Is a Salesforce freelancer cheaper than a consultancy?

Per day often yes, because the consultancy's sales, overhead and margin fall away. The real question is which role you fill. For a whole delivery team a consultancy is almost always the better choice, for the architect role on the client side an independent architect.

When should I not hire a Salesforce freelancer?

When you need a complete implementation from one source, want a warranty for an overall result or expect round-the-clock support. One person cannot provide that.

Can an independent architect work with our implementation partner?

Yes, that is the normal case. The partner builds, the architect on the client side sets standards, reviews designs and pull requests and prepares decisions for the client.

How do I avoid the knowledge staying with the freelancer?

Decisions go into a decision log, standards into a shared document and code into a repository the client owns. Plan an internal colleague from the start who later takes over reviews and the CoE call.

Salesforce freelancer or consultancy: which fits when

Whether you hire a Salesforce freelancer or a consultancy depends on the role you want to fill. If you need a team that builds, tests and runs an implementation, a consultancy or implementation partner is the right choice. A single Salesforce freelancer does not replace that team. If architecture decisions, standards and the steering of several partners should stay with you, the right fit is an independent architect on the client side, because he does not earn from the delivery. In larger programmes at manufacturers, both work together.

What speaks against a Salesforce freelancer?

Search for Salesforce freelancers and you find articles from consultancies near the top that advise against them. Their arguments are not wrong:

One person drops out. Illness, holidays, another project, and nobody takes over.
No team behind him. A freelancer cannot add three developers at short notice when go-live gets closer.
Quality is hard to judge. Profiles on portals are often anonymous, certifications say little about project experience.
No liability for an overall result. Whoever hires a freelancer on time and materials carries the result risk alone.

All four points hold when a manufacturer uses a freelancer as a cheaper substitute for a development team. Then one person sits where a team belongs, and the client wonders why nothing moves.

For the role I work in myself, other questions matter. An architect on the client side does not build the implementation. He makes sure the teams who build follow the same rules, and that the client takes the decisions only the client can take.

When is a consultancy the better choice?

A consultancy or implementation partner is the right choice when you buy capacity and responsibility for a result:

New implementation without your own Salesforce team. You need consultants, developers, testers and a project lead who know each other and work as a unit.
Fixed price or a contract for a deliverable. If you want a result at a fixed price, you need a contractor with a team who stands behind it.
Run and support. Incidents on Monday morning, releases three times a year, new users: that needs an organisation, not one person.
Peaks in delivery. More people before go-live, fewer afterwards. A partner can do that, a freelancer cannot.

A good partner brings its own architects. That works as long as there is one partner and the client can follow its decisions. How to spot a good partner in the proposal is covered in how to choose a Salesforce implementation partner.

When does an independent architect fit better?

It gets critical when the partner also decides on things it earns from, or when several partners build on the same org. Then the client needs someone on its side of the table.

Independent architect on the client side

Works only for the client and does not earn from the size of the delivery
Sets standards that apply to every partner alike
Reviews designs and pull requests independently of the supplier
Prepares decisions like industry cloud or custom build without a sales interest

What he does not provide

No delivery capacity for a whole implementation
No contract for an overall result
No cover by colleagues when he drops out
No run and no round-the-clock support

Typical situations in which I am called in:

Several partners on one org. Each partner builds by its own rules until the automations on one object block each other. Who owns which object is settled by an object ownership matrix, and it belongs to the client.
Decisions before signing. Whether Manufacturing Cloud pays off or a custom build on the platform is enough should not be answered by whoever sells the licences or the project. With licences I regularly see full licences offered by default although many users do not need them. That can easily add up to six figures per year.
Securing quality the client cannot check alone. An architect on the client side reads along before anything goes to production. Why that is a must in enterprise projects is in pull request reviews.
Keeping tools and knowledge with the client. Repository, pipeline and decisions belong to the client, so a change of partner stays possible. I describe this in detail in why clients should own their DevOps tools.

The architect and the partners have separate roles

In most programmes I work in, there are both: partners who build, and me on the client side. The roles are clearly split.

Task	Client	Architect on the client side	Implementation partner
Target picture and architecture decisions	decides	prepares, documents in the decision log	contributes proposals
Standards and object ownership matrix	approves	drafts and maintains	follows them, reports edge cases
Delivery, tests, deployment	accepts	reviews designs and pull requests	builds and delivers
Center of Excellence	chairs	runs the technical call	presents changes
Licences and contracts	negotiates	calculates demand and variants	provides quantities

No single partner could have taken this role without setting the rules for its competitors. And no freelancer could have done the work of the 30 developers. What the board around it looks like is in Salesforce Center of Excellence: cadence and format.

These questions help you check an independent architect

If you are looking for an architect for your side of the table, other questions help than for a developer:

Which decision did he prepare last, and how is it documented? Ask to see an anonymised decision log. Whoever keeps none leaves you nothing but his memory.
How many partners has he steered at the same time? An architect who only worked inside one partner does not know the conflicts between partners first hand.
Where does he say no? Ask for a role he turned down. I, for example, do not take pure admin or developer roles, or roles where the architecture is already fixed and only needs to be signed off.
How does he handle dropping out? Cover by colleagues does not exist with a freelancer. What must exist: documented standards, a decision log and an internal colleague who can take over reviews and calls. In one programme every pull request went across my desk at first, and once the process was stable I handed it over to an internal colleague.
Who is the contracting party? With me it is FK Solution Design GmbH, billed monthly by effort. Many clients hire through a staffing agency, which works as well.

Write down which role is missing

First write down which role is missing: capacity that builds, or control that decides. If capacity is missing, look for a partner, and no freelancer portal solves that. If control is missing, because a partner checks its own work or several partners build by their own rules, get an architect on your side before the next tender goes out. How I fill this role is on the page Freelance Salesforce Architect and under partner governance.