App Development Agency vs Freelancer

When a freelancer is the right call

Tepia is an agency, and the honest start to this comparison is that freelancers are often the better hire. For a clickable prototype to test with customers, a single well defined feature in an app you already have, a website, or a scripted integration, a freelancer will usually deliver faster and cheaper than any agency including Tepia.

Freelancers also make sense when you have technical leadership in house. If your CTO can write the spec, review the code and own the architecture, a freelancer is capacity, not a partner, and capacity is cheap.

The risk with a freelancer is not skill. It is concentration: one person holds the design, the code, the schedule and the knowledge, and when that person takes a full time job, gets sick or moves on, your project stops. Tepia takes over apps in exactly that state regularly.

When an agency is the right call

An agency earns its premium when the project needs more than one discipline at once and needs to survive any one person leaving. Tepia assigns a project manager, a design lead, an engineering lead, hand picked engineers and QA to each engagement, so design, backend, mobile and testing proceed in parallel and no single departure halts the work.

• The app has to pass App Store and Google Play review and handle subscriptions, in app purchase rules and privacy disclosures correctly the first time.
• Payments or regulated data are involved. PCI scoping through Stripe or Square, HIPAA aware architecture with BAAs and audit logs, GDPR and CCPA handling. Tepia has done this repeatedly; most freelancers have not.
• You need iOS, Android and a web admin portal together, which is three skill sets, or a backend that has to scale.
• You do not have a technical leader to write specs and review code, so you need the agency’s leadership as well as its hands.
• The product will live for years and needs a team that answers the phone after launch.

Participant Media’s Director of IT said of Tepia: “If I could build an in-house team, it would be exactly like them.” That breadth is what you are paying for.

How Tepia approaches an engagement compared to a solo developer

The structural difference is process. A freelancer starts coding; Tepia runs six phases with named deliverables, which is slower to start and faster to finish well.

1. Discovery. System investigation, user interviews and third party integration review. Deliverables: Investigation Summary, Interview Summary and User Stories, which become the written scope. Typically 1 to 3 months, shorter with a spec or designs.
2. Design. Design questionnaire, moodboards, style guide, detailed wireframes and sample designs for every screen, reviewed with you before a line of production code.
3. Development and Testing. Alpha and Beta schedules with test plans covering functional, user acceptance and non functional testing, run by people other than the engineers who wrote the code.
4. Training. In person and remote hands on sessions built around user story scenarios so your staff can run the admin tools.
5. Launch. Data migration, transition from any old system, store submission and Tepia support reps on rollout day.

Tepia also takes over apps that freelancers built and left. That work starts with a code and infrastructure review and is covered on the app maintenance and support page.

Questions to ask either option before you sign

Whether you choose a freelancer or Tepia, ask the same questions and get the answers in writing.

• Who owns the code, the designs and the app store accounts? (With Tepia: you.)
• What happens if the lead developer is unavailable for a month? (With Tepia: the engineering lead reassigns within the team.)
• Who tests the app, and against what plan? (With Tepia: written functional, user acceptance and non functional test plans.)
• Can I see two comparable apps you shipped and speak to the clients? (Tepia’s portfolio includes Daily Hope, MNC Go, The Work App and Maximum Controls.)

Tepia’s fuller checklist is in how to choose an app development company. Review Tepia’s services and process, or contact Tepia for a written scope you can compare against any other bid.

Frequently asked questions