Navigating the Challenges of Freelance Web Development: A Candid Reflection

As a seasoned freelance web developer with over five years of experience, I often find myself evaluating my process and questioning whether I’ve truly achieved the level of satisfaction I seek in my work. Building client websites—primarily marketing and informational sites—has been a steady journey, yet I still grapple with frustrations and uncertainties in how I approach Website Development.

The rapidly evolving landscape of web development adds layers of complexity, especially when managing the business side of freelancing. Rising hosting costs, unexpected tier changes, overage fees, and the intricacies of DevOps practices often feel overwhelming, making it challenging to maintain a smooth workflow.

To give you a clearer picture, here are some of the ongoing issues I’ve encountered over the years:

1. Choosing the Right CMS and Hosting Solutions
   I initially experimented with Sanity as a headless CMS. It worked well until client needs grew, resulting in increased charges due to additional users or bandwidth spikes. I started with a traditional model—charging clients a flat annual fee—but fluctuating costs made transparency tricky. Explaining the need for clients to cover unexpected expenses became a recurring challenge.

2. DIY Headless CMS Options and Deployment Hurdles
   I’ve also explored Payload CMS, hosting it myself alongside frameworks like Astro. The goal was to avoid SaaS subscription fees, but setting up and deploying locally to cloud providers like DigitalOcean proved time-consuming and fraught with bugs. Although I managed to get the system working across multiple domains, front-end development introduced new issues: image delivery without a CDN, rendering rich content properly, and ensuring type safety—all while dealing with limited access to payload types and complex data fetching without a neatly integrated API. It’s been a constant battle to streamline this process.

3. Tooling and Framework Overload
   The frontend ecosystem moves quickly. I’ve cycled through Gatsby, which I initially loved but eventually found lacking in certain areas. Next.js rose to prominence but started feeling bloated and complicated, especially around caching and performance. Currently, I’m experimenting with Astro, which offers promising features, but I worry about switching between stacks frequently and losing momentum.

4. Hosting and Costs
   Platforms like Vercel and Netlify are excellent, but pricing them for client projects can be tricky. Explaining that hosting services and CMS platforms are separate costs isn’t always straightforward. I tried hosting with DigitalOcean,