The True Cost of Outsourcing Business Critical Development

When Saving Money Ends Up Costing You Everything

If you're running a serious ecommerce operation and considering Solidus or any custom Ruby on Rails development, you've probably been tempted by the seemingly attractive rates offered by developers in India or other low-wage countries. I get it. Budgets are tight, and when you see someone offering the same work at a fraction of the cost, it's hard to say no.

But as a Growth Hacker who has witnessed the fallout from these decisions firsthand, I need to share a story that should make you think twice. What I'm about to tell you isn't hypothetical. It happened to one of my clients, and the consequences were severe.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Let me set the scene. A client approached me wanting to keep development costs low for their custom ecommerce platform. They needed Solidus development, which is the go-to choice when you need proper customisation, the freedom to do whatever you want with your shop, and the flexibility to scale.

Now, I didn't have the capacity to jump on the project immediately, so I did what any decent consultant would do. I suggested a whole array of talented developers who had years of experience developing in Solidus. One candidate had previously worked for Nebulab, one of the main contributors to Solidus itself. These weren't random freelancers off a marketplace. These were battle-tested professionals.

Their hourly rates weren't cheap, I'll be honest. But their experience more than made up for it. They could perform tasks in a quarter of the time it would take someone less experienced, and the work was consistently up to standard. When you factor in the speed and quality, the real cost was actually comparable, sometimes even lower.

But my client wanted cheaper. So they went with a developer based in Asia offering rates that seemed too good to be true.

Spoiler alert: they were.

The Hidden Dangers Nobody Talks About

Here's what the flashy Upwork profiles and cheap hourly rates don't tell you about outsourcing business-critical development to someone outside the EU or UK.

No Legal Recourse When Things Go Wrong

When you hire a developer within the EU or UK, you have a legal framework that protects you. Contracts mean something. Courts can enforce judgments. Professional standards exist.

When you hire someone in a country where you have no legal jurisdiction, all of that protection vanishes. I've seen clients try to pursue legal action against developers who disappeared mid-project or delivered substandard work. The reality is brutal: the legal costs to sue someone you've never met, in a court system you don't understand, in a country thousands of miles away, are astronomical. And even if you somehow won, enforcing that judgment is virtually impossible.

That contract you signed? It's worth the paper it's printed on, which is to say, nothing.

No Business Insurance to Protect You

Here's something most people don't even think to ask: does your developer have valid business insurance that covers unforeseen damages to your business?

I have yet to encounter a single Asian-based Solidus developer, whether a company or freelancer, who offers this basic protection. Within the EU and UK, professional indemnity insurance is standard practice. It's your first line of defence if something goes catastrophically wrong.

Without it, if a developer's mistake causes damage to your business, whether through data breaches, system failures, or code that brings your site down during peak trading, you're entirely on your own. There's no safety net.

Vetting Becomes Nearly Impossible

How do you verify someone's credentials when they're operating from a country with different professional standards, different regulatory frameworks, and no independent bodies you can check with?

References can be fabricated. Portfolios can be stolen. Work history can be invented entirely. Without being able to verify employment history through reliable channels, check professional registrations, or even confirm someone's real identity, you're essentially gambling with your business.

The Dependency Trap: When They Have You by the Balls

This is the one that really gets people, and it happened exactly as I'm describing to my client.

You hire a cheap developer. They build your system. It works, more or less. Time passes.

Then you notice something. The documentation is sparse to nonexistent. The code comments are minimal. Knowledge transfer has been superficial at best. And slowly, without you realising it, you've become completely dependent on someone who is now the only person on earth who understands how your system actually works.

This is when the power dynamic shifts dramatically.

Urgent issue crops up? That cheap developer suddenly isn't so cheap anymore. I've watched developers push their rates up astronomically once they knew they had a client over a barrel. We're talking rates that exceeded what any EU or UK developer would charge. Premium pricing for what was supposed to be budget work.

And here's the kicker: you can't just fire them and hire someone else. A new developer would need weeks, sometimes months, to understand an undocumented codebase. If you're running a live ecommerce operation, you simply don't have that luxury.

Your cost savings have evaporated. Actually, it's worse than that. You're now paying more than you would have if you'd just hired properly in the first place.

And Then Came the Data Breach

Now, you might think everything I've described so far is bad enough. Lack of legal protection, no insurance, impossible vetting, and the dependency trap. Surely that's the worst of it?

Oh, how I wish it were.

