The most important phase of app development is ‘ideation’ which involves brainstorming ideas, strategies, approaches, and solutions. This helps you to start your app development project with a crystal clear mission and vision. After defining your goals and objectives comprehensively, the next crucial step is to choose the best app developers/companies to develop your mobile apps.

This article gets you prepared with a handy list of prerequisites that you need to know beforehand while choosing to work with a freelancer.

What makes a freelance app developer?

A freelancer works on its own terms and conditions, unlike in-house team members. They are usually billed for their manhours. They may either choose to work with a single client or multiple clients at the same time. They offer services for a standard fee or trade their hours for fixed prices.

There are thousands of app developers across the world working on a freelance model. Before choosing your ideal developer, let’s sneak peek through the pros and cons of working with freelancers.

Pros of working with freelance app developers

• You have a wide range of options to choose from.
• You can acquaint yourself with a contributor without any long-term commitment
• You save a lot of money on employee benefits, resources, hardware, software, tools, and licenses.
• You can choose to work with experts who are specialized in a particular technology/platform.
• You can save a lot of time – for instance, onboarding the employees, training, employee engagement, and similar other things usually.
• take a lot of office hours which do not contribute value to your project directly.
• Working with freelancers empowers you with flexibility, scalability, and quick adaptability.
• It is always a work-work relationship with freelancers that improves efficiency and productivity.
• You naturally hold an upper hand when you get to work with freelancers because you are entitled to get work done the way you want.
• When you consider project cost, freelancer app developers are ideal choices and affordable. Remember that you have a lower financial
• commitment with freelancers because the payment is straightforward and mostly fixed.
• Freelancers are cool to work with. You don’t have to worry if they are culturally fit for your team and organization.

Cons of working with freelance app developers

• The biggest turn-off is the hassles in communication. Since you don’t work together in the same workstation, communication via remote tools has its own shortcomings.
• There’s always room for loss in translating your mission, vision, and goals when you connect with freelancers through remote tools.
• Freelancers are known for working on their own terms. They work on erratic schedules that don’t usually align with the general timelines.
• Lack of commitment is another point of concern. If situations turn out to be unfortunate, and your freelance app developer wants to quit the project, that puts your business at high risk.
• You really need to be well-versed in coding to evaluate their coding hygiene and standards. Or else, it might be difficult for anyone who works on your project in the future.
• There is more threat to the safety and security of your confidential data and sensitive information in the freelancer’s scenario.
• While working with freelancers, ownership of your intellectual property is at stake.
• Collaboration is always magical. With freelancers, you are less likely to reap the benefits of collaboration compared with other scenarios.

With these pros and cons of working with freelancers, here’s how to strike a balance, come to a consensus, and choose an ideal freelance app developer for your project.

Six Prerequisites to Validate Your Freelance Developer

1. Does the freelance app developer have a profile on the freelancing platforms?

There are a lot of freelancing platforms like Upwork, Freelancer.com, Toptal, Craiglist. These websites have a list of mobile app developers for hire. Check if your freelancer holds a decent profile in these forums. It’s easy to check, evaluate, and understand their expertise by running through their previous projects, reviews, and client ratings on these platforms. You can also download the apps developed by them earlier and assess if they are good in terms of user experience, navigation, design, speedy loads, and functionalities. Freelancers with a good profile, candidature, and recommendations on these forums are more likely to deliver positive outcomes and happy experiences.

2. How good is the developer in coding?

Have a detailed conversation with your freelance app developer to know their coding fluency and exposure to the latest platforms and technologies. You can also conduct a couple of assessment tests to evaluate their candidature in black and white before shaking hands with them. Sometimes, the developers may only have theoretical knowledge and may not have hands-on experience with certain tools and platforms. Assessment tests help you get a hang of their actual expertise before taking things forward. Also, you need to ensure that they follow standard coding procedures so that it is transparent, scalable, and legible to fellow coders.

3. Does the freelance app developer hold any certification from reputed certifiers?

It’s undoubtedly an advantage to work with certified app developers. Make sure to check if the certification is from trusted institutions. It actually halves your work of evaluating their coding literacy. If you need an expert with specialization in particular platforms, look out for domain-specific developers who have the required certifications.

4. How do they approach pricing?

Freelancers with a professional attitude and approach have a transparent pricing system. They either charge a fixed tariff based on the end deliverables or choose an hour-based billing system where the complete project is billed for the entire and actual time it takes. You need to establish a clear line of communication in advance regarding your pricing preferences. You may also establish a milestone-based billing where you can release your payments in installments based on what is delivered to you. Besides the mode of payment, you also need to check if the pricing is affordable and on par with the industry standards. Sometimes inexpensive and cheap options come with poor quality, so we recommend you to prefer value to cost so that you don’t compromise on your product quality.

5. Is the freelancer willing to take up the commitment, responsibility, and accountability?

It is extremely crucial that you hire freelancers who have a positive approach towards taking up responsibility and commitment. You can get positive results only with the team players who hold themselves accountable for whatever they are assigned to, no matter a freelancer, or an in-house player. You really need to stay away from the freelancers who take advantage of the freelance model to escape accountability. Because acquainting with such app developers puts your business at stack.

6. Does the freelance developer take deadlines seriously?

Developing mobile apps for your brand is time-sensitive. If you are not able to take your product to the market on time as planned, your launching strategy and campaign goals may become obsolete. That’s not all – your app developer also needs to align with your goals, timeline, and schedule. Despite following the pre-laid plan and roadmaps there are many chances that you might skip deadlines due to unexpected hiccups that are out of your control. Also, some times it takes a couple of more iterations for your designer to give a shape to what you envision. You must hire freelance app developers who value time and take deadlines seriously. Here are two quick hacks for you to ensure on-time deliveries with freelancers. Firstly, have a buffering time in your initial time frame that has a place for iterations, improvisations, and unexpected changes. Secondly, have milestones for micro-goals and phase-by-phase deliveries. This helps you to look at your progress periodically in a micro-level and address discrepancies then and there rather looking at the bigger picture and lose control of things.

Outsourcing to freelancers is a good option. Know what’s the best option?

Having discussed in graphic details the pros, cons, and prerequisites of collaborating with a freelancer, we would also like to give you a walkthrough of how to hire a freelance mobile app developing company for your project. This helps you to analyze both the options and evaluate what works best for you.

To give you a heads up, outsourcing to a reputed app development firm is any day an ideal decision. The reason is that this choice is an integrated approach that strikes a balance between working with freelancers and building an in-house team. This choice comes as a common ground that has the benefits and positive sides of both the approaches. In the next chapter, we are here to give you a handy checklist with 9 important points to choose an ideal app development company to partner with.

For a free consultation on how to hire an app developer in India, contact us. Siam Computing has a team of technology enthusiasts who leave no stone unturned to get your project done. Our team comes with a stellar candidature in building mobile apps using state-of-the-art technologies and multiple platforms.

Mobile app development is not only about coding and testing. It also requires strategies and analysis.  Subscribe to our newsletter and stay updated.