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These days finding web developers with necessary programming and soft skills seems to be a simple task. There are thousands of web development agencies on the market. They all have a company website that can be accessed easily. However, when you start searching for a perfect team to build your project, you realize that it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. The choice is so wide, there are so many websites that making a final decision becomes a real problem.
So by now you may be wondering where you should start. What criteria should you take into account while making your choice? Well, we know the struggle and we really want to make it easier for you.
Therefore in this blog post we will provide you with the step by step guide on hiring web developers. We will also answer to the aforementioned and many more other questions, so in the end you will be able to choose a right agency and hire web developers to build your solution.
Tips on how to find web developers
To begin with, you need to ask yourself a couple of important questions. Do I need one good web developer, several web developers or a cohesive web development team? What is my budget for the upcoming web app development? What kind of web solution do I need and what features are mandatory?
Once you’ve decided what web development team is suitable for your exact needs, what next project you are going to build and what your requirements are, it is time to proceed with looking for your web development team.
There are a few ways to get web developers services:
- You can gather an in-house team.
- You can delegate web development to a freelancer.
- You can outsource web development of your project.
Based on our experience, we can say that the first option is rather time-consuming and expensive, especially if you don’t have an in-house CTO and can’t organize project management or control the quality of work by yourself. The second option is too risky and chances are that you will have to deal with challenging development process and get not so perfect solution.
And the third outsourcing option offers a great price/quality ratio. You get top web developers of necessary qualification who can build beautiful websites, mobile friendly solutions, and web apps. Your web development team will definitely have some past work examples to show you and prove their expertise, the team members will be goal-oriented and self motivated, plus there will be time tracking tools and you can be sure that you will pay only for their hours spent on building your project. No extra costs, no extra nerves.
In fact, you can save time and at least 50% of your costs by outsourcing. We will get back to all pros and cons of all three options a little bit later, and now let’s proceed to no less important step on your way to start web development.
Explore reliable platforms
Before hiring any web developers, you need to surf the market, see what options are available, compare them and choose the most suitable web development partner. There are several trustworthy platforms that can make your research much easier. Let’s take a look at a shortlist of platforms that rate web development companies and have all crucial information:
GoodFirms
For example, our rate on GoodFirms is 5 and we are proud to be among the best companies. By looking at our page you can see our hourly rates, minimum project size, number of technicians we have. All this information helps you to decide with what company to start cooperation.
Clutch
You can check our profile there to see how everything is organized and what services we specialize in. Our rate on Clutch is 4.9 based on 33 reviews of our satisfied clients.
Awwwards
So by looking through different projects on Awwwards you can get an idea of what the teams are capable of – what website and logo design they create, for what business projects, what trends they follow, how their own web page looks like, and so on. It’s a great way to find experienced developers who have been developing websites for small businesses and huge companies for years.
Define your project and choose cooperation model
You need to think about your project before starting cooperation with any web developers or full stack developers of your choice. All web development projects are different, and without knowing your project size and goals, it is hard to decide which team will suit your project the best. Here are the main types of web projects:
#1 A simple web project
It includes building a simple website, or integrating additional features to the existing one. These features might be a contact form, a CTA button, a new template design, a subscription button, and so on. For such kind of a project you do not need a senior web developer, so you can hire a couple of middle ones and get great results.
#2 Medium complexity web projects
Such solutions may include the development of static or dynamic web apps, online stores, and other services that require integration of other solutions such as CRM, CMS, various databases, AI chatbots, and others. Also for medium complexity solutions, project management means a lot. So it is better to hire a team that has PMs who will take care of everything and control all achieved milestones during a set time frame.
#3 Large-sized web projects
Among them there are such as ecommerce stores, social networks require not only a bunch of sophisticated technologies but also integration with cloud hosting servers to store all their user data and process it in real time. If you are starting a huge project, make sure you hire only highly experienced front end developers and back end developers, and also a visionary web designer.
At this stage, you also need to define your specific business challenges, the reason you need to find web developers in the first place. For example, you may need a full team to develop a project from scratch, or maybe your goal is to extend your in-house team, or you just require an implementation of a new technology but lack some specialists.
Depending on your current business challenge and need, you will end up choosing the most suitable cooperation model:
- dedicated development team;
- team extension;
- total project outsourcing;
- managed team.
We have covered all these models in one of our posts, so take a couple of minutes to read it carefully. Whatever cooperation type you’ll choose, after hiring web developers from our team you can be sure that your project will be of highest quality.
