Website development - offshore vs. US Based

Outsourcing software development to India, Pakistan and Ukraine has become more and more popular over the last few years, with more US businesses looking offshore to save costs on software and website development.

A client recently asked me "If I can pay 5 times less in India and get the website done within the same time, why should I bother dealing with US companies?"

Puzzeled for a minute, I promised to think about it and come up with the pros and cons of "shoring" vs. working with a local company.

Here are the top two I came up with -

Benefits of offshore website development:

* Cost - often five times less

* Time to market - Time zone differences combined with the longer hours invested by offshore companies, means you usually get the finished product sooner

Objections to Outsourcing offshore:

* Cultural differences and communication challenges, often lead to hidden costs, frustration and an uncertain completion date.

* Lack of privacy & security. Source code developed for your company is likely to be embedded into other projects. (Read about government data leak)

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If you feel the pros of offshoring outweigh the cons, make sure you use a "middle-man" in the form of an online market place. It's a great way to mitigate the risk.

These online market places help ensuring you are buying from a legitimate provider, by listing past performance, feedback and earning's history as well as serving as an escrow holding payment until you are fully satisfied with the work.

I've put together a list of the top online market places to buy software development, webdesign and graphic design online -

Project Spring
IT Moonlighter
Hire Bidder
Freelance Web Projects
Image Lance
Web Developers Index
ScriptLance
Got Projects
Outsource Today
Freelance Auctions
Programming Bids
12 Freelance
Freelance Spot
Select Designer
City IT Jobs
Freelance Web Programming
Freelance Direct
Freelance Central
Elance
Max Lance
The Centrall Mall
Contracted Work
Quovix
Japher Base
Free Agent
Projects Pool
CodeLance