Freelance vs Full-Time Designers: What’s the Better Choice?

Can’t decide between hiring a freelance graphic designer or a full-time employee? Here’s everything you need to know.

TL;DR

Freelancers bring to the table a wide range of skills and flexible pricing. However, hiring them can become time-consuming and expensive in the long run. A full-time employee can be a smart investment if you need tons of work, but a drain on your budget if you don’t. For the best of both worlds, try graphic design subscription services. You get a steady stream of graphics, for just a few hundred dollars a month, with the flexibility to pause, cancel or upgrade your subscription as you go.  

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Do I really need a professional designer?

With great design tools, such as Canva, this question is totally valid. And yet, although online design tools are no doubt a great resource for designers and non-designers alike, there are some things only professionals can achieve. 

Here are a few reasons why every business should hire professional graphic designers. 

Templates are overused.

There’s no shortage of high-quality design templates, as well as the people who use them. So, no matter how great-looking a template can be, there are no guarantees your designs will look unique. In fact, don’t be surprised if you find your direct competitors using the same Canva templates.

Professional designers work faster.

If time indeed is money, then this is definitely a strong reason for hiring designers. 

Picture this: you’re trying to create a design in Canva, but whatever you do it ends up looking cheap and unprofessional. Sounds familiar? The truth is that what might seem like a five-minute task can turn into hours of work if you’re not a professional designer. 

In contrast, a skilled designer works with professional graphic design software, and know where and how to source different assets that can make the process faster. 

Bad design can harm your business.

Last, but certainly not least - design is simply too important for your business to take risks with it. Here are a few eye-opening stats.

• 94% of first impressions of a website are design-related, and 75% of users judge a company’s credibility based on its website design.
• 38% of users will stop engaging with websites because of unattractive design. 
• 75% of customers recognize a brand by its logo alone.
• Using a signature color (together with consistent visual identity) can increase brand recognition by up to 80%.
• According to a recent academic review (2024), logos influence many aspects of consumer behavior: brand awareness, perception, brand-image, purchase intention, and loyalty.
• In marketing/branding research, consistent visual branding (logo + color + style) tends to lead to better recall, trust, and higher chances of consumer engagement.

So, whether it’s your logo, website, or your ads, design can make a serious impact on your prospective customers. While good design leads to trust and loyalty, bad design will turn customers away from your brand.

You should spend time doing what you know

There’s nothing wrong with acquiring additional skills, but not at the expense of your actual job. A CEO shouldn’t waste their time trying to design social media posts or PowerPoint presentations.

The time you spend struggling with DIY design would be much better used on business-expansion tasks, such as acquiring new clients, making sales, or even making new hires that will help your business move forward. 

Freelance designers: an overview

So, now that you understand the importance of graphic design for your business, let’s discover the main pros and cons of hiring freelance designers.

Diverse skills

The greatest advantage of freelance designers by far is the vast pool of skills you can access. From experienced illustrators, to logo designers and experts in print and web design, you can find the right person for every design project.

Even if you have a design team already, freelance designers can offer additional skills and a fresh perspective that can take your work to the next level. 

That said, it’s important to note that this wealth of choice can be overwhelming for some. You’ll need to properly assess their portfolio and, even give them a test task to ensure they're the right match for your project.

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Flexible budget

With so many designers working freelance, you can expect the prices to range quite a bit.

For example, hourly rates range between $20 and $50 for junior designers, about $45 to $100 for mid-level and $100 and $200 for senior designers. 

The price of freelance design also depends on several factors, including:

• The type and complexity of the project
• The number of revisions
• Experience and location of the designer
  Still, although it’s difficult to calculate your design budget in advance, hiring a freelance designer allows you to pivot and change as you go. You only pay for the actual work done, and it’s much easier to scale up or down as you go. 

Unpredictable availability

The flipside of flexibility, however, is that freelancers are often unpredictable. Even if you’ve worked with the same person for years, there are no guarantees they’ll always be available for your projects. 