Our experts strive to optimize your project by offering a discovery stage. It is a pre-development activity that includes gathering all information and holistic research. We offer a consultation with our Business Analyst who helps to define business goals and choose the best solution for your project.
So as a result, the client receives correctly defined project requirements, tech stack and programming languages, specifications, and design concepts. This is very important as well-written technical documentation helps to avoid numerous development risks and technical issues, achieve better understanding with the team, save time and make development process seamless.
Criteria to hire web developers
To choose the right team for your project, you need to use an integrated approach. So you should pay attention to many factors that include but are not limited to:
For example, here at Altamira, we focus on several domains and can be sure that we have enough experience to be your reliable web development partner and guide in the following areas:
- web and mobile applications for business,
- social networks and corporate LMS systems,
- Fintech and online banking apps,
- SaaS solutions for business,
- healthcare solutions,
- marketing and HR tools,
- travel and booking portals,
- Internet of Things,
- educational websites, etc.
Our expertise lies in cloud solutions, embedded software, Machine Learning & AI, DevOps and BI & Data Science. And here is the list of other technologies that we use:
Technological experience
Altamira is a custom web development partner with innovative technologies that bring the digital transformation benefits to your business. Our team has experience in mobile and web development in a wide range of different industries, outsourcing for startups by bringing such services as:
- development of MVP,
- web development of software from scratch,
- software modernization and integration,
- discovery stage for all projects;
- dedicated and team extension services,
- business digitalization,
- design services,
- software maintenance.
No matter which criteria you choose to use, the crucial indicators of a reliable team are always the same. And here they are:
Portfolio
By choosing a partner, the first thing to look at is surely their website and the portfolio section there. Portfolio helps to understand what industries the company works with and what experience it has. Browsing through their cases, pay attention not only to design but also to the technologies used, business goals of the project (if mentioned), and all the additional information available. Your task is to understand whether the web development team has the relevant expertise to complete your own project.
At Altamira, we have more than 200 clients over 10 years of work, 700 projects successfully completed by our software engineers. We develop web and mobile apps for different business industries and there are many outstanding cases in our portfolio. We are also experienced in web portal development. Here are our cases we are proud of:
- CTRL Golf is an IoT-powered mobile app that helps players to play golf or to improve golf playing skills. It was developed on the idea of training statistics.
- INCINQ is a multifunctional blind date app with a big range of features; it was developed with the help of php7 technology.
- HDR Print is an app for a printing company that allows to manage orders and optimize order placements. It offers a very useful calculator widget that improves the overall customer experience on the website.
- ZempCenter is a sales mobile app that was developed for the business intelligence industry; it helps to structure the processes of sales reports.
- Leo is a complex construction management system that helps employees to manage a full flow of stone production.
Reviews and references
Check out whether the web development team has positive reviews. Satisfied clients and their reviews are proof of a company’s expertise. At Altamira, we have 97% of satisfied clients. There are reliable sources where it is easy to check a real company’s rate (we mentioned them at the beginning of the article).
Such platforms as Clutch, for example, even have moderation and client interviews they conduct, so the reviews here are trustworthy.
Pricing
And finally, it’s always about the money, right? Generally, web developers from the U.S. and UK charge about $100-200 per hour. India-based web developers have the lowest hourly rates which are less than $25/hour but their quality is uncertain.
The Eastern and Northern Europe specialists are known to be the golden mean, as the hourly rates are about $25-50 while the level of expertise is rather high.
As you can see, the cost of web development varies depending on the region and the level of expertise. In case you were interested in the average hourly rates of web developers and other specialists at Altamira, here they are:
| Tech specialists | Hourly rates |
| Business Analyst | $32-49 |
| Web designer | $34-47 |
| Mobile developers | $30-57 |
| Web developers | $34-62 |
| Front end developers | $26-34 |
| QA specialists | $22-39 |
| DevOps | $38 |
| Project Manager | $32-57 |
FAQ
– company’s experience
– reviews and references
– company’s portfolio cases
– how the pricing is made
– what core services company offers
– how accessible is the website going to be
Bottom line
In this article, we explained the difference between outsourcing and in-house software development. The first one should not be associated with low-profile deliverables and last-resort decisions. Many well-known tech companies have delegated some parts of their work to other teams, and the results have been incredible.
If you know you’re not going to build an in-house team, be very careful when signing a contract with a vendor. Discuss how much responsibility you want your service provider to assume so that you can be sure that no part of the required solution will be missing or malfunctioning. But having determined the strategy and narrowed it down, it’s much easier to find a web developer for your project who will totally meet your expectations.