An in-house team is the right choice when the website is your core product and you need permanent senior web capability. A website migration company is the right choice when the site carries your brand and demand but is not your core operation, and the migration needs six or seven skills for a year rather than one hire forever. Bejamas, a senior web development and CMS migration agency, explains how to decide, and why most complex migrations end up with a third model: an embedded senior web team.
The question underneath: is the website your core business?
Companies keep in-house what is core and outsource what is important but not core. That single rule explains most sensible decisions about web teams.
If your website is the product, the store or the platform your revenue runs through directly, it belongs in-house. You will keep a senior team busy every day, and you cannot afford to depend on anyone else for it.
Most organisations are not in that position. Their business runs on cafés, cranes, insurance policies, distribution or software. The website is the company’s most public asset. It carries the brand, the demand, the talent funnel and a good deal of credibility. But it is not the operation itself, and that changes the maths. A senior, multi-disciplinary web team is expensive to hire and hard to keep busy once the migration is done. So the business case never quite closes, and the estate ends up owned by a marketing team of two to fifteen people who cannot ship without raising a ticket.
That gap is where the in-house versus agency debate actually lives. Too important for juniors and freelancers, not core enough to staff.
What a migration actually requires
A website migration is not one job. It is at least seven, and they peak at different times.
| Skill | During the migration | After launch |
|---|---|---|
| CMS architecture and content modelling | Heavy: content model, workflows, localisation design | Light: occasional changes |
| Frontend engineering | Heavy: templates, components, integrations, performance | Moderate: features, campaigns, maintenance |
| Design and design system | Heavy if redesigning: components, tokens, editor UX | Light to moderate |
| SEO migration | Heavy: benchmark, redirect map, metadata, monitoring | Light: ongoing technical SEO |
| Content operations and migration | Heavy: scripted migration, mapping, QA of thousands of pages | Moderate: publishing, campaigns |
| QA, accessibility and performance testing | Heavy: staging crawls, UAT, WCAG, Core Web Vitals | Light: regression |
| Delivery lead and stakeholder management | Heavy: markets, procurement, security, steering | Light |
The shape of that table is the argument. You need a lot of senior capability for twelve to eighteen months and much less afterwards. Very few organisations can hire for the peak without carrying the cost of the trough.
Building an in-house migration team
Where it works. You already have a senior engineering function that owns web. The website is your product or your direct revenue channel. You will have a steady roadmap of web work for years, not just a migration. You can hire senior frontend, CMS and SEO people in your market within a few months.
The advantages. Full control. Institutional knowledge stays in the building. No vendor to manage. Long-term cost per hour is lower if the team stays busy.
The costs people underestimate. Hiring senior web engineers and architects takes months per role, not weeks. One person cannot cover design, frontend, CMS architecture and SEO migration, so you are hiring several. Someone senior has to manage them, which is a real fraction of a director’s week. And when the migration ends, so does most of the work.
The risk that matters most. Continuity. An in-house team of two or three carries a high bus factor. When the lead engineer leaves eight months in, the redirect logic and the content model leave with them.
Working with a website migration company
Where it works. The website is important but not your core operation. You need the full set of migration skills quickly, and you do not want to carry them permanently. Your marketing or digital team owns strategy and content and needs a senior partner for design, engineering and architecture.
The advantages. Speed to start (weeks, not months of recruitment). A team that has done this migration shape before, with a method to show for it. Coverage across every skill in the table without seven hires. Cost that scales with the work.
The risks, and how to avoid them. The agency that delivered the project and disappeared. The pitch team replaced by juniors after signing. The meter running on every question. An incumbent that only knows one platform. These are real failure modes, and they are avoidable if you select for method, named seniors, discovery-first engagement and written commitments. How to Choose the Right Website Migration Company covers the criteria, and the 10 questions to ask before hiring a website migration agency test for them in the room.
The honest trade-off. You are buying judgement as well as hours. A good migration company will push back on your brief, tell you when the platform you have chosen is wrong, and sometimes tell you not to migrate at all. If you want a vendor that executes without comment, hire a body shop and keep the risk yourself. The standards that separate a great migration agency from an adequate one describe what that judgement looks like in practice.