On top of that, remember that freelance designers work alone. So, every time something unexpected happens on their end, you’ll end up with delays on your project. 

Lots of admin

Hiring a freelance designer is not that dissimilar to hiring in-house team members. You still need to lay the groundwork and often negotiate about their payments and deliverables.

But that’s not all. Every time you need a different freelance talent, you’ll need to go through the same process all over again. This can also mean additional costs, for example platform fees that you might have when using different freelancing sites. 

Full-time designers: pros and cons

Now it’s time to look at your other option for professional design: hiring a full-time designer. Although you know exactly how it works, there might be a few things you haven’t considered about in-house designers. 

An in-depth understanding of your brand

One of the best things about an in-house team member is that they’re equally invested in your brand as you. They work as part of the core team and don’t need additional pointers to achieve perfect brand consistency. 

On the other hand, even if you have a long-term relationship with a freelancer, they’ll always have other projects on the side, and they might forget the nuances of your brand design.

Communication is easier

This is a huge, often overlooked benefit of having a designer in-house. Although there’s a hundred and one ways to communicate digitally, nothing beats face-to-face.

When you work with the same space as your designer, the process is usually much faster, and you don’t have to wait hours or even days for simple revisions. 

Fixed pay, predictable budget

The average monthly salary of a graphic designer in the US is between $5,000 and $6,000. While it’s no small investment, it’s certainly a lot more affordable than traditional design agencies, which charge thousands of dollars for a single project.

On top of that, this kind of long-term commitment allows you to plan your budget accordingly and avoid overhead costs. 

One person can’t do it all

With that said, it’s important to remember that no designer is good at everything. So, should a project come up that your in-house designer hasn’t got the necessary design skills for, you’ll need to hire external help, for which you’ll need to pay extra.

You’ll pay for design even when you don’t need it

This is definitely one of the biggest drawbacks of full-time designers for small businesses. Eight hours of work per day is a pretty huge chunk of time, and naturally it comes with a big price tag. 

However, lots of businesses simply don’t need that amount of work. Creating social media posts for the day might take up a couple of hours, and any additional project could use up a few more hours in the week. That could leave your designer idle for a lot of time.

Freelance vs full-time designer: what to pick?

As you can see each option comes with its pros and cons, so it can be difficult to decide between the two.

If you don’t need various design projects, but need them fairly regularly (e.g. you have very active social media and run a lot of digital ads), an in-house designer could be a good pick. Similarly, if you run a design agency and need lots of client work, communication will be easier and the output bigger with an in-house employee.

On the other hand, if you need graphics only occasionally, a freelance designer will be a more affordable and flexible option.

Design subscription: the best of both worlds

You need the design regularly, but can’t afford a full-time designer? And you want to avoid the unpredictable costs and hassle of working with a freelancer?

Then, a graphic design subscription is the right option for you!

One fixed monthly fee gives you unlimited design requests and revisions, and access to a team of designers with diverse skills and styles. The most affordable design subscription services have monthly plans from about $500 to $1,000, which is a fraction of the cost compared to freelancers and in-house designers.

At ManyPixels you can get unlimited design starting at just $599! All our graphic design capabilities are included, as well as professional project management to ensure high-quality work and a smooth and speedy design process.

Our clients include all kinds of businesses, including creative agencies, startups and small businesses. If you want to know which 5 industries can really benefit from unlimited design, check out this article.

ManyPixels has been an incredible helping hand. Managing all kinds of creative work can make it tough to bring someone up to speed on the wide range of tasks we handle — but that hasn’t been an issue at all. They’ve stepped in seamlessly, taken on everything I’ve thrown their way, and consistently maintained our brand standards. Truly a huge support. - Ava Stavridis

Keen to know more about it? Simply book a free 1:1 consultation for a chance to ask us any questions, and see if ManyPixels could be the right design solution for your business.