Freelance vs Full-Time: Why Hire a Freelance Ecommerce Expert?

If you’d asked me a few years ago whether it was a better idea to hire an in-house ecommerce (or Shopify) expert, or rely on a freelancer, I probably would have told you to hire in-house. Building, optimizing, and managing your ecommerce store are all important tasks, and in the past, not every freelancer community had the best reputation for reliability.

But things have changed. Hiring a Shopify expert today isn’t the same as hiring one five years ago, and business needs have evolved. Everyone still wants an ecommerce expert they can rely on, but they need something more agile too. 

Today’s ecommerce brands aren’t just experimenting with Shopify side hustles, they’re evolving rapidly, testing new offers weekly, rebuilding product pages for 360-degree views, launching micro-sites for niche local audiences – the works. 

You don’t get that kind of velocity when you’re still posting full-time job listings, waiting for HR to finish interviews, onboarding someone, and hoping they actually know Shopify’s quirks.

What I’ve seen firsthand (and what a lot of smart founders have figured out) is this: the better bet is hiring on-demand. Here’s why. 

Shopify Freelancer or Employee: What Brands Need

Ultimately, most Shopify brands don’t need a full-time developer, or marketer, or CRO lead.

What they actually need is a really smart, Shopify-literate expert to come in and fix a specific pain point. Maybe it’s speeding up a bloated product page. Or redesigning a collection page for mobile conversions. Or integrating an inventory management app without breaking everything. That’s not a 40-hour-a-week forever job, it’s a high-impact sprint.

Still, I talk to founders every month who are stuck in decision paralysis. “Do I hire someone full-time?” “Should I go with an agency?” “What if I get a bad freelancer?”

Good questions, but a bit outdated. The world of work is shifting. In 2024 there were 76.4 million freelancers in the US alone. By 2028, they’re expected to account for more than 50% of the workforce for the entire country. 

Why? Because businesses, especially lean, digital-native brands, need adaptability more than headcount.

And Shopify is a uniquely specialized ecosystem. It’s not just HTML and CSS. You’re dealing with Liquid, metafields, third-party apps, API limitations, and a constant flow of new feature rollouts from Shopify itself. You want someone who’s been in the trenches. 

That kind of experience isn’t always in-house. 

Pricing: Full-Time Employee vs. Freelance Ecommerce Expert

One of the top reasons most companies consider hiring a freelance ecommerce expert over an in-house employee is that it’s cheaper. That’s a fact. 

Hiring a full-time Shopify developer in the U.S.? That’s easily $100K to $140K a year, not including benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, PTO, or the weeks (sometimes months) it takes to find and onboard the right person. 

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Now compare that to hiring a freelance ecommerce expert, someone with deep Shopify experience, maybe even ex-agency, who you can bring on right now to knock out a project in 10 days. 

Rates on platforms like Storetasker generally fall between $65 and $120 an hour, depending on seniority. For a full theme build or complex integration, you’re often looking at $3K–$6K all-in.

To put that into perspective:

• A U.S. brand we worked with needed a full redesign before Black Friday. A freelance team on Storetasker knocked it out for $4,800 in under two weeks.
• Another brand spent $48,000 with an agency for a similar project, and waited three months.

Same result, dramatically different cost.

On top of that, when you hire full-time, you’re also paying for everything around the work. Weekly check-ins, Slack threads, internal design approvals, even training. 

The Skill Benefits of a Freelance Ecommerce Expert

The cost factor isn’t the only thing worth considering if you’re dithering between hiring a Shopify freelancer or employee. Specialization matters too. 

If you’ve ever tried to get a full-time dev to troubleshoot a Shopify checkout issue and they said, “I’ve never touched Liquid before,” you already know where I’m going.

Shopify isn’t like WordPress or Magento or generic frontend development. It’s its own ecosystem. There are very real landmines, like theme conflicts, app bloat, hardcoded Liquid logic, or metafields not mapping correctly, that only people who live in Shopify understand. 

Now, of course there are people out there you can hire full-time that understand Shopify and ecommerce. But they’re not exactly easy to find, particularly at a time when digital skill shortages are growing. Plus, if you need something specific, like someone who knows their way around Shopify, Klaviyo, and the other tools you use, the talent pool gets a lot smaller.

Hiring a freelance ecommerce expert means you can find the exact professional you want for the precise task you want to complete. You don’t even have to use the same freelancer for everything. You can hire one for theme design, another for app integration, one for CRO, and one for email marketing – while still paying less than you would for a full-time hire. 

Flexibility & Speed: The Real Time Advantage

If you’re an ecommerce store owner, you’ll already know how important speed is. 

Whether you're prepping for a product drop, fixing a post-launch disaster, or just racing against your ad spend, you can't wait six weeks to fill a full-time seat. You need someone straight away. Freelancers don’t go through weeks of trials and onboarding, they dive in immediately.

I once had a client whose site broke three days before a restock. The cart wasn’t functioning, product pages were timing out, and the entire back end was riddled with broken meta fields from a failed migration. Nightmare scenario.

