NaiForge vs Hiring a Freelancer
Often the cheapest quote in the room — and the least certain thing about next year.
What you actually pay
KES 30,000-95,000 one-time
Zero. Hosting included for the life of the project.
M-Pesa via Pay-to-Till by default — no gateway, no gateway fee (just Safaricom's own ~0.55%). Automated M-Pesa (gateway STK push): KES 20,000 add-on, included in Premium, a gateway rate that depends on the provider (published: Paystack 1.5%, Flutterwave 2.9%, IntaSend 3%, Pesapal 3-3.5%).
50% deposit, balance on delivery. Scope, revision count and price in writing first.
KES 10,000-60,000 per project
Usually nothing quoted. In practice hosting and domain renewals land on you, and every later change is negotiated one message at a time — sometimes at a good rate, sometimes not, depending on how busy they are.
None from them. Payment fees are whatever they set up on your behalf.
Commonly 50% deposit. Kenyan freelance quotes for a basic business site cluster around KES 10,000-40,000; ecommerce with M-Pesa typically KES 30,000-60,000.
The prices overlap enough that this is not really a money comparison — a good freelancer and our Starter tier can land within a few thousand shillings of each other. What differs is what you hold at the end. The failure mode is well known to anyone who has been through it: the site works, the freelancer moves on to full-time work or simply stops replying, and nobody has the hosting login, the domain registrar account, or the source code. The site keeps running until the day it doesn't. We are not claiming freelancers are worse developers — many are excellent, and some of the best work in Nairobi is freelance. We are claiming that a studio with a documented handover is a different kind of purchase from a person with a phone number.
Feature by feature
| Feature | NaiForge | Hiring a Freelancer |
|---|---|---|
| Typical price | KES 30,000-95,000, published | KES 10,000-60,000, quoted per project |
| Scope agreement | Written before work starts | Varies — often informal |
| Code handover | Full repo access, documented | Varies — frequently never happens |
| Accounts in your name | Hosting, domain, gateway — all yours | Often under the freelancer's accounts |
| If they become unavailable | Studio continuity | This is the actual risk |
| Revisions | 1-2 rounds by tier, then KES 3,000/task | Negotiated case by case |
| Hosting | Included for the life of the project | Usually your bill, sometimes their account |
| Timeline | 5-28 days, committed by tier | Depends on their other work |
| Best for | Hiring without a referral | A developer you already trust |
- Documented handover: code, hosting, domain and credentials, all in your name
- Scope, revision count and price agreed in writing before work starts
- A studio does not go quiet because it took a full-time job
- Published prices you can compare before talking to anyone
- The stack and the standard are the same on every project, not per-developer
- Often genuinely cheaper, especially at the simpler end
- Direct access to the person building it, with no process in between
- Flexible on scope in ways a productized package deliberately is not
- A great freelancer you already trust beats any agency — including us
- Easier to negotiate small one-off changes informally
Who should choose what
Choose NaiForge if…
You are hiring from cold, you cannot easily judge technical quality, and you need certainty about what you get and what happens afterwards. Published prices, a fixed scope and a real handover are risk reduction — which is most of what you are buying when you cannot personally assess the developer.
Choose Hiring a Freelancer if…
You already know a developer whose work you have seen and whose reliability you can vouch for. That is worth more than any process guarantee we can offer, and you should hire them. Referral beats procurement.
Hire the freelancer you already trust. Hiring blind is where this gets expensive: the cheap quote and the missing handover are the same purchase. If you cannot get a referral, buy the process — written scope, published price, documented handover — rather than the lowest number.
NaiForge vs Hiring a Freelancer — FAQ
NaiForge vs everything else
vs Shopify
Global SaaS with polished templates — but USD-billed monthly forever.
vs Jumia Seller Center
Free to list, but Jumia takes 6-20% per sale and owns the customer.
vs Sky.Garden
Shut down in March 2025. Kept here as the clearest lesson in platform risk Kenyan ecommerce has produced.
vs WhatsApp Business
Free, familiar, and where your customers already are — but manual, unscalable, and invisible to Google.
Ready to decide?
WhatsApp us — we'll tell you honestly if Hiring a Freelancer is actually a better fit for you. We lose some leads that way; we keep the right ones.