Web Development Outsourcing: A Complete 2024 Guide
We draw from our many years of hiring and screening offshore web developers and software businesses to provide this in-depth guidance. You will discover the features and advantages of outsourcing web development, the kinds of services provided by outside vendors, and your four options for hiring web developers. In order to assist you in selecting the ideal team for your upcoming project, this article also covers the five steps of project outsourcing, the price of hiring a web developer in various nations, and a comparison of recruiting platforms with sophisticated screening procedures and sizable talent pools.
- What is Web Development?
- What is Web Development Outsourcing?
- What kinds of services are offered by web outsourcing firms?
- Which Approaches Do You Take When Hiring Web Developers?
- How Much Does Hiring a Web Developer Cost?
- Where to Find and Hire Web Developers?
What is Web Development?
The process of designing, developing, and managing websites for the Internet or private networks is known as web development. Websites can range in complexity from a single static text page to sophisticated e-commerce sites, social networking platforms, and web applications.
The non-design components of creating web services, like creating markup with HTML, applying styling with CSS, and coding with tools like Node.js and JavaScript, are typically covered by web development. Furthermore, web development may require little to no programming knowledge in order to create websites and add content using content management systems (CMS) like WordPress and Joomla.
What is Web Development Outsourcing?
The practice of hiring an outside vendor to manage a planned or ongoing web development project that was previously completed internally by the company’s own staff is known as web development outsourcing. Businesses choose to outsource in order to cut development expenses, free up additional duties and non-essential activities for the in-house team, or gain access to web developers with specialized knowledge and experience that might not be easily found in the neighborhood.
Let’s examine the most common forms of outsourcing, such as project-based outsourcing, staff augmentation, and employing a dedicated team, to gain a better understanding of how web development outsourcing operates.
- In project-based outsourcing, the supplier provides the client with a specification and an estimate of the project budget for approval. Following agreement on every detail of the project, the vendor assigns the required number of web developers to work under its supervision.
- With staff augmentation, clients can quickly scale up or down their own web development team because full-time software engineers work at outsourcing companies. In contrast to project outsourcing, the client is in charge of managing the enlarged team. Businesses use staff augmentation to decrease technical debt, expedite the development process, and relieve internal teams of non-essential work.
- Hiring a dedicated team implies a more involved role for the vendor in overseeing the outsourced project compared to staff augmentation. In the context of a website’s visual and aesthetic elements, it typically denotes a larger collaboration that can cover a wide range of software services, such as project management, quality assurance, business analysis, and web design.
What kinds of services are offered by web outsourcing firms?
Develop Custom Web Applications
Custom software development, in contrast to commercial off-the-shelf solutions, concentrates on a specific, well-defined set of needs. Better application performance, enhanced search engine optimization, and seamless integration with your company are the outcomes of a custom development approach.
An outline of the user journey and the features and technology required to enable it is the first step in custom development. In order to do this, the business studies the concept of the current business model, performs UX research, and studies the market.
Services for Web Integration
The process of integrating and managing data from several sources, including other websites, systems, or applications, is known as website integration. By doing away with the need to physically copy and paste data into important systems, website data integration helps you better understand your consumers and their behavior while also saving time and minimizing human error. Web connectors include things like securely transmitting real-time transaction data to a payment gateway, delivering data from contact forms straight to a CRM, and automatically importing newly signed users into your Mailchimp contact list.
Consultancy for Web Development
Professional guidance on web software architecture, design, development, and debugging is provided by web development consultants. They can also help integrate outside suppliers with internal development teams, evaluate software vendors, and offer hiring advice.
Aside from having a thorough understanding of programming languages, web frameworks, design principles, data analytics, and upgrading legacy systems, consultants also keep up with the most recent developments in web development. Businesses who need help with developing and improving their web software, migrating to the cloud, performing a user experience audit, putting an SEO plan into action, or customizing their website engage web development consultants.
New outsourcing services will keep developing as more web development trends emerge.
A Step-by-Step Guide for Web Development Outsourcing
These procedures could be different for other businesses and projects because, in most cases, clients work with the vendor to decide on the strategy, UX research, and development budget. However, for businesses who are outsourcing their web development, we offer the most important measures.
Step 1: Gather ideas and perform market research
Companies perform extensive market study and user experience (UX) research to determine what the needs and desires of a service or product’s end consumers are prior to defining the requirements for a web development project. Businesses also do business analysis to pinpoint areas for expansion and generate concepts to ascertain what sets their software apart from rivals.
Step 2: Identify the Needs and Goals of the Project
A list of the goals, techniques, resources, and web frameworks to be used is included in the requirements and description of the web project. It also specifies the kind of knowledge and expertise that is needed. To provide the web development vendor with clear expectations, the company’s technical leaders and hiring managers also formulate performance-based requirements.
