Dataclay custom development is the better fit when the work lives inside Templater and its Event Scripts, and a freelance developer is the better fit when the work is mostly something else that happens to touch Templater. That is the whole decision in miniature, and the rest of this article is how to tell which side of it your project is on.
We offer custom development ourselves, so you should discount our opinion accordingly. We will try to earn it back by being specific about where a freelancer is simply the better choice, because there are real cases. A good freelance developer can be exactly right, and we say so on our own site when we offer to connect customers with a qualified freelancer for the video side of a project.
Why the split exists at all
It helps to understand why this is a real question and not a sales pitch from either side. Templater is a plugin that runs inside After Effects, and it extends in a defined way: shell scripts and ExtendScripts that listen for the events Templater broadcasts. That is a small, specific surface. Around it sits a much larger world of ordinary software work, such as web apps, databases, authentication, notification systems and dashboards.
A project that arrives at our door is almost always a mixture. Some of it sits on the small surface, and some of it sits in the larger world. The mistake we see is not choosing the wrong provider for the whole project. It is treating the whole project as one thing. Break it into pieces first, decide for each piece, and the question mostly answers itself.
This is also why we are comfortable pointing people elsewhere. Nobody is helped when a piece of general software work comes to a video tools company because we happened to be the first name they knew. And nobody is helped when a Templater-specific problem goes to a developer who spends their first weeks learning how our events behave.
What we actually offer
Our professional services are described in a handful of pieces, and it helps to see them as separate things, because people tend to lump them together as “custom development.”
Support packages. Standard support comes with your software purchase at no additional charge. Premium support is a more advanced level of troubleshooting that reaches beyond our applications, to the video, data and other files you use. The Ultimate package adds support for remote JSON feeds and event scripting. These are support, not development, but the Ultimate package matters if you plan to run scripts in production.
Implementation services. The suite is designed to be easy to implement on your own, but sometimes you need more. An implementation engagement can be anything from helping one content creator set up a first customized video project to consulting with a company’s developers on building integrations with our APIs.
Consulting services. Our team comes from the production world, and the point of consulting is to build your skills so you can move on without us. That is an unusual goal for a vendor, and we mean it. The engagement ends when you no longer need it.
Event scripting for Templater. Templater can be extended with shell scripts and ExtendScripts. Developers who know those tools can write their own and attach them to their rigged compositions. For people who lack the experience, the time, or both, we offer scripting engagements and can author complex scripts. Past examples include authenticating with a third-party database before extracting data, transforming data into a different format, and sending an email or text message when a render is complete.
Feature enhancements. Any customer can suggest a feature, and we add suggestions to the roadmap if appropriate. If a feature is vital to your business, a customer can pay an engagement fee for us to prioritize it and reassign developer time. Features built this way become part of the application and may be made available to other customers.
Every professional services engagement is quoted individually. We do not publish rates, and we will not guess at a number here. Talk to us about your project and we will tell you what it would take.
Where a freelance developer is the better fit
Now the honest part. There are projects where you should not call us first.
The first is when most of the work is not Templater. Suppose your project is a customer web portal, with accounts, forms, a database and a payment step, and video is one output among several. A freelance developer or an agency who builds web applications is the right person. Templater has a command line interface and an Event Scripts API, and our FAQ is plain that Templater does not come with a front end of its own. Someone has to build that front end, and general web development is not our specialty. We will help you wire the video part, and the portal itself is better in the hands of someone who builds portals.
The second is when you want a person embedded in your team. A freelancer can sit in your chat, join your planning, and learn your systems over months. A vendor service, ours included, is organized around engagements. If you need ongoing, flexible, day-to-day development capacity on many things, a freelancer or contractor fits that rhythm better.
The third is when the job is creative or production work, not engineering. If you want template design, motion graphics, animation or editing, that is a different skill from scripting. We say in our consulting description that we can connect you with a qualified freelancer experienced in customized video if you want to outsource all or part of a project. We mean it. For design work, a freelancer who works in After Effects every day is the right call.
The fourth is when you already have a relationship. If you have a developer you trust who knows your systems, and the Templater part is a small piece of their larger job, there is no reason to bring in anyone else. Give them our documentation and sample scripts and let them work. They can reach our support if they get stuck.
The fifth is a general-practice point, and we state it as such. When you hire anyone to write code for you, whether a freelancer or a vendor, sort out in writing who owns the result, who maintains it afterward, and who can read it. That is not a point against either option. It is just a question that gets skipped when everyone is in a hurry.
Where we are the better fit
Several kinds of project point toward us.
The work is inside Templater’s own surface. Event scripts hook into events that Templater broadcasts during its processes. Knowing which event fires when, what arguments it passes and how it interacts with Bot’s queue is knowledge we have because we built the product. A freelancer can learn it, and good ones do, but there is a learning curve, and we are standing at the top of it.
You need a feature that should exist in the product. If what you want is a capability that belongs in Templater for everyone, a feature engagement is a different kind of thing from a script. Because features developed this way become part of the application, you are not carrying a private fork. A freelancer cannot add something to our product, by definition.
You want the Ultimate-level support story. Support for remote JSON feeds and event scripting is part of the Ultimate package. If a script you depend on is part of a mission-critical workflow, having the people who built the product stand behind the environment it runs in is a real advantage.
Your team is short on time and skill both. Our description of the scripting service is for exactly this. If nobody on your staff writes ExtendScript, and the thing you need is a data transform before a render or a notification after one, it is a well-defined job that we have done before.
You want to learn. A consulting engagement is designed to transfer knowledge. If your goal is a team that can do this on its own, an engagement that ends with your people able to fly solo is a good shape.