The developer my client hired uploaded more than 14,000 customer records to GitHub. Names, email addresses, purchase histories, potentially payment-related information. All of it, sitting on a repository for anyone to find.

Fortunately, the repository was private. And when I discovered this massive breach, I removed the data immediately. But the fact remains: sensitive customer data that should never have left the client's servers was uploaded to a third-party platform by a developer who either didn't understand or didn't care about data protection laws.

This is a serious GDPR violation. This is exactly the kind of thing that can result in massive fines, reputational damage, and loss of customer trust.

What Happened When I Reported It to the ICO

I did everything by the book. I reported the data breach to the Information Commissioner's Office, including full details of what had happened, how many records were exposed, and the circumstances of the breach. This was actually one of several serious breaches I reported around the same time.

The response? Underwhelming doesn't begin to cover it.

Five months later, I received a generic email asking if the issue was still ongoing. I confirmed that yes, the underlying problems persisted. After that? Complete silence. Nothing. No follow-up, no action, no investigation that I'm aware of.

Now, I'm not suggesting anyone should deliberately violate data protection laws. I would never do that, and neither should you. But if you've ever worried about minor cookie banner compliance issues or tracking technicalities, this experience might provide some perspective. The ICO, whether through lack of teeth, capacity, or interest, doesn't appear to be actively pursuing these cases.

That said, don't take this as a reason to be careless. The reputational damage alone from a data breach can be devastating, regardless of whether regulators take action.

The Maths That Nobody Does

Let's actually run the numbers that people refuse to consider before outsourcing.

A skilled EU or UK-based Solidus developer might charge somewhere between £80 and £150 per hour. A developer in India or elsewhere in Asia might charge £20 to £40 per hour. On paper, the savings look obvious.

But factor in:

Time taken: An experienced developer who knows Solidus inside out will complete tasks in a fraction of the time. What takes a less experienced developer 20 hours might take a specialist 5 hours. Suddenly the cheaper option costs the same or more.

Rework: Substandard code often needs to be rewritten. You end up paying twice for the same work.

Communication overhead: Time zone differences, language barriers, and cultural differences in communication style all add friction and slow projects down.

The dependency premium: As described, once they have you dependent, rates mysteriously climb.

Crisis costs: When something goes wrong (and it will), the cost of emergency fixes from someone who doesn't know the codebase is enormous.

Legal and compliance exposure: A single data breach can cost more than your entire development budget.

Opportunity cost: While you're dealing with fallout from poor development choices, your competitors are moving forward.

When You're Serious About Growth, You Can't Afford Shortcuts

Here's the thing. If you're at the point where you're considering Solidus, you're not running a hobby shop. You're running a serious ecommerce operation that needs customisation standard platforms can't provide.

You're probably employing data scientists. You're thinking about automation for your marketing efforts. You're working on referral strategies and customer retention programmes. You're serious about growth.

At this level, your technology platform is a strategic asset. It's not the place to cut corners.

The developers who understand Solidus at a deep level, who can build maintainable, scalable systems, who can document properly, and who operate within legal frameworks that protect you, are worth every penny they charge. Their hourly rate is the least important number in the equation.

What You Should Actually Do

Before you engage any developer for business-critical work, here's what I'd recommend:

Verify legal protections. Are they operating within a jurisdiction where you have legal recourse? Is there an enforceable contract framework? Can disputes be resolved in courts you have access to?

Confirm insurance coverage. Do they carry professional indemnity insurance? What does it cover? What are the limits? Get documentation.

Check references properly. Don't just accept testimonials on a website. Speak to actual clients. Verify work history through LinkedIn, GitHub contributions, and professional networks.

Demand documentation standards. Make it a contractual requirement that all code is documented to specific standards. Review the documentation regularly.

Ensure knowledge isn't siloed. Have regular knowledge transfer sessions. Ensure more than one person understands every critical system.

Audit security practices. How do they handle your data? Where do they store code? What are their security protocols? The GitHub incident I described should never have been possible.

Factor in the real costs. Compare based on total project cost, not hourly rate. Include the value of risk mitigation in your calculations.

The Bottom Line

Outsourcing business-critical development to low-wage countries outside the EU or UK to save money is, more often than not, a false economy. The initial savings are frequently wiped out by hidden costs, and the risks to your business, including legal exposure, data breaches, and dependency traps, can be catastrophic.

When you're building something serious, when you're investing in growth, when your platform is a genuine competitive advantage, you need partners you can trust, hold accountable, and work with for the long term.

Those partners rarely come cheap. But they're always worth it.