In short: There is no universally right answer - but there are clear patterns. An agency (typically 110-180 €/h) pays off when you need design, marketing, content and development at the same time, or when you are planning a large project with many parallel workstreams. A freelancer (typically 65-120 €/h) is the better choice for concrete technical tasks: plugins, migrations, performance, ongoing maintenance. And hardly anyone knows the third option: combining both - which is exactly how I regularly work with agencies myself.
Up front: I am not neutral - but I am honest
I am a Shopware freelancer, so this article has a perspective. At the same time, I have worked with agencies for years, as an external developer inside their projects - I know both working models from the inside. And I regularly forward inquiries myself when an agency is the better choice. You will find exactly those cases below.
When an agency is the right choice
- You need many disciplines at once: shop design, branding, SEA campaigns, content production and development from one source. No single person can deliver that seriously.
- Your project is bigger than one person: a relaunch with six months of runtime and several parallel development tracks needs a team with redundancy.
- You need contractually guaranteed availability with SLAs, holiday cover and escalation paths - an agency can absorb staff absences, a freelancer cannot.
- You want to hand over responsibility completely and are happy to pay for project management that takes coordination off your plate.
The price: higher hourly rates (project management, sales and administration are priced in), more communication layers, and the reality that your ticket passes through several hands internally before anyone writes code.
When a freelancer is the better choice
- Concrete technical tasks: a plugin, a migration, a performance problem, an integration. Clear scope, direct path.
- Ongoing technical maintenance of an existing store - updates, error analysis, further development. What counts here is one person actually knowing your setup, instead of rotating team members re-learning it every time.
- Budget efficiency: you only pay for development. With me that is 95 € per hour - without agency markup. But more important than the rate is the math behind it: an experienced developer solves in 2 hours what a junior in an agency team needs 8 for.
- Direct communication: you talk to the person writing the code. No telephone game via project managers.
The honest downsides: a freelancer does not scale infinitely, goes on holiday, and does not cover every discipline. Anyone promising you "full service like an agency" as a single person is overselling.
The underrated third option: combine
The model that often works best in practice: agency for design and marketing, freelancer for technical implementation or specialist topics. Many of my projects run exactly this way - an agency brings me in for plugin development, migration legacy or performance analysis, because that depth of specialization does not pay off for them internally. For you as a merchant this means: you do not have to decide either/or - you can combine the best of both worlds, as long as responsibilities are clearly defined.
The decision guide in three questions
- Do you need more than technology? (Design, SEA, content) → agency or combination.
- Is your project one person big? Plugins, migration, maintenance, optimization → freelancer. A months-long relaunch with five construction sites → agency.
- How much do you value a direct line to the developer? If you have ever waited three weeks for the answer to a technical question, you know its worth.
And however you decide: ask for references, clarify who will actually work on your project, and measure both options by the same yardstick - not the hourly rate, but what actually works per euro invested.