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Three decisions before you hire anyone.
Before a business hires someone to build, it is really making three choices: who builds it, where they are, and what it runs on. Here is each one with the takeaway up front and the full comparison a click away.
Decision one
Who builds it: agency, freelancer, or one studio?
An agency gives you a big team behind an account manager, and a retainer that funds the layers between you and the work. A freelancer gives you one set of hands, cheaper, until they hit their capacity or the edge of their skill. A studio gives you one point of contact who does the work and owns the result, and pulls in specialists when a job needs depth.
The question is not headcount. It is who owns the outcome when something goes sideways.
Decision two
Where they are: US, offshore, or Canada?
A US team costs the most and shares your clock. Offshore looks unbeatable on the hourly rate, then gives a lot of it back in time zones, communication gaps, and rework you end up managing yourself. A Canadian studio sits in the middle: your US dollar buys about a third more, the time zone overlaps your whole day, and the business norms are the same.
Sticker price and total cost are different numbers. Friction is the gap between them.
US vs offshore vs Canadian →Why hiring Canadian saves US companies money →
Decision three
What it runs on: WordPress, or a static site?
WordPress runs a database and a stack of plugins to serve pages that rarely change, and somebody has to patch all of it forever. A static Astro site with the code in GitHub is pre built and served from the edge. On a real client rebuild we measured, the static version came in roughly 3.5 times lighter and 2.8 times faster, with nothing to hack and almost nothing to host.
Most business sites change a few times a year. They do not need a platform that needs feeding every week.
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