pace of your meetings. Someone else may have to do the actual work, so ask whether it is included.
Doing it yourself
It costs less, and you can fix things as soon as you notice them. The hard part is deciding what to fix, and it gets pushed back when you are busy.
What to ask before you decide
Whichever you choose, these three questions help you avoid surprises.
- What does one small edit cost, and how long does it take?
- Who decides what to fix?
- Which numbers will show whether it worked?
Where we fit
We are building a service that lets AI decide what to work on. Each morning it will send one to three tasks, or none if there is no good idea that day, and you choose whether to apply them. It does not do rebuilds or major development, so an agency is the better fit when you need those.