Three ways to get software built: hire a freelancer, hire an agency, or hire us. We are one of the three options, so treat this as a comparison written by an interested party — but an interested party that would rather not take on a project it is the wrong choice for, because those projects lose money and produce no reference client.
Here is the honest version of when each option wins.
Table of content
The comparison, in one table
| Freelancer | Small / mid agency | Geexar | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | Lowest per hour | Middle | Middle — our published WordPress packages start at 2,000 SR; custom work is quoted against scope |
| Who does the work | One person, all disciplines | A small team, often part-time on your project | A full team: design, mobile, backend, QA, plus marketing if needed |
| Design + development + QA | Usually the same person, so quality varies by discipline | Usually separate people | Separate specialists; QA is a defined phase with a sign-off, not an afterthought |
| Bus factor | One. If they stop, the project stops | Low to medium | Team-based; the repository, documentation and handover package are yours regardless |
| Speed to start | Fastest | Medium | Medium — we scope before we quote, which costs time up front and saves it later |
| Arabic + English done properly | Depends entirely on the individual | Often translated rather than designed | Bilingual by default: RTL designed as RTL, hreflang configured per URL |
| Post-launch maintenance | Informal, ends when they take a job | Usually available | A written monthly agreement with a fixed allowance of change hours |
| Marketing and the build in one place | Rare | Sometimes | Yes — the campaign team and the web team are in the same company |
| Contracts, invoicing, VAT | Varies; often informal | Formal | Formal, with milestone invoicing against a signed scope |
| Best for | Small, well-defined, low-risk pieces of work | Mid-size projects where you want a single vendor | Bilingual products, projects with integrations, and work that continues after launch |
When a freelancer is genuinely the right answer
Often. We say that as a company that loses those projects.
- The work is small and well defined. A landing page, a theme customisation, a plugin conflict, a set of illustrations. If you can describe the whole job in a paragraph, you are paying an agency for coordination you do not need.
- You have someone technical in-house to manage them. Freelancers work best against a clear brief from someone who can review the output. Without that, you become the project manager, and it is a real job.
- The budget genuinely will not stretch. A freelancer who does good work is better than an agency you can only half-afford, because a half-funded agency project stalls in the middle, which is the most expensive place to stop.
- You are testing an idea. A prototype to show investors or run a pilot does not need a QA phase and a maintenance agreement.
The risks to plan around: one person cannot be equally good at design, backend, mobile and QA — something will be the weak part. If they take a full-time job mid-project, you inherit the code and the problem. And Arabic/English work in particular is where individual freelancers most often produce a mirrored English layout rather than a designed Arabic one.
When another agency is the right answer
- The project needs a specialism we do not have. We do not do managed IT infrastructure, we are not an ERP implementation partner for the large vendors, and we do not do broadcast-scale video production. If your project is mostly one of those, a specialist will do it better and cheaper.
- You need an on-site team in a specific city. We work from Riyadh with scheduled on-site sessions rather than a branch in every city. If your procurement requires people in your building daily, that is a real constraint and we will say so.
- A vendor is already embedded and working. Switching a functioning vendor mid-programme usually costs more than the improvement is worth.
When we are the right answer
- The product has to work in Arabic and English, properly. This is the most common reason clients come to us. Arabic screens designed as Arabic screens, RTL layouts, Arabic number and date formats, and hreflang configured per URL so the two language versions support each other in Google instead of competing. The last part is the single most common thing we find broken on existing Saudi bilingual sites.
- The project has integrations. Payment gateways, SMS and OTP, maps and live tracking, ERP or accounting systems over REST. These are where fixed-price projects go wrong, and they need an architecture phase before design, which is how we sequence every build.
- The build and the marketing have to move together. Most wasted ad budget is not wasted in the ad account — it is wasted on a landing page nobody can change quickly. Our campaign team and our web team are in the same company, so a page can be rewritten and republished in a day when the data says the offer is wrong.
- The work continues after launch. Apps break because iOS and Android ship new versions and store policies change, not because your code rotted. If you need someone still there in eighteen months, that needs to be a contract, not a favour.
What you get from us that you should insist on from anyone
None of this is unique to us, and you should demand all of it from whichever option you pick:
- Code in a repository you own, from the first commit, with the handover package including source, database schema, API documentation and deployment instructions.
- A signed scope before a price, and a price that does not move unless the scope does.
- A staging environment you can use throughout, so you see the product growing rather than seeing it at the end.
- A defined QA phase with a test report and a defect log you sign off.
- Redirect mapping on any redesign — every old URL mapped to its new equivalent with 301s, or you lose the rankings those URLs held.
- A written maintenance agreement with a fixed number of change hours per month.
- Accounts in your name — domain, hosting, app store, Google Ads, Meta. We work inside your accounts, not ours, so nothing is hostage if we part ways.
The cost question, answered as directly as we can
Our two published website packages are the WordPress Basic plan at 2,000 SR and the WordPress Premium plan at 3,000 SR, both listed on our web development page. Everything else — custom software, mobile apps, e-commerce with a wholesale channel, portals and integrations — is quoted against a scope, because the cost is driven by the number of user roles, the number of integrations and how much of your process is exception handling. We are not going to publish a number for those; anyone who does is publishing a number that will be corrected later.
A freelancer will usually be cheaper per hour than any agency, including us. The question is not the hourly rate, it is the total cost of the project including the parts you will end up doing yourself and the parts that get redone. Ask all three options for a written scope and compare those, not the day rates.
How to decide in ten minutes
- Can you describe the whole job in one paragraph, and do you have someone technical to review it? → Freelancer.
- Is the project mostly IT infrastructure, an ERP rollout, or broadcast video? → A specialist agency, not us.
- Does it need to work in Arabic and English, or does it have integrations, or does the marketing have to move with the build? → Talk to us.
- Not sure? Book the free consultation. If the answer is “hire a freelancer for this”, that is what you will be told — it is a cheaper conversation for both of us than the wrong project.
Our published work is on the projects page, including Doroop (ride-hailing), Zidcash (a wallet published on Google Play), Dirat-Elbinaa (construction) and Athar (e-commerce). Company facts — founding year, offices, team size, phone numbers — are on our about page.
