Hiring Freelancers vs. Outsourcing to a Company

Many readers think freelancing is similar to outsourcing. Yet both the words are very different in usage. When a person is freelancing, he is not part of any company. They might be a single person or a group of individuals; whereas outsourcing requires multiple employees working in a company hired by a third party.

In a way it can be said that freelancing is a part of outsourcing. The major difference between the two is based on the type of work they do. Freelancers usually perform tasks that are simple and can be done by one person. However, outsourcing is of more than one type, and all of the different types involve doing complex task. Freelancers usually work for a short time but outsourcing firms are under contract for a longer time. While freelancing, individuals are usually asked to do work which can be done without further research whereas outsourcing requires additional learning and research.

Outsourcing can be done in two ways. An organization can either use near shore outsourcing method or offshore outsourcing. Near shore outsourcing is when the organization uses the services of firm which is located close in terms of geographical location whereas, offshore outsourcing is using the services of firm situated overseas.

While freelancing provides easier communication methods, outsourcing can be used to significantly reduce the overall costs. However, it is based on the skilful use of outsourcing. Both the methods, if not used in the right way, can cause serious problem to the respective firm. The damages associated with outsourcing are far more than those which could arise due to poor freelancing usage. Therefore, it is important to differentiate both the methods on the basis of when and where to use them. Freelancing is a good choice when the work is tedious and can be completed by a single individual. Such a work is usually home based and does not require primary research. But in situations where entire operational units need to be built or a lot of primary research is required, outsourcing is the appropriate way.

Another differentiating point is the cost associated with the both the methods. Freelancing is a relatively cheaper option, as compared to outsourcing and can be used when the organization feel like reducing cost in the short run. However, if the organization wants to reduce their overhead costs in the long run, outsourcing, either by near shore and off shore, is the best solution. The key however, is to find the ideal software development partner.

Today as globalization increases, organizations are fast adopting outsourcing to achieve economies of scale. Through the use of economies of scale, the firm can then allow its customers low prices. Therefore, all of this adds to up to increased customer satisfaction and brand loyalty. However, this does not mean that freelancing is not a good option. For organizations looking for creativity and innovative thinking, freelancing is a good choice. Since freelancers are able to give their entire attention to the work they are doing as it allows them to produce quality content.

It would not be wrong to say that both the methods are useful, but it depends on the way they are used. For a firm looking to reduce operational costs, freelancing is not an appropriate solution. Yet for a firm who is looking for fresh and creative content, outsourcing would be an inappropriate choice. They would get the job done, but at very high price as compared to freelancing. So for any firm deciding between whether to use freelancing or outsourcing, they must look at the work at hand and make a judgement call as to which method to be adopted.

Mindfire Solutions has been providing unparalleled offshore software development services for the past 16 years and has been constantly delighting its clients ever since. If you are looking for an expert and reliable offshore software development company look no further than Mindfire Solutions dot com.

PHP or ASP .NET, Which Is Better?

“No programming language is the best- it’s the programmer who constructs and adds value to an application! It’s not just about PHP or ASP, it holds good for every technology of the industry. Wise people understand the fact that, every technology comes with some advantages and disadvantages; still the debate continues among themselves as well! Why? This is yet madness for their love and showing patriotism to their beloved technology. Now, we are asked to plot a comparison between PHP and ASP .Net and provide a conclusion for the better one of these! ”

Better- The term itself perplexing for an IT professional! Everybody knows Java is super fast; but JavaScript is blazing fast with many drawbacks against Java- still we compare. Everyone knows Ruby on Rails is a framework and hence helps in creating awesome web apps on the fly that is never possible in a language. Still, we compare RoR with PHP! We dare to do this, knowing the fact that it is really not going to finish off anything. The reality is that every language or technology comes with some immense features along with few loopholes. Again, every language seems to be perfect from an angle of prospective and necessities; whereas it falls far behind the client’s demand from another angle. So, no one is the qualified person to judge any technology without knowing the prerequisite of the developer. Here we are daring to compare PHP with ASP .Net on the basis of few eminent circumstances of the client or the developer.

