How to choose the right way to fix your website

It became obvious that your website is a growth bottleneck. Now what?

Most teams jump straight to "find a top agency" or even "hire an A-level team", often without fully understanding what they're actually buying, eventually ending up overpaying for the wrong solution, or underpaying and getting exactly what that buys. Stuck in the feeling that you are about to move a bottom piece of a wobbly Jenga tower.

This guide outlines the reality of each option, describes its characteristics, and helps you choose the right path for your situation.

There's no single best answer, at least not one that applies to everyone. A $500 template site is the right call for some companies, while a $30k consultancy engagement is the right call for others. The goal of this guide is to take you to a single solution that best fits your needs.

Let's look at the options:

1. DIY
2. In-house hire
3. Freelancers
4. Generalist agency
5. Specialized consultancy

Option 1 / DIY

Planning to have a founder or someone on your team build the site using a no-code template-based builder? This path makes sense when you're early, still validating your offer, and need something functional without spending much.

It's also viable if someone on your team genuinely has design and development skills, and you won't need external help beyond tutorials and maybe a few hours of paid consulting.

The tradeoff is time and ceiling. Time, because even simple sites take longer than expected when it's not your core skill. Ceiling, because templates get you to "functional" but rarely to "impressive." For early-stage companies still finding their footing, functional is enough. For companies trying to close serious deals or compete against well-funded players, the gap shows.

Option 2 / In-house hire

You hire someone full-time to own the website internally. On paper, this gives you full control: someone dedicated to your site, available whenever you need them, deeply embedded in your business context.

Reality, however, is a bit more nuanced.

A website that drives growth requires strategy, design, development, and ongoing optimization. That's rarely one person. A designer who can also code, while growing in popularity, is still somewhat uncommon. A developer who has an advanced sense of conversion is even less common. Someone who can do strategy, design, build, and optimize? You're looking at a unicorn hire or multiple roles.

This path makes sense for companies with continuous, high-volume website needs: constant landing pages, frequent product launches, and dedicated experimentation programs. If you're shipping new pages weekly and the website is core to your growth engine, the math starts to work. If you need one rebuild and occasional updates, you're paying for capacity you won't use.

Option 3 / Freelancers

You hire external specialists to execute the project: a designer, a developer, maybe a copywriter or strategist. You find them through referrals, Dribbble, Upwork, or your network. You brief them, manage the timelines, and stitch the pieces together.

Notice the plural. A website that performs requires multiple disciplines. At a minimum, you need design and development. If your team can handle strategy, copy, and project management internally, two freelancers might be enough. If not, you're coordinating three or four people who've never worked together before.

This path works well when you have a clear scope, defined deliverables, and someone internally with bandwidth to run the project. The quality ceiling is high since some of the best talent works freelance. But you're paying for execution, not guidance. If you're not sure what you need, you will rarely get it.

The biggest tradeoff is coordination. Each additional freelancer adds communication overhead. Handoffs between designer and developer can go smoothly or turn into weeks of back-and-forth. You're the one making sure everyone's aligned, and that takes more time than most teams expect.

Option 4 / Generalist agency

A full-service agency handles the project end-to-end. Typically offering branding, web design, development, and sometimes marketing, content, and SEO bundled together. One team, one contract, one point of contact.

The appeal is obvious: you don't have to coordinate freelancers or manage multiple relationships. They've done this before, they have a process, and they'll handle the details. For companies who genuinely need multiple things at once, like a rebrand plus a website plus a marketing strategy, this simplicity has real value.

The tradeoff is cost, speed, and focus. Generalist agencies serve many types of clients with many types of needs. Your project gets slotted into their process alongside brand identities, app designs, and marketing campaigns. Timelines stretch because their process is built for thoroughness, not speed. And you often pay for capabilities you won't use simply because that's how they package their services.

There's also the team question. Senior people sell the project. But who actually does the work? At larger agencies, it's often junior team members executing while senior talent moves on to the next pitch. Not always, but often enough to ask.

Option 5 / Specialized consultancy

In the website space, this might mean a team that only works in Webflow, only serves B2B SaaS, or specifically focuses on building websites that marketing teams can operate without dev dependency.

Unlike freelancers, a specialized consultancy brings a team. Strategy, design, development, and enablement working together, with people who've collaborated before. Unlike generalist agencies, they've chosen a lane. Their process, pricing, and output are all built around solving one type of problem well.

This means faster timelines since they specialize in solving it. It means more opinionated guidance since they're not waiting for you to figure out what you want. And it often means better value for the specific problem they solve since you're paying for expertise, not overhead.

The tradeoff is scope. A specialized consultancy won't help with things outside its focus. If you need a full rebrand, a content strategy, and a paid media program alongside your website, you'll need to look elsewhere, bring in additional partners, or explore if they have solid recommendations. They're not trying to be everything to everyone, which is both a strength and a limitation.

Match the path to your situation. Then commit.