Studio, agency or freelancer: who should build a seed-stage startup's website?
At seed stage you'll be choosing between three kinds of help: an agency, a freelancer, or a small studio like Marshal. Each is the right answer for some startups. This is a fair comparison, including where a studio of one is the wrong choice.
By Chris, founder of Marshal · Updated 8 October 2026
An agency
An agency brings a team: strategists, designers, developers and a project manager, often working in parallel. That's the right call when you need several disciplines at once or a lot of output quickly. The trade-offs are cost, since the overhead is in the price, and distance: the senior people who pitch are not always the people who do the work, and feedback passes through an account manager.
A freelancer
A good freelancer is often the most affordable option and can be excellent at one thing. The usual gap is the handoff: a designer who doesn't build hands a Figma file to a developer who didn't design it, and what ships drifts from what was agreed. Availability is the other risk, because one person juggling several clients may not be there the week you need them.
A small studio
A studio like Marshal sits between the two: one senior person who both designs and builds, working to a fixed scope, price and date. You get the agency's end-to-end delivery without the layers, and the freelancer's directness without the designer-to-developer handoff. The honest limit is capacity. One person can only take on so many projects at once, so it isn't the right fit if you need a team of five shipping in parallel.
Questions to ask whoever you hire
Whichever route you take, these questions separate the good options from the risky ones:
- Who exactly will do the work, and will I talk to them directly?
- Is the price fixed for the scope, or billed by the hour?
- What happens, and what does it cost, when the scope changes?
- Do I own the code, the design files and the accounts at the end?
- Can I see live work you designed and built, not just mockups?
- What happens after launch if something breaks?
How Marshal answers them
Chris does the work and is the person you speak to. Prices are fixed per piece of work, not hourly. Scope changes are agreed and priced before anything moves. You own the repository, the Figma files and every account at handover, and each project ends with a support window.
Prices
- Trial · $1,000 – $1,350
- A contained first piece of work so we can test the fit before anything bigger.
- Starter · From $2,000
- A small site or a single product surface, designed and shipped end to end.
- Project · $4,700 – $10,000
- A full site or web app with real backend work behind it.
Prices in US dollars. Retainers are billed monthly and can be cancelled with 30 days notice.
Questions
- Is a studio more expensive than a freelancer?
- Usually more than a junior freelancer and less than an agency. Marshal's prices are on the site: a trial from $1,000, small sites from $2,000, and full projects from $4,700.
- What if we're not sure which we need?
- Book the 20-minute call. If a freelancer or an agency would suit you better, you'll hear that on the call.