Understanding the Challenges of Freelance Web Development: A Personal Perspective

As a freelance web developer with over five years of experience, I often find myself contemplating the complexities and frustrations inherent in building websites. Despite having crafted numerous client-facing sites—primarily focused on marketing and informational content—the satisfaction I seek in the process continually eludes me. If you’re in a similar position, you’ll know this feeling all too well.

The Ever-Evolving Web Development Landscape

Modern web development offers a myriad of tools and frameworks, yet navigating this landscape can be daunting. As a freelancer juggling multiple projects, I frequently encounter hurdles related to hosting fees, unexpected costs due to tiered plans, overage charges, and the intricacies of DevOps. The rapid pace of tooling innovation only adds to the challenge, often making the entire process feel overwhelming.

Reflections on Tools and Platforms

Over the years, I’ve experimented with various content management systems and technologies:

• Sanity: Initially, I appreciated its ease of use, but as client needs grew, so did billing—additional user tiers and bandwidth charges became a hurdle. I had to inform clients about rising costs due to usage spikes, which complicates straightforward pricing models.

• Payload CMS: Attempting to escape the SaaS subscription model, I adopted Payload, hosting it myself alongside Astro. After weeks of troubleshooting deployment issues to platforms like DigitalOcean, I finally achieved a working setup on multiple domains (example.com and admin.example.com). However, front-end development revealed more challenges: lacking a CDN for image delivery, rendering rich text content, safely typing Payload data, and data fetching without a proper local API—all of these issues felt like an uphill battle.

The Rapid Shift in Development Frameworks

Frameworks and static site generators like Gatsby once seemed promising, but their popularity has waned. Next.js has become the dominant player, yet its complexity and caching strategies can feel bloated. Currently exploring Astro, I appreciate its approach but worry about constantly switching stacks, which hampers long-term consistency and learning.

Hosting and Deployment Woes

While platforms like Vercel and Netlify simplify deployment, pricing models can be tricky when explaining to clients—particularly when combining multiple services like Sanity and hosting providers. DigitalOcean offers more control but introduces a new challenge: managing servers and infrastructure, effectively turning me into a sysadmin. Time constraints make extensive server management impractical, even