A worked example, on both sides of the line
Take a company that produces weekly videos from a product database, the kind of workflow we describe in our post on making hundreds of personalized videos from data. Each row becomes a video. They use Templater Bot and a JSON feed.
Two requests arrive. The first: before data is extracted, authenticate with a third-party database, because the product data lives behind a login. The second: build an internal dashboard where salespeople request a video for a product, see its status, and download it.
Request one is squarely inside Templater’s event scripting. If the product data sits in Que instead of a feed, the shape of the problem is the same. It is the sort of authentication step we named as a past engagement example. Our team knows the hook points, and the work is small, well-bounded and attached to Templater’s own process. We would be a sensible choice, and doing it in house with our sample scripts as a starting point would also be sensible.
Request two is a web application. It has users, permissions, a list view and a download. Templater has what it needs to sit behind such an app, since Bot can watch a data source and developers can push data into it, but the app itself is general web work. A freelance web developer is the person to hire, and they can use our documentation to connect the app to the video back end.
The mistake would be to hand both to one party because they arrived together. They are different kinds of work.
How to decide quickly
Ask three questions of your own project.
What fraction of the work is Templater events, data handling around Templater, or a change to Templater itself? If most of it is, we are probably the stronger option. If a small fraction is, a generalist developer is probably the better value.
Is it a project or a relationship? A bounded engagement, with a clear end, suits us. An open-ended stream of work across many systems suits a person on your team.
Do you need the knowledge to stay with you? If you do, ask for either a freelancer who documents what they build, or a consulting engagement from us. Do not accept a black box from anyone.
If you are unsure, send us the description. We will tell you honestly if it is outside our lane, and we will point you to someone who can do it. A project that goes to the right party is better for everyone than one that goes to us by default.
Practical steps before you contact anyone
Whichever way you lean, a little preparation saves time with both a freelancer and with us.
Write down the input and the output. What data comes in, in what shape, and what should be true when the process ends? A script that “makes things easier” is hard to scope. A script that “takes the rows from this feed, renames the output by customer ID and emails the producer when the last render finishes” is easy to scope.
Gather what you have. Our post on five tested data sources helps you describe the input. Our event script documentation and GitHub repositories contain sample scripts and case studies for Windows, Mac and Node.js. Having read them, you will ask better questions, whoever you ask.
Decide how you will test. Make a copy of a real batch, with real data, including a few ugly rows, and agree up front that the work is done when that batch runs cleanly. Our 30-day free trial gives you a fully featured Bot to try the whole workflow before you commit to anything.
Know your environment. Which machines run After Effects, which version of Templater, and where do files go afterward? Our guide to Templater’s licensing is a useful companion if you are sorting out editions, and our look at the Templater suite for sports production shows what a scripted pipeline can look like at larger scale.
What tends to go wrong on either side
Both routes have a characteristic way of disappointing people, and it is better to know them going in. These are general-practice observations, not statistics.
With a vendor engagement, the usual problem is scope that was never written down. The customer says “make the render process more efficient,” the vendor hears one thing, and the customer meant another. The fix is the input-and-output description above, plus a real test batch. We would rather spend an extra conversation up front than deliver something that does not match the picture in your head.
With a freelancer, the usual problem is context. A capable developer who has never opened After Effects can spend the first stretch of a project learning what a rigged composition is and why a script has to wait for a particular event. That is not a flaw in the developer. It is the cost of an unfamiliar tool, and it is why a short orientation from our documentation, or a short consulting session, pays back quickly.
In both cases the second problem is the same. Someone writes a working script, moves on, and a year later nobody remembers how it behaves. Ask for comments in the code and a short note on what the script expects. It is a small request and it is easy to forget until it is urgent.
The bottom line
If the job is mostly Templater, its events, its data and its edges, bring in the people who built it. If the job is mostly something else, like a web app, design work or an ongoing development relationship, hire a freelancer and let them use our documentation. And if you cannot tell, ask us, because the right answer is sometimes someone else.
Here are the questions we get most often from teams weighing custom work with us against hiring an individual developer.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Dataclay custom development include?
Our professional services include support packages, implementation services, consulting, event scripting for Templater and feature enhancements. Scripting engagements cover things like authenticating with a third-party database before extracting data, transforming data into another format, and sending an email or text when a render finishes. Every engagement is quoted individually, so contact us with your project.
When should I hire a freelance developer instead of Dataclay?
Hire a freelancer when most of the work is not Templater, such as a customer portal or web app, when you want someone embedded in your team over time, or when the work is design and motion production. Templater does not ship with its own front end, so general application development belongs with someone who builds applications.
Can Dataclay connect me with a freelancer?
Yes. Our consulting description says that if you want to outsource all or part of a customized video project, we can connect you with a qualified freelancer who has experience in customized video. We also say that our consulting goal is to build your skills so you can eventually work on your own.
Can my own developer write Templater event scripts?
Yes. Templater is extendable with shell scripts and ExtendScripts, and developers can attach their own scripts to rigged compositions. Our GitHub repositories, case studies and event script documentation include sample scripts for Windows, Mac and Node.js. Many teams do this without any engagement from us.
Does a feature built in an engagement stay private to me?
According to our description, features developed in these engagements become part of the application they are developed for, and may be made available to other customers. If a feature must stay private, a script that lives in your own environment is the better route. Ask us during scoping.
Does Dataclay support scripts that my freelancer wrote?
The Ultimate support package includes support for remote JSON feeds and event scripting, and Premium support goes beyond our applications to your video, data and other files. The details of what is covered are in the support package descriptions, so check them against your situation or ask us.
Where do I find the cost?
Custom development is quoted individually. We do not publish rates, so contact us and describe your project. For software licensing, see our licensing pages.