Step 3: Choose Your Budget
Determine the amount of professionals who need to be hired, their pay scales, the hiring platform, and the commission that the outsourcing business will receive.
Step 4: Examine Hiring Platforms and Outsourcing Companies
Depending on the objectives and schedule of your project, you might investigate the following sample review websites and online platforms for recruiting web developers and development teams:
Appic Softwares: A platform for staff augmentation where qualified contractors can be hired on a full-time basis;
These websites are good if you’re trying to find independent web developers: Upwork, TopTal;
G2, Clutch: Look through online directories to identify an outsourcing company and give them the full project, or employ a specialized group.
Step 5: Make an Outsourcing Provider Shortlist
See a web development agency’s portfolio, industry experience, and client testimonials before choosing to get in touch and sign a contract. Additionally, you want to confirm if a marketplace or outsourced provider abides by data protection and intellectual property transfer contracts as well as global security requirements. You will reduce the number of web development companies on your shortlist by going over the previously specified criteria.
Which Approaches Do You Take When Hiring Web Developers?
Hiring Local vs. Nearshore and Offshore Web Developers
There are three possibilities for hiring web developers depending on where you live: you can trust an offshore developer, hire a nearshore software engineer, or look for local talent. While hiring local talent is more likely to include typical in-house hiring, the latter two choices are more frequently considered in the context of outsourcing.
Employing Web Developers Both Offshore and Nearshore
Companies can access a broader pool of developers through nearshore and offshore outsourcing, which helps bridge skill gaps in situations when the necessary talent is hard to come by in the local market. Outsourcing web development, as opposed to employing internally, saves money on recruiting and administrative expenses. It also releases the business from the responsibility of onboarding new employees and creating a long-term plan for their professional growth.
For these two possibilities, the hiring procedure is rather comparable. You start by searching for well-rated hiring platforms or development companies. Before engaging web development businesses, prospective clients can read customer ratings on B2B rating platforms like G2 and Clutch.
Employing Regional Web Designers
Web developers will typically join your team and work in the same office if you hire local talent. Members of the development team and other teams can now communicate more closely as a result. It is more convenient to schedule team calls when engineers are in the same time zone, regardless of whether they work remotely or in a hybrid model.
Typically, when we discuss hiring local developers, we are referring to the conventional hiring processes, including looking via job boards like Wellfound or Glassdoor or looking through LinkedIn for potential prospects.
In addition, as offline events appear to be gaining traction following the COVID pandemic, you might look for developers by organizing or participating in local hackathons and tech conferences. Lastly, you can approach headhunting companies to request an internal web developer.
Four Hiring Models for Web Developers
Staff Extension
Companies who find specific abilities unobtainable in the local market or need to swiftly add more talent to their web development team should consider staff augmentation. With this approach, businesses may avoid worrying about operational and administrative costs as development agencies use pre-screened software developers.
Businesses oversee contract developers and have direct communication with each one, much like they do with in-house developers. Furthermore, because team augmentation usually provides trial periods, safe intellectual property transfer, standardized, locally-compliant contracts, and data protection, it is just as safe as recruiting someone internally.
However, in order to align workflows and establish communication between in-house and remote teams, staff augmentation requires management attention throughout onboarding.
Delegating
When a business decides to outsource web development, it gets in touch with an agency, assesses the caliber of the engineering staff, and decides on the specifications and objectives of the project.
By contracting out the creation and upkeep of apps to other companies under the direction of their CTO or product owner, tech companies are able to concentrate on their core competencies.
Outsourcing, however, restricts the exchange of information and contact between the business and outside suppliers. Some features or scripts may be confusing to you if the supplier does not have up-to-date documentation. Furthermore, it could be challenging for the hiring organization to locate the ideal vendor in terms of size. Since a tiny outsourcing company is difficult to scale up or down, it will not have any room for expansion. Large outsourcing firms, on the other hand, might take a less customized approach, which could lead to increased expenses.
Working for yourself
Businesses use independent contractors to finish small jobs and temporary projects. Hiring freelancers has many benefits, chief among them the abundance of platforms such as Upwork that offer hundreds of professionals ready to begin a web project.
Freelancers are the fastest employment kind, however there is a danger of project delays and cancellations with this hiring approach. Freelancers frequently juggle several projects, and the quality of their work may not satisfy the client’s expectations, in contrast to dedicated outsourcing teams and contractors. Unlike with employees or full-time contractors, tech organizations do not have the same level of control over independent contractors.
Internal Hiring as an Alternative to Outsourcing
Despite the fact that outsourcing can save expenses, businesses don’t always decide to do so. For instance, a project might need the utmost level of security and secrecy, and it might be challenging for the business to talk to an outside vendor about these concerns. Organizations that place a high value on expedited team communication can also want to keep all web developers on staff. Last but not least, during the core development stage, recruiting internally is the most popular choice.
