How WordPress Outsourcing Can Help Scale Your Agency

WordPress development outsourcing is becoming more frequent and affordable every day, helping global digital agencies of all sizes scale their services without the long-term investment of hiring an in-house team.

In this article, we’ll explore the 5 main ways outsourcing WordPress development helps your agency scale up as needed, how to choose the right WordPress outsourcing partner, and how to determine when you need a freelancer or an agency.

Key Takeaways

• WordPress outsourcing partners give you quick access to skilled teams, save you the costs of building your own team, and help you finish projects faster.
• When choosing your outsourcing partner, consider their track record with previous projects via online reviews, the services they provide, and the cost of hiring them compared to competitors.
• Hire freelancers for short, simple projects, but hire agencies when you need help with projects that will take longer (several months or more) and require a wide range of skills.

5 Ways WordPress Outsourcing Scales Your Agency

Quick Access to Skilled Teams

WordPress outsourcing allows you to quickly access highly skilled developers, QA analysts, project managers, and designers with years of experience. This helps your internal team become more capable of achieving WordPress-related goals.

It also gives you access to new clients who need some of your services (marketing, content creation, design, etc.) but also need WordPress development. It is much more efficient and cost-effective to outsource these services to experts than it is to set up your own in-house development team.

Overall, these are some of the services and skills that outsourcing WordPress development tasks gives you access to:

• Design and development of custom themes.
• Installation and management of plugins so your site provides the features your users need.
• Development of custom plugins that fulfill unique needs.
• Development of ecommerce sites.
• Long-term maintenance for your site (fixing bugs, updating WordPress, themes, plugins, etc.).
• Integration into your team to provide long-term WordPress support.
• Manage security and backups.
• Optimization of SEO and performance to bring in more traffic and improve the user experience.
• Migration from one web hosting provider to another or from a different CMS to WordPress.

These services enrich your agency and make it more capable of overcoming WordPress-related challenges.

Cost Savings

Hiring full-time employees can be expensive due to salaries, benefits, and overhead costs.

WordPress developers earn a wide range of salaries depending on their experience, specific roles, and other factors. As a result, a full-time WordPress developer can earn anywhere from $37,500 per year to $150,000 per year.

More specifically, junior developers (under 2 years of experience) can earn around $40,000 per year, while expert WordPress developers (over 5 years of experience) can earn up to $150,000 per year. These salaries are even higher if we add benefits and overhead.

Depending on your needs, these costs may be a good trade-off for the value you get out of their skills. However, many agencies don’t need an in-house WordPress developer for most of the year.

In these cases, outsourcing WordPress development when needed can be much more cost-effective.

In our experience, most WordPress projects are completed within a couple of months, so outsourcing development for a cost of $50 to $100 per hour is much more affordable than hiring and onboarding a developer full-time.

In fact, according to data by Deloitte, 70% of companies that outsource software development do so to save on cost. It’s the most common motivation for outsourcing software development.

Faster Project Turnaround

With a dedicated outsourcing team handling most aspects of development, your agency can complete projects more efficiently.

Hiring and onboarding developers could take weeks or months, so having quick access to WordPress experts leads to quicker turnaround times, satisfied clients, and the ability to take on more work without overburdening your internal team.

It Lets You Focus on Core Business Activities

Outsourcing WordPress tasks allows your in-house team to focus on the activities they are best at, such as web design, project management, marketing, content creation, etc. This helps position your agency for sustained growth.

The Ability to Expand or Reduce Services According to Your Needs

When demand for projects changes, outsourcing allows you to scale up or down as needed. This means that you can enter contracts that last exactly as long as you have the need for WordPress experts.

As a result, you don’t have to pay for developers when you don’t need them for projects. But you do have the possibility of accessing their skills quickly if you were to need them again.

The best part is that you don’t need to be a big company to hire third parties for these skills since outsourcing is becoming more widespread and affordable.

Many offshore companies charge very reasonable rates and allow you to start projects with only one developer by your side, flexible cancellation terms, and minimal setup costs.

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 it leaves 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

Reputable WordPress development partners offer a wide range of services. Ask about any services that may be relevant to your project, such as custom theme or plugin development, integration with external services, optimizing performance, etc.

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 Outsource WordPress Tasks With 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 projectsIf 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.

Find the Right Outsourcing Partner for Your Needs

WordPress outsourcing is an alternative to building your own development team that helps you save costs and scale your business without greatly increasing operating costs.

If you are considering outsourcing your WordPress site’s development, we encourage you to explore our services! Over the past 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, and let’s talk about how we can take your WordPress project to the next level.