Do you outsource any of the work?

The arrangement this is contrasted with is common and worth understanding rather than criticising. Larger providers sell through senior people and deliver through junior ones, which is how the economics work at scale. The person who understood your business is not the person building, and the gap between those two is where a substantial share of disappointing outcomes originates.

The practical consequence is that context does not get lost in translation. A decision made in a conversation about your customers shows up in the work, because the same person holds both. Where those are separated, the brief is written down, interpreted, and executed by somebody working from a document rather than from the discussion, and detail is lost at every step.

It also means the answer to a question is direct rather than relayed. You are not waiting for somebody to check with the person who actually knows, and there is no account manager translating between you and the work. For a small business owner who wants a specific answer, that difference is most of what makes an engagement feel productive.

The limitation is capacity, and it is genuine rather than nominal. One person can take a certain number of engagements at a time, which means availability is constrained and timelines reflect an actual queue. If you need something started immediately and the queue is full, that is a real answer rather than a negotiating position.

The other limitation worth stating is that there is no team absorbing the work if something happens. A larger provider has continuity that a solo practice does not, and that is a legitimate consideration for anything where an interruption would be costly. What mitigates it is that accounts are in your name, decisions are documented, and nothing is built in a way that requires me specifically to operate.

Where specialist input is genuinely needed, that gets said rather than attempted. Something requiring a discipline outside what I do is better handled by somebody who does it constantly, and an introduction is more useful than a competent attempt. Recognising the boundary is part of the arrangement rather than an exception to it.

This suits some businesses and not others, and the distinction is worth being honest about. A business wanting depth of attention from somebody who understands the whole situation is well served. One needing several disciplines simultaneously, at volume, or with guaranteed continuity, is better served elsewhere.

Then judge it by whether the person you met is the person who replies. That is a question you can ask directly of anybody, and the answer tells you which arrangement you are actually buying regardless of how the proposal describes it.

Ask what happens if the person becomes unavailable, since that is the legitimate concern with any solo arrangement and it deserves a straight answer. Accounts in your name, documented decisions, and work built on ordinary tools rather than anything proprietary is what makes the answer reassuring rather than theoretical.

Judge it by the first conversation rather than by the claim, since somebody doing the work themselves will discuss the actual problem while somebody selling will discuss a package. That difference is visible within twenty minutes and it is more reliable than anything on a website.

Expect a straight answer about capacity rather than an accommodating one, since a provider who says they can start immediately while visibly busy is telling you something about how the work will be handled.