PHP for cost sensitive projects; ASP .Net for quality oriented web applications: PHP and ASP .Net both are web domain specific technologies and serving the industry for more than a decade with uninterrupted enhancements in their features. The most important difference that strikes to a tech savvy guy is the cost of development in both technologies. PHP is an open source language with enormous features to contribute in blending awesome web applications; on the contrary, Microsoft demands some premium from the developers to get the charm of awesomeness and the secured web environment. Due to open source nature PHP is undoubtedly a first preference for low cost web application development projects; because the cost of development is directly proportional to the cost of software, cost of application developer, cost of server and infrastructure cost. Along with that, the time of development also affects the cost of project, which is less with PHP as compared to ASP .Net. Hence if your budget is limited then you can definitely go with PHP web application development; on the contrary, if you want life-size features and superior quality web application at the cost of your hard earned money, then choose ASP .Net.

Development time is a criterion: Though, development time comes at the second position while choosing any technology, but for me it is a silly stuff to discuss at this point. You may ask why? PHP is a web domain language that helps in crafting beautiful web applications with its core features and libraries whereas ASP .Net is a fully loaded framework for .Net developers. It needn’t to portray that a framework helps in diminishing the programmer effort as well as project duration as against any language. In fact, frameworks are made to make the development process easier and quicker with the inbuilt classes, modules and libraries that are used to make the code length smaller yet efficient. Hence, with ASP .Net, the development time of any web application will be definitely lesser as compared to PHP if both the applications are of equivalent standard. But again, if you can compromise on the quality of the application, then the development time of PHP will drastically decrease over ASP .Net. So it depends upon the clause that you must aware of before choosing the technology.

Achievement of scalability should be considered: Are you looking for a highly scalable web application? If yes choose ASP .Net blindly. For most of the top notch web applications, scalability plays an important role in the development process, whereas it is absolutely ignored for low cost or static web applications. Scalability is the nature of the web application that enables it to accustom with the ever changing demands of the industry. So premium websites are developed with scalability as the biggest priority and the choice is ASP .Net.

Are you looking for availability of free and open source resources! We can’t neglect the potential of free and open source technology in the form of availability of resources over the web. In fact, many developers rely on these resources in order to make the development process not only quicker but also efficient enough. With a little tweak in codebase of these free resources, a smart web developer can easily make it fit to be integrated with his web application. In this process, the time of development decreases significantly and hence the productivity increases. We must aware of the fact that this is only possible with an open source language like PHP. So, the PHP developer can take the help of third party software tools and modules in designing his web application on the fly. On the contrary, for ASP .Net developers, the resources are quite limited. In reality, Microsoft never encourages ASP .Net developers to rely on any third party free codebase at any cost.

Performance with ASP .Net mostly takes over PHP: ASP .Net is quite popular in the industry for its highly optimized libraries and modules that are already available within the framework. These libraries and modules are highly optimized to make the application not only faster but also stable. On the contrary PHP as a language provides only the core functionalities and hence not as much helpful as ASP .Net in crafting high performance web applications. Though a smart PHP developer can also develop enterprise standard high performance web solutions; but he has to put a lot of effort as compared to that of an ASP .Net developer.

Security with ASP .Net is better; but it all depends how the programmer codes: As a compiled language, ASP .Net stands over PHP while we consider the security level of the language. Complied languages are by default provides additional boost to the security of the application due to their binary code conversion during the compilation process. On the other hand PHP, an interpreted language can never achieve that level of securities as that of any compiled language like Java or ASP .Net.

From above discussion, we can come to a conclusion that PHP is for those who want a quick and low cost web application that doesn’t require so much power and securities; whereas ASP .Net is for everyone who don’t care much for the development cost over the quality of the end product.

Mindfire Solutions has been providing offshore software development services in both PHP and ASP.NET with equal competence and delighting customers nevertheless. If you have a software development task that needs expertise in PHP or ASP.NET or both then send in your requirements to sale at Mindfire Solutions dot com.