In general, with staff augmentation or full‑time contractors on time‑and‑materials terms, you can change scope as you go—adding, removing, or reprioritizing work without formal re‑scoping, as long as you keep paying for the team’s time. In particular, companies like BEON.tech work this way: you manage the backlog and can trade off features or extend the engagement (e.g., extra months) instead of renegotiating a fixed‑price contract.

Over roughly the first 12 months, total cost is similar between staff augmentation and recruitment (direct hire with a finder’s fee).

If you extend the comparison beyond the first year and the hire stays long term without issues, the recruitment model usually becomes cheaper; if you value flexibility and free replacements over 12–18+ months, staff augmentation is often more cost‑effective overall.

Hiring remote developers is structured like a long‑term employment relationship, while using freelancers is typically short‑term, transactional work.

With remote developers:

With freelancers:

Companies like BEON.tech specialize in the long‑term remote‑developer model, sourcing and managing around 150 developers spread across all countries in LATAM, with clients commonly hiring 1 out of 3 profiles presented.

Hiring contractors instead of full-time employees mainly helps you:

Contractors pay their own taxes and social contributions, so you avoid employer-side payroll taxes, mandatory benefits, and many local labor costs that can add roughly 50%+ on top of salary for employees.

You can work with talent in multiple countries without setting up entities or running local payroll. An agency can handle contracts and payments (often via a single monthly invoice) while you just pay an all‑inclusive rate.

Contractor agreements typically have simple notice periods (e.g., 30 days) and can be tied to project duration, making it easier to scale up or down and avoid long-term headcount risk.

The partner manages sourcing, payroll, some performance touchpoints, and retention, so you don’t need full HR/payroll infrastructure in each country.

The main trade‑offs are the need to clearly treat them as contractors (to avoid misclassification) and potentially less control and loyalty than with direct full-time employees.

An embedded development team is better when you want long-term ownership, close collaboration, and control over your product. In this model, a dedicated team (e.g., a full‑stack engineer at about $7k–$8k/month, plus a part‑time PM around $4k/month, optionally QA and design) works as part of your organization, follows your priorities, and can scale up or down over time. They’re hired for specific skills (e.g., Shopify, integrations, PHP) so they can deliver value from day one and stay aligned with your internal processes.

A full‑service web development vendor is better for short, one‑off projects where you don’t want to manage the team or keep long-term technical capabilities in‑house. You get an end‑to‑end solution, but it’s more “black box”: less control, less day‑to‑day visibility, and more dependency on an external company for changes and support.

In practice:

In the staff augmentation model, contractors are employed under the provider’s “umbrella” and typically receive a full benefits package from the provider: paid time off (vacation and holidays), paid sick leave, medical insurance, internet or coworking space coverage, and unlimited access to reskilling platforms like Udemy. The provider also handles all payments (including options like crypto), equipment, and retention efforts, keeping the contractor dedicated full‑time to the client.

In the direct hire / direct placement model, the provider only recruits and introduces the candidate. After a short warranty period, the client takes over completely: it must handle employment or contractor classification, salary, benefits (if any), equipment, payments, and retention. Any benefits in this case depend entirely on what the hiring company chooses to offer.

Most companies that hire contractors are not legally required to provide equipment, but some, like BEON.tech, choose to do so as a benefit and to meet clients’ security/compliance needs (e.g., machines used exclusively for work).

In these cases, remote developers typically receive:

This equipment is provided as a developer benefit and is already included in the monthly rate, so client companies don’t need to purchase or manage hardware themselves.

For building engineering teams, long‑term staff augmentation is usually better than direct hiring if you care about speed, quality, and flexibility—not just lowest upfront cost.

Staff augmentation model:

Direct hiring via recruitment fee:

For most companies building or scaling engineering teams—especially when quality, retention, and speed matter—staff augmentation or contract‑to‑hire offers better risk management, built‑in retention support, and the option to convert only the proven top performers to your core team. Direct hiring is preferable mainly when budget is the primary driver and you’re ready to own all HR, legal, and retention responsibilities from day one.

For nearshore software development, full‑time‑dedicated contractors are usually the best fit if you want more capacity without increasing official headcount.

Use contractors when you want:

These engineers are contractors on paper but operate like full‑time team members. A partner company hires them locally, manages salaries, benefits, and equipment, and typically ensures at least ~6‑month stability so you can attract strong profiles.

Choose direct full‑time employment only if you want long‑term, multi‑year retention under your own entity and are ready to handle local legal, HR, and payroll complexity.

