A vacancy for an experienced .NET developer can stay open for six months in the Netherlands. Meanwhile the customer portal waits, the release slips, and the wish list from the business keeps growing. More and more organizations are looking across the border, mostly at countries close by.
Nearshoring means outsourcing work to a team in a nearby country, in the same or an adjacent time zone and within a few hours of travel. In nearshore software development, engineers in countries such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, or Portugal work day to day with a team in the Netherlands, on the same hours, tooling, and way of working. The difference from offshoring is distance: nearshoring keeps the collaboration close, while offshoring moves the work to another continent.
The term also shows up in manufacturing and logistics, where companies bring factories back from Asia to Europe. This article is about software: hiring developers or extending a team through a partner nearby, and when that works well and when it doesn't.
Nearshoring, offshoring, onshoring, and outsourcing: the differences
The four terms get mixed up, even though they mean different things. Outsourcing is the umbrella term for handing work to an external party, wherever it sits. Onshoring, nearshoring, and offshoring describe where the work happens.
| Onshoring | Nearshoring | Offshoring | Classic outsourcing | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time zone | The same | The same or one hour apart | Four to eight hours apart | Depends on the vendor |
| Culture and way of working | The same | European business culture, few differences | Bigger differences in communication and hierarchy | Depends on the vendor |
| Travel time | Hours by car or train | Two to three hours by plane | Ten hours or more | Varies |
| Rates | Local level | Lower than at home | Lowest | Often a fixed project price |
| Who manages the team | Your own team | Your own team, every day | Often a project manager as a middle layer | The vendor manages the team |
Onshoring means hiring in your own country, for example through a staffing agency. It's the safest choice for language and culture, and the most expensive. You're also fishing in the same pond as everyone else, so the shortage stays. Offshoring, with India and the Philippines as the best-known destinations, is the cheapest per hour. The trade-off is that a time difference of five hours or more makes daily alignment hard, and misunderstandings only surface days later.
Nearshoring sits in between. Rates are lower than at home, the team works your hours, and a visit fits in a single day. The biggest advantage is that you manage a nearshore team the same way you manage your own people: the same standups, the same backlog, the same code reviews.
Our page on extending your team with nearshore engineers shows how that works in practice.
Why companies choose nearshoring
Three reasons come up in almost every conversation: the shortage of developers, the cost, and how fast you can scale.
The shortage weighs heaviest, even now that the market is cooling. The Dutch employment agency UWV has seen the number of open ICT vacancies fall since 2023, yet nearly 18,800 were still open at the end of 2025. Experienced developers for a specific stack, such as .NET, Java, or Angular, remain hard to find. An organization outside the major cities with an aging system competes for the same candidates as banks and scale-ups. Nearshoring adds an entire country to the pond you fish in.
Cost plays a role too, although it's rarely the main reason. Hourly rates in Bosnia and Herzegovina or Poland are lower than in the Netherlands, and you pay no recruitment fees, no office space, and no severance when demand drops. The real advantage is the combination: you get a senior developer within weeks instead of months, at a rate that doesn't blow up the budget.
Take Sanne, IT manager at a healthcare organization with 900 employees. She needs two developers for a new patient portal and an integration with the electronic health record system. The vacancy has been open for eight months, and two candidates chose a bank in Utrecht at the last minute. Through a nearshore partner, two engineers from Sarajevo join her daily standup within six weeks, with a product owner from her own team setting the priorities. The portal goes live four months later.
Scaling is the third reason. A partner with a larger pool of engineers takes a team from two to five people without a recruitment campaign. If demand drops after go-live, you scale back down without anyone losing their job.
When nearshore software development works and when it doesn't
Nearshoring works when you treat it as extending your team, and it fails when you treat it as placing an order. That is the whole difference in one sentence. Four conditions decide whether a nearshore team becomes a full part of your organization.
- Your own product owner. Someone in your organization decides what gets built and in what order. Without an owner, the team builds what the ticket says, and that is rarely what the business meant.
- Daily alignment. A short standup, the same chat, and the same backlog. Questions get answered the same day rather than in a weekly call.
- The same way of working and tooling. The nearshore team works in your repository, your pipeline, and your definition of done. A separate environment at the vendor leads to integration problems sooner or later.