We hired a Storetasker freelancer on a Thursday morning. By Sunday afternoon, the site was back online and running better than it had in months. Total cost: $2,400. Total stress avoided? Priceless.

That kind of response time is basically impossible with a full-time hire or a big agency. Freelancers are built differently. They’re used to dropping into chaos, working async, and shipping clean work without needing a three-hour kickoff call. 

Plus, you can scale up or down instantly. Need 20 hours this month and 5 next month? That’s absolutely no problem with a freelancer. 

Shopify Freelancer or Employee: The Reliability Issue

I know, I mentioned above that in the past, freelancers haven’t always had the best reputation for being reliable. The truth is, some freelancers are flaky. So are some agencies. So are some full-time employees who show up to meetings in sweatpants and disappear after lunch.

The problem isn’t freelancers, the problem is unvetted freelancers.

If you take the time to find freelance ecommerce experts that have already been pre-vetted and approved by experts, on a platform like Storetasker, you avoid the problem. 

Storetasker doesn’t just let anyone call themselves an “expert.” Every freelancer goes through a full application process, interviews, test projects, and Shopify-specific vetting. That means you’re not posting a project and getting 63 copy-pasted proposals from people who once customized the Debut theme back in 2019.

You’re getting 1–3 curated matches. Pros who have actually built subscription stores, solved checkout issues, integrated third-party tools, or improved conversion rates on mobile. 

We’ve had clients come to us after getting burned on Upwork or Fiverr. Projects half-finished. Poor documentation. Missed deadlines. You name it. Once they try a vetted freelancer through Storetasker, it’s night and day.

The reality is: good freelancers work like pros, because their entire business depends on referrals, reviews, and reputation. There’s no safety net. That’s why, when you hire through a platform that filters for quality, you’re actually getting some of the most accountable, consistent, and skilled talent available.

Long-Term Success: Ongoing Work Without Commitment

One of the biggest myths about hiring freelance ecommerce experts is that they’re only good for one-off projects. Fix this theme bug. Build this landing page. Launch this new product. Done and gone.

That’s not really true anymore. In reality, the best Shopify freelancers can be your long-term partners. They’ll jump in for new launches, run optimization tests quarterly, help with seasonal updates, or even hop on calls when you’re spit balling a new product flow. The difference is, you only pay them when you need them.

That flexibility is huge, especially when you’re still scaling. You don’t want to lock yourself into a $7,000/month agency retainer or commit to a full-time salary for someone whose workload fluctuates wildly. Freelancers give you elasticity.

For example, on Storetasker, a lot of our clients run monthly retainers at 15–30 hours with their favorite dev or CRO expert. That’s enough to cover support, optimization, and new feature work, without breaking the bank or adding HR complexity. Some months they use all 30 hours. Other times they use 10. 

You keep the continuity, the codebase stays clean, and your store keeps improving. No hiring. No onboarding. No fuss. If something urgent breaks on a Friday night? You already have someone who knows your stack. That’s priceless.

Storetasker: The Place to Go for Freelance Ecommerce Experts

Now you might be asking: “Okay, but where do I actually find these people?”

That’s where Storetasker comes in. And yes, I’m biased, but also, I’ve used every other platform out there. Upwork, Fiverr, Reddit, agency directories, Facebook groups, you name it. Nothing comes close to Storetasker’s quality, speed, or simplicity.

Freelancers on Storetasker are carefully vetted and curated – not crowdsourced. Only about 5% of applicants make it through. With Storetasker, you also get:

• Fast, Clear Matching: Most clients are connected to a qualified freelancer within 24 hours. You’re not hunting people down. You’re not hoping someone with the right keywords notices your post. It’s proactive, not passive.
• Real Pros, Not “Side Hustlers”: Storetasker freelancers work like professionals because they are professionals. They’re not moonlighting or side-gigging. They do this full time. That means you get tight communication, on-time delivery, and clean work. Every time.
• Transparent Rates: You’ll know exactly what you’re paying before the project starts. $450 for homepage tweaks. $2,000 for a mini redesign. $3K/month for a retainer. No back-and-forth negotiation drama. 

It’s stuff like this that has helped Storetasker to earn a 4.9 out of 5 star rating on Trustpilot. That’s after more than 1,600 confirmed reviews. 

Freelance Ecommerce Experts: The Better Option

Hiring full-time used to be the standard. But in 2025, it’s often just a slower, more expensive way to get results you could’ve had last week with a specialist.

If you’re running a fast-growing Shopify brand, you need to move fast. You need deep expertise, on demand. You don’t have time to babysit an in-house hire through their Shopify learning curve. And you definitely don’t need three layers of agency management standing between you and the person actually doing the work.

This is why top eCommerce brands are turning to freelance ecommerce experts. Not as a stopgap or budget option, but as the smarter alternative. 

If you’re ready to hire freelance ecommerce experts you can actually rely on to make your store better and your life easier, contact Storetasker today. 

We’ll show you why a freelancer shouldn’t be your plan B.