Navigating the Challenges of Freelance Web Development: A Personal Reflection

As a seasoned freelance web developer with over five years of experience, I often find myself contemplating the ongoing hurdles that come with building websites for clients. Despite numerous projects under my belt, a sense of dissatisfaction persists, prompting me to ask: are others in this field feeling the same frustration?

The Complexity of Modern Web Architecture

The landscape of web development today is intricate and constantly evolving. As a freelancer managing multiple responsibilities, I grapple with rising hosting costs, unexpected expenses due to tier changes, and the complexities of DevOps and tooling best practices. These challenges make the process feel overwhelming at times.

Learning from Past Experiences

Throughout my journey, I’ve experimented with various content management and hosting solutions:

• Sanity CMS: Initially a promising choice, but skyrocketing user numbers soon led to increased charges. I had hoped for a straightforward, flat-rate hosting model, but fluctuating bandwidth requirements meant explaining additional costs to clients, which complicates billing.

• Payload CMS with Static Site Generators: I ventured into self-hosting Payload CMS alongside Astro, aiming to avoid SaaS subscription fees. After weeks of troubleshooting deployment issues, I achieved a stable setup on two domains (example.com and admin.example.com). However, front-end development uncovered more hurdles—lacking a reliable CDN for images, challenges in rendering content to HTML, and difficulty in typing Payload data due to limited access to type files. These ongoing technical obstacles are quite disheartening.

The Rapidly Changing Tooling Landscape

Frameworks and tools are evolving swiftly. Gatsby once seemed ideal but fell out of favor for some. Next.js took the crown but now appears increasingly complex, especially with caching strategies and performance optimizations. Currently exploring Astro, I like its modern approach, yet I worry about switching between stacks too frequently, which can hinder consistency and efficiency.

Hosting Woes and Cost Management

Vercel and Netlify offer excellent services, but their pricing structures pose challenges when presenting options to clients. Explaining that services like Sanity and hosting platforms are separate entities often leads to confusion. I also tried hosting via DigitalOcean, but managing servers and executing deployment commands made me feel more like a sysadmin than a developer—something I’d prefer to outsource or streamline but lack the time for.

Feeling Stuck and Seeking Community Support

Despite my skills in front-end