a freelance web designer compared

Hiring a freelancer or using a managed service: which one is still answering in month seven?

Hiring a freelancer is a genuinely good option and we are not going to pretend otherwise: you get one person who learns your business, often at a lower project price than an agency, and you can usually call them directly. The risks are availability and continuity. One person gets busy, takes a holiday, takes a full-time job or stops replying, and roofing has weeks where a change needs to happen the same day. A managed service trades the personal relationship for a team, a stated turnaround and work that happens without you asking.

See it built for your company Plans from $127

The short version

A good freelancer gives you a person who knows your business. A managed service gives you a team, a turnaround and cover when one person is unavailable.

Live in7 days
Speed90+ PageSpeed, guaranteed
Changes5 a month, 2 to 5 working days
Build fee$697, after launch

The project ends. The site does not

Most freelance work is scoped as a project: agreed pages, agreed price, delivered and handed over. Then the business changes. You add two towns, start doing metal retrofits, want the storm banner up on Tuesday and have forty new job photos. Each of those is a new conversation about scope and rate, and each one waits for someone with other clients. Roofing does not schedule its busy weeks around a freelancer's calendar.

What one person cannot cover

A managed plan is a team: whoever writes the articles is not the person who builds the pages, and neither of them is the person who answers your ticket. That is why a revision has a stated turnaround of 2 to 5 working days rather than "when I get a gap", and why a holiday does not stop your site being updated. It is the same reason you send two people to a roof.

What you lose, said honestly

You lose the direct line to one person who knows your business personally, and for some owners that relationship is worth more than a faster turnaround. You also lose the ability to negotiate a one-off price for a one-off job. If you have a freelancer who answers the phone and delivers, keep them. This page is for the roofing companies whose last three site people stopped replying.

Line by line, with nothing hidden

The same twelve dimensions on every comparison page, so you can hold two of them side by side. Where a competitor answer says "varies" or "depends", that is the honest answer rather than a dig.

a freelance web designer compared with a managed roofing contractor website
What matters	a freelance web designer	GetRoofingWebsite
Page speed and Core Web Vitals	As good as the person you hired, and unguaranteed after handover.	90+ guaranteed, monitored, and fixed at no charge if it slips.
SEO control	Depends on their skill set. Design freelancers and SEO specialists are rarely the same person.	Page architecture, content and technical work from the team that also built and hosts the site.
Schema and structured data	Often added at launch, and rarely maintained after it.	Generated per page type and maintained automatically as pages change.
AEO and GEO readiness	Usually outside a design project's scope unless you ask for it specifically.	Standard on every page, not a line item.
Hosting and security	Usually your own hosting account, or theirs, which becomes a problem if they disappear.	Included: Cloudflare hosting, SSL, CDN, DDoS protection, unmetered bandwidth.
Maintenance burden	Yours to chase, unless you agreed a retainer.	Ours, on a tracked turnaround, through a portal.
Who does the work	One person, with other clients and a calendar of their own.	A team, so no single person's week decides whether your site changes.
Content and blog	A separate cost, and rarely the same person who built the site.	2 to 3 researched articles a week, included in the fee.
Design quality	Can be outstanding, and varies enormously between individuals.	A roofing-specific design language, applied consistently across every page.
Accessibility and policy pages	Included only if specified in the brief.	Always included, written for your business.
Cost model	A project fee, then hourly or per-change afterwards.	$127 a month plus a $697 build fee after launch. No hourly rate anywhere.
Lock-in and ownership	Usually good if you own the hosting and the domain. Bad if they hold either.	Domain registered in your name from day one, content yours, export on cancellation.

When each one is the right answer

When hiring a freelancer is the better choice

You already know someone reliable who understands roofing and answers the phone.
You want one very specific thing built and then left alone.
You have a marketing person in-house who can brief and manage them properly.
A one-off project budget suits you better than a monthly subscription.

When the managed service is the better choice

You have been left with a half-finished site by somebody who stopped replying.
You need changes during storm week, not when somebody has a gap.
You want content published every week without commissioning it.
You want one predictable number instead of a quote per change.

Not either or

If you already have a freelancer

Plenty of our clients keep one for things outside our scope: truck wraps, print, photography, ad campaigns. What moves to us is the website itself, its hosting and its upkeep. If they built your current site, we ask for access rather than going around them, and we redirect every URL they built so their work keeps earning.

Access requested properly, with your permission, not scraped behind their back.
Their pages reviewed and rebuilt where they are working.
Redirects from every old URL, so nothing they achieved in search is thrown away.

Dale Whitmer

Owner, residential roofing company

Waco, TX

The old site had one page for the whole county. Now every town we work has its own page, and the estimate form asks for an address instead of a novel. That alone changed how many people actually finish it.

A page for every town, and a short estimate form

Sample review

Illustrative examples. These are sample reviews written to show the kind of feedback this service gets, not quotes from named clients, and they carry no ratings or review counts. Verified client reviews replace them as they are collected.

Questions about a freelance web designer and this build

My freelancer built the site but has stopped replying. Can you help?

Yes, and it is a common reason people call. If you own the domain we can proceed even without their cooperation, rebuilding from the live site and redirecting the old URLs.

What if my freelancer owns my hosting or domain?

Get the domain into your own name first; that is the one thing you should never leave with somebody else. We can point a new domain at the site and set up redirects if the old one cannot be recovered.

Is a monthly fee more expensive than a freelancer over a year?

It depends on how many changes you make and whether content is included. A project fee plus a year of changes and a writer is usually in the same range, and the managed fee is predictable.

Can I still use my freelancer for other work?

Of course. Photography, print, ads and branding sit outside what we do, and plenty of clients keep someone for exactly that.

Who do I talk to when something is wrong?

Your client portal, where every request is tracked, and a person replies. You are not depending on one individual having a free evening.

How fast is a change, really?

Within 2 to 5 working days of us having what we need, whatever the size of the request. 5 a month are included.

Do you write the content too, or is that extra?

It is included. Every plan carries researched, sourced articles every week, written for roofing and your service area.

What happens if I want to leave?

Cancel by email with the notice in our terms. Your domain is transferred wherever you want at no charge and we send an export of your content within 14 days.

No individual or company is named on this page. It compares the freelance hiring model in general with a managed service.

We keep these pages factual. Products change, so if something here is out of date,tell us and we will correct it.

See the site before you decide anything

A live walk-through of the build for a roofing contractor like yours, in about 30 minutes. Plans from $127 a month, the $697 build fee invoiced only after launch.

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