Navigating the Challenges of Freelance Web Development: A Personal Reflection

As a freelance web developer with over five years of experience, I often find myself reflecting on the complexities and frustrations that come with building websites for clients. Despite a solid track record of delivering marketing and informational sites, I frequently grapple with feelings of dissatisfaction and overwhelm. If you’re a solo developer in the same boat, you’re not alone.

The rapidly evolving web development landscape presents numerous hurdles, especially when managing projects independently. From escalating hosting costs to unexpected fees and the intricacies of DevOps, it can feel like a never-ending battle to stay afloat. Here’s a candid overview of some of the persistent challenges I’ve encountered over the years:

1. Choosing the Right Content Management System (CMS)
   I experimented with Sanity, which initially impressed me. However, as the client base grew, so did the costs—additional charges for increased users and bandwidth spikes began to add up. My initial approach involved a flat annual hosting fee, but these rising expenses became a difficult conversation with clients.

2. Self-Hosting Solutions and Tooling Hurdles
   My journey with Payload CMS involved self-hosting alongside frameworks like Astro, aiming to bypass SaaS fees. After weeks of troubleshooting and deployment challenges—especially ensuring seamless deployment to platforms such as DigitalOcean—I finally achieved a workable setup. Still, development revealed more issues: lacking a CDN for image rendering, difficulties converting Lexical content to HTML, the absence of straightforward type safety for Payload data, and tricky data-fetching without a local API. Each obstacle feels like a new mountain to climb.

3. Rapidly Changing Toolchains and Frameworks
   The frontend ecosystem shifts quickly. I enjoyed Gatsby initially, but shifts in focus and community support pushed me toward Next.js, which now feels increasingly complex and bloated—particularly when managing caching and performance. Currently exploring Astro inspires me, but I worry about constantly jumping between frameworks, losing momentum, and mastering new stacks.

4. Hosting and Deployment Pain Points
   Platforms like Vercel and Netlify are convenient, but pricing for client projects can be challenging to explain—especially when combining multiple services like Sanity and Vercel. DigitalOcean offers more control but requires sysadmin skills I haven’t fully developed. Command-line management is time-consuming, and I sometimes feel like I’m just firefighting rather than building.