Comparison
Goodspeed compared to the alternatives
Most teams choose between four routes: a freelancer, a traditional web agency, hiring in-house, or building it themselves in an AI builder. Goodspeed sits between the freelancer and the agency. Senior humans running a stack of agents, live in two to eight weeks, and a site your own team can update afterwards without us. Below is the honest version, including where the other four win.
How the five routes compare
Goodspeed
Freelancer
Traditional web agency
Hire in-house
Build it yourself in an AI builder
Typical cost
From £10k for a site, £20k+ for a multi-page system, from £2k/mo ongoing
£3k to £8k
£25k to £60k+
£120k+ a year loaded for a designer plus a developer
£0 to £500 plus your own time
Time to live
2 to 8 weeks
3 to 10 weeks, depending on their other clients
12 to 16 weeks
2 to 3 months to hire before work starts
A weekend to a first draft, then it stalls
What exists in week one
A designed page on staging you can send round
A kickoff call and a moodboard
A discovery workshop and a schedule
A job spec
A homepage that looks close
Who does the work
The senior people you met, with agents doing the research, copy passes, motion and QA
The person you hired
Often a junior team after the pitch
Your hire, once they land
You, between everything else
Design and build
Both, in one team
Usually one or the other well
Both, through a handoff
Depends entirely on the two hires
Whatever the tool allows
When something breaks
Bugs fixed in 2 business days or that month is free
When they are free
A ticket in a queue
Your hire, if they are still there
You are the support team
After launch
Your team edits the site itself. We stay only if you want new work
Back to the queue for every change
Change requests, quoted
You own it, if the hire stays
You own it, and every edit risks the layout
Where it goes wrong
We are more expensive than a freelancer and slower than a prompt
One person leaves and the site is orphaned
The site reflects the agency’s taste and needs them to change
Two hires, two notice periods, one dependency
Easy to start, hard to make production-safe
Choose each route when
Choose a freelancer when
The scope is one or two pages and you can art-direct them yourself.
You already have a design system and you need hands.
The site is not carrying revenue yet, so a stall costs you nothing.
Choose a traditional agency when
You need a brand built from zero: name, identity, tone, the whole thing.
You have four months and a committee that needs to be walked through it.
The site is a small part of a much larger campaign they are also running.
Choose an in-house team when
You ship website changes every week, permanently.
You can wait two to three months to hire, then absorb the ramp.
You have someone senior who can direct a designer and hold quality.
Choose an AI builder when
You are testing whether a positioning idea gets any interest at all.
Nobody important is about to look at it.
You are happy to throw it away once it works.
Choose Goodspeed when
Something is about to put eyes on the site: a raise, a launch, press, a rebrand, or ad spend about to turn on.
The person or tool that built the current site cannot take it forward.
The site now looks smaller than the company behind it.
You want the team to update it afterwards without booking anyone.
When we are the wrong choice
We are the wrong choice if you want the cheapest option, if you want a single landing page with no CMS behind it, if you need someone on site with you, or if you want a brand invented from scratch before any of it gets built. We will tell you this on the first call rather than three weeks in.
What the first two weeks actually look like
Day one
One shared channel, and you meet the people doing the work.
Every day
A written update. Every few days, a Loom walking through what changed.
End of week one
A real page on staging, on your content, that you can forward to anyone.
Week two
The system behind it, so page nine takes an hour instead of a day.
Proof
Speed
A VC-backed startup selling into enterprises went from a placeholder site to an enterprise-ready platform in two weeks, with a CMS their marketing team owns.
When the site has to survive scrutiny
A Boeing-backed autonomous aviation company that has raised over $500M. The site was Webby-nominated, and is now the most-cited domain in AI answers across its category.
Migration without losing what you have
A Bubble-built marketing site moved to Framer with zero SEO regression. It rose from sixth to second position and loads 75% faster.
Independence afterwards
A Series B team migrated page by page with zero downtime, and now runs ten times more growth experiments without involving engineering.
Questions buyers actually ask
How much does Goodspeed cost compared to a freelancer?
A freelancer is cheaper: roughly £3k to £8k against our £10k and up. You are paying for a team rather than a person, a fixed delivery window, and a site your own team can edit afterwards. If the scope is one or two pages and you can art-direct it, hire the freelancer.
Is an agency worth it if I can build the site in Framer myself?
If nobody important is about to look at it, build it yourself. It costs almost nothing and you learn what you actually need. The case for us starts when the site has to survive scrutiny, carry revenue, or be edited by a team without breaking.
What happens to my site if we stop working together?
You keep everything. The project, the CMS and the content are yours, and your team can already edit the site because that is how we build it. There is no proprietary layer to unpick and no retainer required to change a line of text.
How long does a website take?
Two to eight weeks, depending on page count and how quickly content and feedback come back. You see a real designed page on staging in week one, so you are never waiting a month to find out what it looks like.
Will I lose my search rankings if I migrate?
Not if the migration is done properly. We map every URL, keep the redirects, and check the structure before launch. One Bubble to Framer migration held its rankings, moved from sixth to second position, and loaded 75% faster afterwards.
Who actually does the work?
The senior people you meet on the first call. Agents run the research passes, first-draft copy, motion and QA, which is what makes the timeline possible. You are not handed to a junior team after the pitch.
What if I already have a designer?
Then use them. If you have a designer whose work you like, we build to their designs rather than duplicate the role. Plenty of our best projects start with someone else’s design system, and our job is making it real and editable.
Not sure which route you are in?
Tell us what is about to put eyes on your site and we will tell you honestly which of the five routes fits.
Book a free consultation
Last updated 17 August 2026 · Written by Harish Malhi
