L'Atelier · June 11, 2026 · Vincent Mary
Solo studio or agency: who should build your iOS app?
I run a one-person studio, so this article could easily be a sales pitch for my own side. It won't be: there are projects I turn down because an agency will do them better. Here is where I draw the line — the same line I apply to my own prospects.
What a solo studio does better
One head, zero telephone game
In an agency, your needs travel through a salesperson, a project manager, a designer, then developers. Every handoff loses information. In a studio, the person listening to you is the one who designs, codes, and ships. When you say "trainers won't have time to click three times", the developer hears it firsthand — and knows why it's true, because in my case I spent fifteen years as a trainer.
Structurally lower cost
You pay for no offices, no sales team, no internal coordination meetings. On a reasonably sized app, the gap commonly runs from one to three times the price. Not because agencies are robbing you: because their structure is expensive, and that structure adds nothing to a project one person can carry.
Responsibility that cannot be diluted
When something goes wrong, there is no "let me check with the team". It's me, it's signed, and my name sits on the App Store right next to the app. That personal exposure is uncomfortable — and it is exactly what guarantees attention to detail. A studio cannot afford a mediocre app: its entire portfolio rides on it.
What an agency genuinely does better
Three cases where I redirect prospects to someone bigger than me:
Multi-team projects. An app + a complex back-end + Android + a web portal, all in six months: that is team work, not craftsman work. A solo studio that says yes to this is lying to you.
Strong contractual continuity. If your app is so critical that two weeks of vendor unavailability is unacceptable, an agency offers human redundancy an independent cannot promise. That is a real argument, and it deserves to be stated honestly.
Very large organizations. Tenders, compliance, committees: some structures need a counterpart sized for their procedures. Fair enough.
The right questions to ask (both of them)
Whether you are talking to a studio or an agency, ask these — the answers say more than any brochure:
"Who, by name, will write the code?" If the answer is vague, the work may be subcontracted. "Show me a shipped app that person built." Not an agency reference: an app by the person. "What happens in two years, when we need an update?" Maintenance is where both models show their true nature. "Can the app work without a server?" If you are being sold infrastructure you don't need, you will pay a lifelong subscription for nothing.
My conclusion — and my limit
For a human-scale iOS or macOS app — an internal tool, an app for your clients or your learners, a focused product that does one thing very well — a solo studio is almost always the rational choice: cheaper, more direct, more carefully made, more durable. Beyond that — heavy multi-platform, teams, extreme criticality — hire an agency, with no regrets.
That is the line I apply: describe your project, and if L'Atelier is not the right place to build it, I will tell you in the very first exchange.