This kind of hiring, however, can take a while because, in addition to the requirements for candidates, employers also need to develop a thorough onboarding and career development plan for internal staff members and match each candidate’s experience and skills with the company’s long-term objectives to guarantee that their knowledge will be useful in upcoming projects.
How Much Does Hiring a Web Developer Cost?
Based on information taken from Glassdoor, we have put up a list of yearly wages for web developers. The “most likely range” between the 25th and 75th percentiles of all available pay data for a web developer position is what we have selected for this worksheet.
| Country | Minimum salary, USD | Median salary, USD | Maximum salary, USD |
| United States | $64,000 | $82,000 | $105,000 |
| Canada | $41,000 | $51,000 | $64,000 |
| Germany | $48,000 | $58,000 | $69,000 |
| United Kingdom | $38,000 | $48,000 | $65,000 |
| Poland | $24,000 | $36,000 | $63,000 |
| Ukraine | $24,000 | $41,000 | $60,000 |
| Turkey | $6,000 | $11,000 | $24,000 |
| India | $4,800 | $11,000 | $18,000 |
*Annual salary for web developers, broken down by experience level. The Glassdoor source.
Additionally, we have computed the average hourly rates for contract developers who have registered on the Appic Softwares platform and indicated that their primary area of competence is web development.
| Country | Average hourly rate, USD |
| Ukraine | $40 |
| Poland | $54 |
| Greece | $50 |
| Mexico | $50 |
Where to Find and Hire Web Developers?
For businesses that need to rapidly progress their projects, scale up or down their web development staff, or assign non-essential jobs to outside contractors, we provide four solutions in this section for hiring web developers.
1. Appic Softwares
Scaling up or down web development teams rapidly is made easier for tech organizations by Appic Softwares. The platform serves as a single point of contact for hundreds of development organizations in Europe and Latin America with a united talent pool.
Appic Softwares interacts with the CEO, CFO, and project managers of the agency prior to adding it to the network, and its legal team conducts compliance checks on the organization’s past clients, legal history, and background.
For every available opportunity, Appic Softwares evaluates and thoroughly screens potential candidates in addition to evaluating their partner agencies. Every customer has a matched expert allocated to them who sticks by them for the duration of their working relationship with contractors, helping with onboarding, growing the team up or down, and managing replacements. Appic Softwares also automates billing and contract signing for software development companies’ clients.
Additionally, Appic Softwares offers its clients an AI assistant to assist in creating a personalized screening procedure according to the duties and skill set of each function. The assistant generates specific tech skill evaluations, coding exercises, and soft skill questions based on the project needs and the ideal candidate’s vision.
2. Arc
Codementor, an online platform for software development mentoring, gave rise to Arc.dev. Arc, which was developed on top of the active Codementor community, assists in the recruitment of web developers and technical consultants.
The platform provides part-time freelancers and permanent full-time engineers. Software developers produce a self-introduction video as part of the screening process, which Arc examines for suitability for remote work, English language competency, and communication abilities. Additionally, candidates participate in pair programming sessions and a tech interview.
Throughout the collaboration, the Arc team helps with developer project onboarding and does frequent assessments to make sure performance satisfies their quality requirements.
North America, Europe, and South America are home to the majority of Arc web developers.
3. Toptal
Toptal is a platform that provides independent web developers for projects involving vital software. A thorough language, personality, and communication interview as well as a technical interview to evaluate their problem-solving and skill-set are all part of the platform’s screening procedure. Each candidate also completes a real-world test project and takes live tests to gauge their level of coding proficiency.
In order to comprehend the client’s objectives, technical requirements, and team dynamics, Toptal finally allocates an industry expert to the client.
4. Turing
Turing is a marketplace for hiring that provides managed web development teams and full-time contractors. To give clients better insight into the work of remote developers, it offers time zone management, virtual daily stand-ups, and automatic time monitoring.
The business assesses developers’ proficiency in programming languages, data structures, algorithms, system architectures, and frameworks in addition to their command of the English language.
Due to the fact that the majority of Turing’s clients are located in the United States and operate on Pacific Standard Time (PST), web developers must have a 4-hour overlap within this timezone in order to facilitate effective communication.
Turing not only locates contractors that fit company specifications, but also provides IT services including data engineering, cloud migration, AI implementation, and application evaluation.
Conclusion
In 2024, outsourcing web development gives companies the chance to get affordable knowledge. In the always changing digital landscape, stay educated, adjust to trends, and take use of the advantages.
For your project, you can select a skilled full-stack developer from Appic Softwares. Our full-stack engineers have a wealth of global project experience and are highly skilled in soft skills.
You will be able to supply top-notch developers for your project if you choose to collaborate with them.
Why then the hesitation?
