The Web or Mobile App Freelancer

Typically you will find them in carousell, gumtree directory, or even in Fiverr and Toptal. It is the cheapest option to build your website or app but there are a few things you need to take note of before hiring them.

First, they often have a full-time job and developing your project in their side free time. This means they are unable to fully commit to your project and have the highest rate of project abandonment. You might have issues contacting them to get urgent changes done fast.

The Outsourced Web or Mobile App Agency

This will either be a company comprises of salespersons who are not IT trained in Singapore. The salesperson will make many promises throughout the process of discussing with you and outsource the project to an overseas company. It is important to understand that working with the company will be time-consuming and even frustrating. As they are only salesmen, they are unable to provide real technical consultancy to you or understand your business needs. Some of them don't even know simple HTML or understand a database ER diagram design. In the worst case, as they outsource to an overseas company like India or Vietnam they are unable to comply with PDPA requirements nor understand web security causing you to have a huge risk in a data breach and fall into trouble with PDPC resulting in huge fines.

It is fine if the salesperson or project manager has the necessary technical experience in web security and PDPA compliance to ensure your project is secured and is able to advise you instead of just taking instruction from you. Simply ask the salesperson or project manager their educational background and check if they have the necessary knowledge to ensure smooth project delivery as you do not want them to simply throw all the requirements to the overseas company and expect the outsourced company to plan everything.

There are cases where the agency keeps changing outsourced vendors and chose the cheapest option causing huge havoc to the project. This often results in poor coding with poor performance or no security planned and even storing the wrong data. The red flag will be no discussion like what is in the maintenance contract provided or how they will comply to protecting your project from a data breach and you feel that you are doing more of the quality control for them finding bugs etc. Typically their portfolio consists of mostly brands that you do not know.

This kind of agency is common as anyone can set up a web agency and outsource as there is no regulation in place by IMDA or IDA yet.

The Local Boutique Web or Mobile App Development Agency

This is the local development company staffed with skilled talents such as creative director, project manager, programmers, designer, and DevOps, etc. Their prices are generally higher than an outsourced agency but they will have more synergy, generally produces award-winning portfolios, and willing to run an extra mile for your projects. You will be able to connect with them and even meet up with the developer personally more often than an outsourced agency as they have to wait for their outsourced team to come back to them in a different time zone.

The local agency might consist of a few employees who are also the founders of the company doing the development for you. They are able to take only a limited project due to their size but are able to deliver a higher quality of work as they develop it themselves with pride.

The Big Web or Mobile Development Agency

The big agency has instant credibility. They don’t have to spend significant time in the sales process building trust like a local web agency. 

Their system typically works like this: A senior staff member makes the sale, then delegates the work to junior staff members, and the process repeats. Junior staff at these agencies have power—they made the cut to be employed by the agency, so why not trust them? But keep in mind that you may be billed at double the rate of a boutique agency for those junior team members who actually have half the practical experience. That’s not really a customer-friendly formula.

Big agencies survive on very high billing levels. Sometimes they invent new parts of the process to increase their billing. The example project would be quoted starting at $100,000—and it’s actually a steal. Since those billable hours all have to be accounted for, it will result in your project taking WAY TOO LONG.

The Offshore Web or Mobile App Development Agency

This is the satellite web or mobile app development company that is based overseas and soliciting sales in Singapore. They might have only one or two salesmen in Singapore and you have to communicate with their team overseas for your project. It might be frustrating with setbacks in conveying your idea across and dealing with timezone gaps and language barriers. As they are not in Singapore, they are most likely not certified in PDPA nor understand the requirements required in Singapore.

Some of the offshore companies consist of 350 staff in strengths. This figure might look good but you might have to talk to a system analyst, a project manager, a business manager, etc to get your idea through and every resource is chargeable. Such companies don’t have to practice high ethical standards and their business is based on mass production with some focus on client’s success in mind.

The Local Web or Mobile Application Development Consulting Agency

This is where an agency like us comes in. The agency provides holistic consultancy first to your project via technology and business consultancy. This allows your project to be consulted by certified consultants in Singapore to ensure there is leverage in your project scope to hit KPI and planning all the technical system flow and logic right here in Singapore. Your project will be planned again with two more layers of consultancy which are Data Privacy by Design and a Web Data Security Plan to comply with data privacy compliance. 

Once you are confident of the project plan, the agency can develop it in-house or recommend qualified vendors and ensure that it is built according to the certified consultant's direction. This method ensures that your project incorporates best practices with experience of successful projects that are implemented by certified consultants.

If you are looking for an ecommerce project, find a Web or Mobile Development Agency who have build a single project that produces million dollar in transactions than an agency that produces many many ecommerce projects.