Everyone who builds software for other companies calls themselves something different, and the labels overlap enough to be useless. What matters is what the firm is built to do, because that determines what you will get when the project gets hard. Here are the four kinds you will actually meet.
The big consulting firm
Built for large enterprises with large budgets. Strong on strategy, governance, and process. The partner who sells the work is excellent. The delivery is often a bench of junior people, sometimes offshore, working to a plan the partner approved.
- Good at: transformation programs, regulatory scope, work that needs a brand name on the slide.
- Weak at: speed, price, and staying tied to a growing company’s needs. The overhead is real and you pay for it.
- You will know you are talking to one when the proposal is long, the team is described in roles rather than names, and the rate card has a lot of rows.
The IT service provider
Built to keep systems running: hosting, help desk, networks, licenses, and increasingly “digital services.” Good operators. Software development is usually a side business, and it shows.
- Good at: operations, infrastructure, and predictable monthly service.
- Weak at: design, product thinking, and anything that has not been done before. Development tends to be offshore or subcontracted.
- You will know you are talking to one when the conversation moves quickly to licenses and managed services, and the software question gets handed to “our development partner.”
The software agency
Built to produce deliverables: a website, an app, a design. Often excellent at craft and speed. The model is to take a brief, execute it, and move to the next client.
- Good at: well-defined builds with a clear finish line, visual polish, and marketing-adjacent software.
- Weak at: questioning the brief, systems that have to run for years, and anything that requires understanding your operation. Agencies build what they are told.
- You will know you are talking to one when the portfolio is beautiful, the process is a fixed set of phases, and nobody asks what number the software is supposed to move.
The consultancy, or the consulting-led software firm
Built to solve a business problem with software and stay accountable for the result. Advises and builds with the same team. Asks why before how. Smaller than the big firms, more opinionated than an agency.
- Good at: mission-critical systems for companies that are not technology companies, projects with real uncertainty, and relationships that last past the first build.
- Weak at: being the cheapest option, saying yes to everything, and work that does not need judgment. A consultancy will push back on the brief, and some clients do not want that.
- You will know you are talking to one when the first meeting is mostly questions, the proposal comes after a planning step rather than before, and the people in the first meeting are builders, not salespeople.
That last one is what we are, so weigh the description accordingly. Why Frogslayer has the longer case and a comparison table.
What you should actually be hiring for
Ignore the label and ask four things.
- Who does the work, and can I talk to them? If there is a manager between you and the people building, you are paying for the manager.
- Will they tell me no? A partner who never pushes back is an order-taker, and order-takers build the wrong thing on time.
- What happens when the plan is wrong? It will be. The answer tells you who carries the risk. Look for a fixed budget with controlled scope rather than a change-order machine.
- Do I own everything? Code, designs, accounts, data, from the first week.
A short test
Send the same problem to two firms and watch what comes back. An agency sends a quote. A big firm sends a deck. A service provider sends a licensing proposal. A consultancy asks for a meeting with the people who live with the problem, and will not give you a fixed number until they have had it.
What pre-project consulting is explains why we work that way, and Questions to Ask a Software Development Partner Before You Sign is the list to bring to any of the four.