Title: Navigating the Challenges of Freelance Web Development: A Personal Perspective

As a seasoned freelance web developer with over five years of experience, I often find myself reflecting on the complexity and struggles inherent in building websites. Although I’ve delivered numerous client projects—primarily marketing and informational sites—I still grapple with feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration with the development process. If you’re in a similar boat, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The modern web development landscape is overwhelmingly intricate, especially when working freelance. The array of hosting options, escalating costs, unexpected fees from tier changes, and the technical headaches involved in DevOps can quickly become overwhelming. Juggling tooling best practices and keeping up with rapidly evolving technologies only adds to the challenge.

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

1. Challenges with Content Management Solutions

I experimented with Sanity for content management. Initially, it seemed like a solid choice, but as client needs grew—more users and higher traffic—it became clear that costs could spiral unexpectedly. I started with a straightforward, flat annual fee model, but bandwidth spikes and tier upgrades meant I had to inform clients of additional charges. This workflow isn’t ideal for sustainable project planning.

2. Exploring Self-Hosted CMSs

To avoid the “SaaS tax,” I turned to Payload CMS—self-hosted and integrated with Astro. After weeks of debugging and configuration, I managed to deploy the system to DigitalOcean, with domains like example.com and admin.example.com. However, front-end development revealed additional hurdles: lack of integrated CDN support for image rendering, difficulties in converting lexical content to HTML, typing Payload data safely without full type access, and complexities with data fetching via Local API. It’s been a constant battle, and I find myself seeking guidance before I lose my mind.

3. Rapidly Changing Tooling Landscape

Choosing the right tools has been a moving target. I started with Gatsby, which was great at first—then it wasn’t. Next.js became the go-to, but now it feels bloated and overly complex, especially dealing with caching strategies. Currently, I’m exploring Astro, which I genuinely like, but I worry about spreading myself too thin across multiple stacks, risking a fragmented workflow.

4. Hosting Woes

While platforms like Vercel and Netlify offer convenience,