This is the comparison that actually matters for most of the businesses we talk to, because the realistic choice is not between platforms. It is between us and the agency that built the current site, or the next one.
Agencies have real advantages and we would be silly to pretend otherwise. Here is the honest version. And if you are reading this from the other side of the table — you are the agency — the end of this page has a different offer for you.
What Web agencies does well
- A team, which means holidays, illness and resignations do not stop your project.
- Specialists in their lanes: designer, developer, copywriter, SEO.
- Established process, contracts and insurance. Procurement departments like them.
Where it struggles for a growing business
You are usually a small account
The people who pitched are rarely the people who build, and attention follows the largest retainers. A business of moderate size is often neither.
The workshop model costs you the thing you have least of
Discovery sessions, wireframe reviews, revision rounds. Most business owners do not have that time, and the project stalls in their inbox rather than in the studio.
The relationship usually ends at launch
The site is delivered, the retainer lapses, and it drifts. The neglected WordPress sites we audit were almost all built by competent agencies that moved on to the next job.
The honest verdict
CHOOSE WEB AGENCIES IF
- You need a large project with many streams delivered to a fixed corporate timeline.
- Procurement requires a vendor of a certain size, with specific insurances.
- You want several disciplines working in parallel.
CHOOSE UNITNINETY IF
- You want the person who pitched to be the person who builds it.
- You would rather react to a real site than sit through workshops.
- You want a long relationship with someone who keeps up, not a project that ends at launch.
- You want the same one dashboard across every site if you run more than one, instead of a separate contact and a separate contract for each.