Everything You Need to Know About WordPress Outsourcing

Professional WordPress development takes time, effort, and very specific knowledge. That’s why more and more businesses are turning to outsourcing the creation of their sites instead of hiring in-house teams, which costs significantly more to maintain over time.

If you are one of those businesses looking to find the right partner for your project, let’s explore everything about WordPress outsourcing and how it can benefit your business.

Key Takeaways

• WordPress outsourcing is hiring a freelancer or WordPress agency to build, design, or modify your site.
• The hourly rate of WordPress outsourcing can range from $15 to $250 per hour. We recommend staying in the $50 to $80 per hour range.

What is WordPress Outsourcing?

WordPress outsourcing involves hiring a WordPress developer or development agency to perform WordPress-related tasks, such as website design, development, maintenance, and optimization.

A WordPress development agency that provides outsourcing services can:

• Design and develop custom themes.
• Review your web designs (should you have any) and prepare them for development.
• Install and manage plugins so your site provides the features your users need.
• Create custom plugins that fulfill unique needs.
• Build ecommerce sites.
• Maintain your site over time (update WordPress, themes, plugins, etc.).
• Integrate into your team to provide long-term WordPress support.
• Manage security and backups.
• Optimize your site’s SEO and performance to bring in more traffic and improve the user experience.
• Migrate your site from one web hosting provider to another or from a different CMS to WordPress.

These services allow clients and digital agencies to delegate WordPress development duties without hiring full-time developers.

Who Provides WordPress Outsourcing Services?

Thousands of WordPress agencies and freelancers provide outsourcing services to global clients. Here are a few specific examples of who provides WordPress outsourcing services:

• Freelance developers. Independent WordPress experts available on platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, Toptal, etc.
• WordPress development agencies. Companies that specialize in WordPress design, development, and maintenance.
• Offshore IT firms. Large firms that provide multiple web development services, including WordPress.
• White label WordPress providers. WordPress agencies hired by other businesses (such as digital agencies) while staying anonymous to the website owner.

How Much Does it Cost to Outsource WordPress Development?

The hourly rate of outsourcing WordPress development varies widely depending on factors like:

• The agency’s location. Asia, Africa, and Latin America tend to be affordable compared to the rest of the world.
• The experience of the team involved. The more experienced, the higher the rate is likely to be.
• The agency’s targeted audience. For example, some agencies aim for low to mid-budget projects, while others have a hard minimum for their projects, such as $5,000.

As a result, the hourly rate can range from $15 to $250 per hour for worldwide WordPress agencies. However, there are many great WordPress agencies that operate in the $50 to $80 per hour range.

This is the range we recommend you seek since it provides the best balance between affordability and quality. While it can seem steep at first, you should consider that even though some regions of the world have relatively low wages compared to the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, etc., experienced developers still require high local wages.

Covering these wages would be extremely challenging while charging clients $15 to $40 per hour. As a result, seeking companies that charge around $50 to $80 per hour ensures that the agency’s developers are experienced and productive.

Here’s what you can expect to pay for outsourced WordPress development within the $50 to $80 per hour range.

Hourly rate ($)	Project cost, assuming 160 hours per month ($)
	1 month	3 months	6 months
50	8,000	16,000	24,000
60	9,600	19,200	28,800
70	11,200	22,400	33,600
80	12,800	26,600	38,400

These numbers give you an idea of what to expect from WordPress partners when planning to outsource your site’s development.

How to Choose the Right WordPress Outsourcing Partner

Choosing the right partner for your needs is very important. It determines what your experience will be like during development and the quality of the final result.

This decision can be challenging, especially if you have no experience outsourcing web development, but there are several criteria you can use to choose the right one for your needs.

Consider the following factors when choosing your WordPress outsourcing partner.

Client Reviews and Portfolio

The reputation of a WordPress development agency or freelancer tells you a lot about the impression they leave on its clients. Platforms like Clutch, Trustpilot, and DesignRush provide reviews from past clients.

Extensively read reviews for every partner you’re currently considering and look for specific details about how they communicate and treat clients throughout development.

Consider their portfolio, too. All reputable WordPress development agencies will provide an online portfolio or a list of case studies from past clients.

These resources will help you understand how they operate and determine whether they have the experience you need.

Avoid hiring the first WordPress developer or agency that comes up in search results. The fact that they are at the top of the results doesn’t necessarily mean they’re a good fit for your needs.

It mostly means they know how to optimize search result performance. This is, of course, good, because it means they could use their knowledge to boost your site. But it doesn’t necessarily mean they are the right partner for you.

Technical Knowledge and Experience

Look for agencies with extensive knowledge of the tools and frameworks WordPress sites can use.

Most WordPress sites use plain HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. On the other hand, some developers and agencies use frameworks like Next.js, Gatsby, and Astro, depending on their methods and the needs of the client.

Range of Services

Most reputable WordPress development partners offer the following services:

• Designing and building a WordPress website from scratch.
• Developing custom themes unique to your site.
• Reviewing your existing web designs and using them to develop your site’s theme.
• Developing custom plugins.
• Integrating your site with external services via APIs.
• Redesigning your site.
• Optimizing your site’s search engine rankings and performance.
• Providing ongoing WordPress support and maintenance.
• Developing ecommerce sites.

