Full Agency service or White Label Development; What’s right for you?

According to Clutch the average hourly rate for a web development agency is between £70 – £110 per hour, or between £525 – £825 per day, OR between £11,025 – £17,325 per month…So not cheap!!

The reason for this high cost is because you are generally paying for a full suite of services from Senior strategists, Solutions architects, Project managers, Account managers and various levels of Developer skill – alongside telephone, email and instant messaging support. So when you roll all of that in, the cost is justified.

However, not all businesses make use of the hidden services, or simply don’t need a full service solution. This is where looking at the ‘white label’ model can become appealing, in this model the hourly rates can actually start as low as £15 and go up to £30 for more senior developers. As you can see from our table below the difference is cost when looked at a full month is vast.

So why the difference? Well, in the white label model you need to think of it more like going out and hiring your own dedicated developer, but with the added benefit of having an agency wrapped around them. So for the lower hourly rate you get your own dedicated developer, access to the agencies tools (if you need them) and guarantees on developer skill level and reliability, but requires you to manage them as if you would any other member of your team / freelancer.

Which service is right for you?

If you are a small/medium sized business with limited internal knowledge and experience of web development then you will more than likely need an agencies full service. Unless you have a dedicated in-house project manager or individual that is going to be planning tasks, reviewing work and understands QA and testing procedures you will need the additional support that comes from a full agency solution. Also if you are not 100% sure what you want by way of a solution, then that’s when the senior team members of an agency come into play as they will work out solutions for problems and briefs.

However if you do have a larger team and individuals who have experience of web development project management then you may find you are paying for services you don’t really need. If you are already working with an agency and find that your team is creating and planning all tasks, specifying solutions, doing reviews and QA, communicating direct with developers and approving work for release – then you should probably start thinking about how to bring down your agency fees and get more development time for your money. Which is a White label / Dedicated Resource solution. In this scenario you will have access to the agencies wider team when required, but generally you will be managing the workload of your dedicated resource as-if they are working direct for you, you get full control over what tasks they work on, approving work and planning out project plans.

Want to find out more?

Here at SOtech we offer both services for new projects and ongoing development and support so are happy to discuss your requirements and even work up bespoke packages unique to your needs.