Agency, freelancer, or in-house: who should look after your website?

Once you accept that a website needs looking after rather than just launching, the next question arrives immediately: by whom?

There are four realistic answers. None of them is universally right, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you their own answer. What is true is that each one fails in a specific, predictable way, and knowing which failure you are signing up for is most of the decision.

Getting this wrong is not a small thing. 39% of people say they have walked away from a business because its website was poor or missing (DreamHost). Whoever ends up responsible for your site is, in a quiet way, responsible for a slice of your revenue.

The short version, if you are in a hurry:

If your website is...	Best fit
A formality nobody really visits	In-house or DIY
Fine, but needs the occasional fix	A freelancer
A big, complex build with real budget	A traditional agency
Genuinely bringing in business, and needs to keep improving	A dedicated support team

The rest of this article is why. If you already know which row you are, skim straight to it.

The four realistic options

Where each one falls down

DIY fails through neglect. Not because you are incapable, but because you are busy. The website is always the thing that can wait until next week, and next week has a habit of lasting two years.

Freelancers fail through absence. They are excellent right up until they are on holiday, ill, overloaded with a bigger client, or simply gone. And because everything lived in one person's head, you are starting from zero.

Agencies fail through indifference. Not deliberately. You are just a small line on a big spreadsheet, so senior attention goes to the accounts that pay the most, and yours goes to whoever is junior and free.

Support teams fail through complacency. A retainer can quietly become a subscription for doing very little. This is exactly why you should insist on seeing what was done with every hour, and never sign a long lock-in.

How to actually choose

Forget what each option is called. Ask one question instead: how much does this business depend on its website? The honest answer points straight at the right choice.

Where we sit, and where we do not

We are the fourth option, so it would be strange to pretend we are neutral. What we can do is be honest about who we are not for.

If your website is a formality that nobody visits, do not hire us. If you need someone once a year to fix a broken link, do not hire us, you will pay for time you do not use. And if you are commissioning a huge enterprise platform, we are not the right size for you either.

We are the right answer for one situation: the website matters to the business, it needs to keep getting better rather than merely staying online, and you want senior people who know your site doing that work every month. If that is not you, one of the other three is genuinely the better call, and we would rather tell you that than take your money.

If you are in the UK and the fourth option is where you land, working with a team outside the UK raises its own practical questions, covered separately.

Frequently asked questions

Is a freelancer cheaper than an agency?

Per hour, almost always yes. Over a year, not necessarily. A freelancer is cheap until you factor in the gaps: the weeks they are unavailable, the skills they do not have, and the time you spend project-managing them yourself. Cheap per hour and expensive per outcome are not the same thing.

What happens if my freelancer disappears?

This is the single biggest risk of the freelancer route, and it is worth planning for before it happens. Make sure you personally own your domain, your hosting and your website logins, and that nothing is registered in their name. If all the keys to your website live with one person, you do not really own your website.

Why do agencies put junior people on smaller accounts?

It is economics rather than malice. Agencies are built around large projects, and senior time is allocated to the accounts that pay the most. If you are a small retainer in a big agency, you are rarely the priority, and the work usually goes to whoever is most junior and most available.

Can I mix and match these options?

Yes, and many businesses do. A common and sensible arrangement is to handle simple content updates in-house while a support team looks after everything technical and keeps the site improving. The thing to avoid is having nobody clearly responsible, because that is how websites quietly rot.