Whether They Use Site Builders

Some WordPress developers and agencies use plugins known as site builders, such as Beaver Builder or Elementor. These plugins allow non-technical developers to create websites with customizable drag-and-drop interfaces.

There are a few advantages to building a site with site builder plugins, including being budget-friendly and faster to build.

However, they have pitfalls such as having less control over the website’s code, suffering from potentially lower performance due to the extra JS code, and experiencing scalability issues (making it harder for your site to grow while maintaining performance and stability).

Depending on your site’s needs and intended uses, you may benefit from site builders due to the faster development time. On the other hand, if your site requires multiple custom functions, you’ll need your outsourcing agency to code it themselves.

The Agency’s Size and Availability

If you’re seeking agencies, their size influences how they communicate with clients and potential clients. On smaller agencies, you’ll likely communicate directly with the founders for preliminary meetings and project updates.

On larger agencies always handling multiple simultaneous projects, you’re more likely to  communicate with project managers or a similar representative. These larger agencies will provide more project availability, but their communications representative will likely be farther from the higher-ups.

In contrast, in smaller agencies, the founders will likely be more involved in every project. Still, given their size, they may only be available for new projects if they expand.

Regardless of the size, you should explore the team members who will work on your project. Many WordPress agencies have a page dedicated to their team members, experience, and skills.

Explore these pages and click on every team member to understand the agency’s overall skill set and determine whether they’ll be able to fulfill your needs.

Their Process and Strategic Vision

Reputable WordPress developers have a mature and efficient operational process and a clear strategic vision that helps structure their projects.

To understand how they work, look at their case studies. They’ll have a detailed description of the client’s challenges and the agency’s methods to overcome them. Case studies are a window into an agency’s inner processes and can help you determine whether you like their approach.

Once you establish contact with an agency, these are some of the subjects you can bring up to understand their processes and strategic vision:

• Ask them specific questions about the case studies relevant to your needs.
• Ask about how you’ll participate in the process. What part do clients play during development?
• Ask them about the various stages of the process, what they each involve, and the duration of each.

Cost-Effectiveness and Value

Ask for a quote when you’ve found a WordPress developer or agency that meets your needs. Based on the response, you need to determine how their costs compare to the other agencies from which you’ve received quotes.

If you have multiple quotes at various price ranges, choosing the one that costs the least may be tempting. However, you also need to consider the value of each of their propositions.

A more expensive project from a very experienced agency may provide more value for your website or a more scalable foundation for future growth.

You need to balance cost-effectiveness with the value they provide for your website. Ultimately, you know your budget better than anyone else and are in the best position to determine whether an investment will be worth it.

Should You Hire WordPress Freelancers or Agencies?

The decision between hiring freelancers and agencies depends on various factors.

One of the most important ones is the scale of the project. In most cases, a single freelancer will have a limited ability to take on a large project that will take months to complete.

On the other hand, agencies provide well-oiled teams with already established efficient processes to take on large websites.

Another factor is the cost. Freelancers will almost always be more affordable per hour than agencies since agencies have higher operating costs.

However, some offshore agencies can still have lower hourly rates than experienced freelancers in countries with high living costs (the U.S., Western Europe, etc.).

There are several more factors, so to bring them all together, the following table summarizes the pros and cons of outsourcing your WordPress development to freelancers and agencies.

	WordPress Agencies	WordPress Freelancers
Pros of Hiring	• Ability to take on large projects • A diversity of skills and specializations in various areas of we design and development • Access to project managers experienced in communicating with clients and keeping projects productive • A good fit for large, complicated websites • Can often quickly substitute a team member that left the project or needs time off	• Generally costs less than agencies • A good fit for small-scale projects, such as personal or small business sites • Freelancers who specialize in specific skills can be national or world leaders in what they do
Cons of Hiring	• Generally costs more than freelancers	• A limited ability to take on large projects • If the freelancer is unable to continue the project, it’ll take time and onboarding to bring a new one • Project management skills vary

Which One Should You Choose?

In general, you should hire WordPress freelancers for small, low-budget projects or extremely specialized projects with few alternatives.

On the other hand, you should hire WordPress development agencies for large projects with multiple phases that require a broad range of skills and an entire team to get done. These projects will generally be in the medium or high-budget range, given the time and coordination they take.

WordPress Outsourcing Services Help You Grow

WordPress outsourcing helps businesses save time, reduce costs, and improve efficiency in WordPress-related projects.

If you are considering outsourcing your WordPress site’s development, we encourage you to explore our services! Over the decade, we’ve built hundreds of WordPress sites and collaborated with top global agencies and individual clients, resulting in a Clutch review score of 4.9 out of 5.

Don’t settle for a one-size-fits-all solution. Partner with a team that understands your unique needs and has the skills to bring your vision to life.

Contact us today for a free consultation. Let’s talk about how we can take your WordPress project to the next level.