The third option: an embedded senior web team
In practice, most complex migrations do not end up as pure in-house or pure agency. They end up with a hybrid.
Your team owns the roadmap, the brand, the content and the relationships with your markets. The partner supplies the design, engineering, CMS architecture and migration method as a named senior team on a quarterly retainer. Capacity scales up for the migration and down afterwards, without recruitment, notice periods or idle headcount. The partner works inside your tools and your governance, often on your own accounts, and stays after launch to run the estate.
The test of whether this model is working is simple: your marketing team can publish, launch a campaign or add a market without raising a developer ticket, and you can answer “what is happening, what does it cost and why” to your management without scheduling a call.
This is how Bejamas works with most of its long-term clients: one senior team, one contract, from a fixed-price discovery through the migration programme to a quarterly retainer that runs the estate for years. Many of those relationships have renewed quarter after quarter for years.
Comparison: in-house team vs migration company vs embedded senior team
The three models differ most in how fast they start, how the cost behaves, and who still owns the estate a year after launch.
| Area | In-house team | Website migration company (project) | Embedded senior web team (retainer) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to start | Months of hiring | Weeks | Weeks |
| Skills coverage | Only what you hire; usually one or two roles | Full set for the project | Full set, flexing with the roadmap |
| Cost shape | Fixed salaries regardless of workload | Project fee, then support | Quarterly retainer that scales up and down |
| Continuity | High while people stay; fragile at small team sizes | Ends at handover unless a retainer follows | Same named people through migration and Run |
| Control | Full | Shared, defined by SOW | Shared; you own roadmap, partner owns delivery |
| SEO risk ownership | Yours | Agency’s, if written into acceptance criteria | Partner’s, ongoing |
| After the migration | Team needs a new mission or shrinks | Handover or new procurement | Same team runs, improves and reports |
| Best when | The website is your core product | A one-off migration with in-house capacity to run it afterwards | Complex estate, no senior in-house web function, ongoing roadmap |
A decision framework: five questions
- Is the website your core product, or your most public asset? Core product: lean in-house. Public asset: lean partner.
- How many distinct skills does the migration need at peak, and how many six months after launch? If the answer is seven then two, you are describing a retainer, not a hiring plan.
- Can you hire senior web people in your market in time, and keep them busy after launch? If not, the in-house route has a hidden cost in time and idle capacity.
- Who owns the SEO risk if it goes wrong? In-house means you. A migration company can accept it in writing. Make sure someone has.
- What will your editors need on day 91? Training, documentation, a team that answers in hours. Whichever model you choose has to answer this before launch, not after.
Partner with Bejamas
Bejamas is the senior web team you do not have to hire, and that stays. Design, engineering, CMS architecture and migration method under one contract, delivered by named senior people who start with a fixed-price audit, migrate your estate without losing rankings or content, and run it with your team for years afterwards.
Weighing in-house against a migration partner? Talk to Bejamas about what an embedded senior web team would look like for your estate.
Read more about Bejamas website migration services.
Frequently asked questions
Is it better to migrate a website in-house or with an agency?
In-house is better when the website is your core product and you need permanent senior web capability. An agency or embedded partner is better when the site is important but not core, and the migration needs several senior skills for a limited period. Most complex estates end up with a hybrid: the internal team owns strategy and content, a senior partner owns design, engineering and migration.
How many people does a website migration need?
At least seven distinct skills at peak: CMS architecture, frontend engineering, design, SEO migration, content operations, QA and accessibility, and delivery management. Some can be covered by one senior person, but rarely fewer than four people for a multi-market estate.
What are the hidden costs of an in-house web team?
Recruitment time, management overhead, the cost of idle capacity after the migration, and continuity risk when a key person leaves. Salaries are the visible part.
What is an embedded web team?
A named senior team from a partner that works inside your organisation’s tools and governance on a quarterly retainer, scaling up for a migration and down afterwards, and staying to run the estate. Your team keeps ownership of roadmap and content; the partner owns design, engineering and architecture.
Can an agency take responsibility for SEO during a migration?
Yes, if it is written into the contract. Look for URL continuity, redirect mapping and monitoring against a pre-migration benchmark as acceptance criteria, not as best-effort promises.
