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Strategy
4
min read

Design Partner vs Design Agency - Which is Better?

Written by
Joseph Wheatley
Published on
May 31, 2025

When you're scaling a SaaS or tech company, great design isn't optional. But how you get that design work done? That's where most teams get stuck.

You’ve got two main options:

Work with a Design Partner or hire a Design Agency.

They might sound similar. They’re not.

One integrates with your team and helps drive growth.

The other delivers what's in the brief and moves on.

Watch the full breakdown here, or keep reading:

What’s the Difference?

Let’s break down how each approach works and where they shine or fall short.

1. Relationship
  • Design Partner: Embedded, long-term collaborator. They’re part of your rhythm, not just a one-time vendor.
  • Design Agency: External and transactional. You send a brief, they deliver, then it’s done.
2. Team Integration
  • Design Partner: Feels like part of your marketing team. Joins strategy calls, communicates in Slack, async-first.
  • Design Agency: Works separately. Communication goes through project managers or formal briefs.
3. Scope
  • Design Partner: Flexible and evolves with your marketing needs. No rigid scope - just results.
  • Design Agency: Fixed scope, fixed deliverables. Any change means new paperwork.
4. Strategic Involvement
  • Design Partner: High. They help plan campaigns, advise on messaging, and direct creative work.
  • Design Agency: Low. They follow your brief, no more, no less.
5. Ownership Mentality
  • Design Partner: Invested in your goals. Shares responsibility for results like leads, signups, and conversions.
  • Design Agency: Delivers assets, not outcomes. Performance isn’t their problem.
6. Speed and Workflow
  • Design Partner: Fast, async, iterative. Designed for modern teams who move quickly.
  • Design Agency: Slower. Scheduled timelines, fixed rounds of feedback, and approvals.
7. Talent Quality
  • Design Partner: Senior-level design and copy, consistently.
  • Design Agency: Mixed team quality. You may get a senior or a junior with a checklist.
8. Flexibility
  • Design Partner: Highly flexible. Can pivot fast based on campaign shifts, urgency, or new insights.
  • Design Agency: Low flexibility. Changes mean new scopes, new invoices, and delays.
9. Deliverables
  • Design Partner: Focused on outcomes. Think landing pages, ads, content assets, messaging - all tied to performance.
  • Design Agency: Focused on the to-do list. They deliver only what’s scoped.
10. Best For
  • Design Partner: SaaS and tech companies that need high-quality creative baked into their team.
  • Design Agency: Companies with one-off projects or clear-cut execution needs.
11. Pricing
  • Design Partner: Subscription or retainer with built-in flexibility.
  • Design Agency: Project-based or fixed service retainers.

So... Which One’s Better?

It depends on what you need.

  • If you’re doing a one-off rebrand, need a new website built, or want to test out a small project, a design agency works fine.
  • But if you’re a SaaS or tech company running ongoing campaigns, launching features, iterating weekly, and need strategic creative support that keeps up, a design partner will outperform every time.

Agencies are structured for outputs.

Design partners are structured for outcomes.