- A long-term team. Developers who work on the same product for months or years know the business rules, the users, and the exceptions. That is the core of good custom software: knowledge that stays inside the team.
Ruben, director of a logistics software company with 12 developers, wanted a one-off integration with a customs system built last year. He sent a three-page specification to an agency abroad, heard nothing for six weeks, and got back a working integration that nobody on his team understood. When customs changed the message format six months later, his own team had to work it all out again. The problem was in the setup: no owner, no daily alignment, and no transfer of knowledge.
For a one-off job without ownership, nearshoring is a poor match. It works for organizations that keep developing a product for years and need more hands than they can find at home.
Our client cases show what that looks like, from RFID in manufacturing to legacy modernization in aerospace.
What nearshoring looks like in practice
This is how it works at Isatis. We have offices in Nijmegen and Sarajevo. Bosnia and Herzegovina is in the same time zone as the Netherlands, so when Nijmegen starts at nine, Sarajevo starts at nine too. Engineers in both offices follow the same ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 processes, with the same coding standards and review steps.
A typical collaboration starts with a conversation about the product, the stack, and the roles you're missing. We then put together a team, usually with a Dutch point of contact and engineers from Sarajevo, that joins the client's standup from day one. The client keeps the product owner role, and we take care of the team's continuity. With 30+ engineers we can scale up without diluting team quality.
That continuity is the core of our model. The people who build the software are the same people who keep it running. After more than 30 years and 100+ projects, we know that changes in a team cost more than any rate difference can make up for. Read more about our way of working and certifications on our page about Isatis.
How to assess a nearshore partner
A company in the software industry that offers nearshoring sells three things: people, continuity, and a way of working. Five points to check before you sign.
- Continuity of people. Ask about staff turnover in recent years and what happens when a developer leaves. A good partner has an onboarding plan and a replacement who already knows the product.
- Certification. ISO 27001 shows that information security is demonstrably in order. If the country is outside the EU, ask how the partner handles the GDPR and the data processing agreement.
- References. Ask for comparable projects in your sector and call those clients. A case on a website says less than a client who has been working with the partner for three years.
- Ownership of the code. The code belongs in your repository, with your access rights. That way you can always continue, even without the partner.
- Management. Direct access to the developers, daily alignment, and no account manager as a mandatory middle layer.
In How to choose a software company we work these points out further, including the red flags in a proposal.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between nearshoring and offshoring?
Both are forms of outsourcing abroad. With nearshoring, the team sits in a nearby country in the same or an adjacent time zone, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina or Poland from the Netherlands. With offshoring, the work goes to another continent, with a time difference of four hours or more. Nearshoring is therefore easier to manage day to day, and offshoring is cheaper per hour.
What does nearshoring cost?
That depends on the country, the seniority of the engineers, and the size and duration of the team. Hourly rates are lower than in the Netherlands, and you save on recruitment, office space, and the cost of a vacancy that stays open for months. Also count on time from your own product owner. You get a concrete estimate after a conversation about the roles you need.
Which countries are suitable for nearshoring from the Netherlands?
Popular destinations are Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Portugal, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They sit in the same or an adjacent time zone, have a well-educated pool of engineers, and a business culture close to the Dutch one. The partner matters more than the country: a well-run team in Sarajevo works better than a badly run team in Lisbon.
How do you manage a nearshore team?
The same way you manage your own developers. One product owner sets the priorities, and the team joins the daily standup and works in your repository and pipeline. Also plan a demo every few weeks and visit the team a few times a year. You mainly notice distance when you treat the team as a vendor rather than as colleagues.
Nearshoring in short
- Nearshoring is outsourcing to a team in a nearby country, in your time zone and within a few hours of travel.
- It eases the developer shortage at a lower rate than at home, without the alignment problems of offshoring.
- It works with your own product owner, daily alignment, the same tooling, and a team that stays for the long term.
- Judge a partner on continuity of people, certification, references, and ownership of the code.
If you're unsure whether nearshoring fits your organization, a 30-minute conversation is usually enough to find out. Tell us which roles you need and where the project stands. We'll also tell you honestly if a different route is better. Book a no-obligation call with our team in Nijmegen.
