[stared]

I agree with most, especially that OP left the tap open. No risk for an agency and de facto unrestricted costs for OP.

With one exception of a blanket statement:

> - A good agency IS better than a freelancer

If there is a single freelancer:

- There is a single person responsible. If it gets diffused, it may easily end in an unending project, as no one is incentivized to finalize the project.

- The number of people working on the project is capped at one. You won't ever get charged for two people talking with each other.

- For a single freelancer, they may be some "sanity check" regarding the cost. For any well-known agency, it wouldn't raise one's eyebrows if you said [This Well Known Agency] charged you [any number] $. Logo design alone could have costed OP $50k.

[seangp]

For me, the 3 key downsides to a single freelancer is:

* You’re totally dependent on a single point of failure. If they get ill, go on holiday or simply disappear, take on another project or go full time somewhere else, then you’re left in the lurch - particularly post-live when you may need additional support/amends/bug fixes.

* I’m yet to find a single freelancer that can project manage, UX, design, write copy and build to a high standard in all areas. You’ll probably need several freelancers.

* Lack of code review. Usually an agency will have several devs on their team, so there should be some form of code review whereas this is less likely with a single freelancer.