Honest comparison
Hiring a freelancer feels like the premium choice: a real human, custom design, direct communication. Sometimes it is — and sometimes it's a three-month project that stalls on copy, balloons past quote, and leaves you afraid to ask for changes.
Ground8 productized the parts freelancers find hardest about therapy sites: the words, the ethics check, and the fixed price. Here's how the paths compare.
A good freelancer builds you a beautiful site and an ongoing relationship you must maintain. Ground8 builds you a therapy-ready site with copy and QA included — for less than most freelancers charge for the homepage alone.
| Criterion | A Freelancer | Ground8 |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Typically $1,500–$5,000+ for custom work; changes billed hourly afterward. | $57/mo all-inclusive. The price is the price. |
| Timeline | Weeks to months, gated by both calendars — and usually by unwritten copy. | Days after your 15-minute briefing, with human QA before launch. |
| Therapy copy | Designers design; almost none write ethically-worded therapy copy. The words stay your problem. | Copy is the core deliverable: drafted from your briefing, refined and ethics-checked by a human. |
| After launch | New invoice per change, or a handoff to DIY editing you didn't want. | Revision round included, support ongoing, files downloadable if you ever leave. |
| Risk | Ghosting, scope creep, and style mismatch are common freelancer stories. | Fixed scope, fixed price, preview before launch — low drama by design. |
Hire the freelancer when you have a specific creative vision and budget for an ongoing relationship. Choose Ground8 when you want the standard excellent therapy site — great words, calm design, live soon — at a fixed, solo-practice price.
For genuinely custom work, expect low four figures minimum. Quotes far below that usually mean a disguised template — in which case compare with Ground8's $57/mo honestly.
The copy stall: design finishes, then the project waits months on your unwritten pages. Ground8's briefing exists specifically to prevent this failure mode.
Some can, most don't claim to. Ask directly who checks wording against your ethics code — with Ground8, a human QA expert does, on every site.
Your files are downloadable and your domain is yours — hire anyone for anything, anytime. Ground8 covers the 95% case; nothing blocks the other 5%.
Answer a 15-minute briefing in your own words. Our AI drafts your site, a human QA expert refines every line for warmth and ethics compliance, and you approve before launch. $57/mo all-inclusive, no setup — your files downloadable anytime.