Choosing
Agency or freelancer for a website? What the Reddit threads say
Freelancer for a focused build where you can judge the work and you can live with one person’s availability. Agency when you need several disciplines at once and continuity matters more than cost. Small studio when you want agency breadth without paying for the account layer.
The failure modes are different and that matters more than the price: a freelancer’s risk is disappearing, an agency’s risk is you never speaking to whoever is doing the work.
This page is the Reddit side of the question. The full comparison, with a table setting the three side by side, is in the article Agency, freelancer or small studio: who should build your website?
Why people add “reddit” to this search
Because everyone selling you one of the three has an obvious interest in the answer, and it shows. Agency pages explain why freelancers are risky. Freelancer pages explain why agencies are bloated. Neither is lying exactly, and neither is useful.
We are a small studio, so read what follows knowing that. We have tried to write the version that is still useful if you go elsewhere.
What the threads actually say
Quotes below are from public discussions, kept short and linked to the original so you can read the full context rather than take our summary for it.
Work for a 100 person tech company as head of marketing, I prefer hiring agencies of 1.
So maximum a weeks work then charged 46k.
Fiverr is good if you hire the right people. First is to find someone who can communicate and understand.
What we would tell you, with the numbers
The question is not size, it is who touches the work. Ask directly: will the person I am speaking to be writing the code and the copy? At a lot of agencies the honest answer is no, and it is the single biggest predictor of whether the thing you described is the thing you get.
Continuity is the real agency premium. If your freelancer gets ill, the project stops. That is worth paying to avoid for some businesses and not others. Be honest about which you are.
Cheap and expensive both hide things. A low agency price often means juniors. A high freelance price often means they are busy, which is usually a good sign.
Ask what happens at the end. Who owns the code, the domain, the accounts. If final payment does not transfer everything outright, you are renting. Ours does, in writing.
The short version
Pick on three things: who does the work, what happens if they vanish, and whether the price is fixed before you start. Company size is a proxy for all three, and a poor one.
The longer write-up, with the full working: Agency, freelancer or small studio? Who does the work here, and who we are not right for, is on the about page.
Almost every price on this site is published and fixed in writing before work starts. We are Werehouse Holdings Ltd, company number 16802511, and you can check that.