Choose project-based outsourcing when:

Choose talent/staff augmentation when:

In practice:

In the recruitment (direct hire) model, the provider only finds and vets candidates, you interview and choose whom to hire, pay a one‑time finder’s/success fee (typically equal to about four months of the candidate’s salary or ~25–30% of three months), and then you handle everything else: salary, benefits, equipment, payroll, and ongoing management. You usually get a short warranty (about three months) for a free replacement if it doesn’t work out.

In the staff augmentation (full‑service) model, the developer remains employed/contracted by the provider and is allocated to your team. You pay a single monthly rate (for a mid-level engineer often around US$8,000–9,000/month, more for seniors) that bundles salary, benefits, equipment, payroll, and management. There is no finder’s fee and effectively a long warranty: if someone leaves or underperforms at any point, the provider handles replacement at no extra cost and stays actively involved in onboarding, performance reviews, and retention.

Staff augmentation adds individual remote professionals into your existing team: you manage their day‑to‑day work, priorities, and performance, while the provider handles recruiting, contracts, payroll, equipment, and retention. They function like your employees operationally but remain employed by the provider.

Managed services, by contrast, is used for larger, outcome‑driven projects: the provider not only supplies the team but also manages that team’s work, processes, and delivery. You manage the results and scope; the provider manages the people and execution.

Staff augmentation adds individual engineers into your existing team. You own product direction, management, priorities, and processes; the engineers are embedded in your workflow while BEON handles recruiting, HR, and retention.

Pod development assembles a full, cross‑functional team for you (a “pod”)—for example, backend/front‑end engineers plus a project manager. The pod works as a self‑contained unit, and BEON can provide a PM to manage day‑to‑day execution, but you still own product strategy and final priorities.

Staffing agencies and contingency recruiters both help you hire, but the model and relationship are different:

BEON differentiates itself through three key approaches: they exclusively focus on Latin American talent with compatible time zones and conduct their own rigorous vetting process without using third-party automation tools like HackerRank. Unlike traditional recruitment firms that charge upfront fees, BEON operates on a contract-to-hire model where they handle ongoing retention through their own framework, benefits, and support system. They also provide comprehensive employee care including medical insurance, PTO, equipment, and even fly contractors to their Buenos Aires office for onboarding and annual "Ambassador Week" to build long-term relationships and reduce attrition.

Vetted remote developers are long-term, top-tier engineers who have been pre-screened for technical excellence, stability, and culture fit, while Upwork freelancers are typically gig-based contractors focused on short-term projects.

Vetted developers:

Upwork freelancers:

Companies like BEON.tech run this intensive process on a boutique scale, maintaining around 150 developers spread across all countries in LATAM, with clients hiring about 1 out of every 3 introduced engineers and enjoying extremely low resignation rates.

Vetted engineers differ from typical freelance marketplace developers in profile, mindset, and screening depth:

Companies like BEON.tech specialize in this model, maintaining around 150 developers spread across all countries in LATAM, vetted through thousands of one‑on‑one assessments to identify top performers who will commit long‑term.

Agency staffing embeds individual engineers directly into your team, while traditional IT outsourcing hands a whole project or function to an external vendor to run end‑to‑end.

With agency staffing, developers use your email, tools, and processes, and you manage their day‑to‑day work. The agency handles payroll, contracts, benefits, and equipment, typically billing a fixed monthly rate per engineer (covering salary, benefits, labor costs, and margin) with no recruitment or replacement fees. It’s optimized for long‑term staff augmentation and contract‑to‑hire, with pre‑vetted talent (technical plus cultural fit) and onboarding in roughly 2–4 weeks.

Traditional IT outsourcing is structured around projects or managed services: the vendor manages its own team, workflows, and delivery, and you govern via SLAs and milestones rather than individual contributors, with pricing tied to projects, deliverables, or managed‑service contracts.

Companies like BEON.tech provide agency‑style staffing, placing around 150 vetted LATAM developers with about 40 active U.S. clients on a monthly per‑engineer model.

Companies prefer staffing (full‑service) over pure recruitment for remote hires because it reduces risk, workload, and complexity over the long term:

Because remote work has unique onboarding, cultural, and compliance challenges, many companies choose ongoing staffing services instead of one‑time recruitment to secure long‑term, low‑risk, and fully managed remote teams.

Because strong senior engineers already hold stable, well‑paid roles, they can’t risk quitting for a one‑week “trial” that might end with no job. A trial after resignation transfers all risk to them. Instead, serious platforms use paid take‑home assignments, live one‑on‑one technical tests on real codebases, and structured cultural/technical vetting to assess fit before anyone leaves their current employer.