Eleven questions to ask a web designer before you pay them
The questions that decide who owns your website, what it costs after launch and how hard it is to leave, with the answers you want to hear.
Three quotes for a new website sit on your desk. One is £900, one is £2,400 and one is £4,000 with a monthly fee, and none of them answers the questions you will care about in two years’ time.
The design is the part you will see, so it is the part everybody compares. The questions below cover the parts you will not see until something goes wrong. Send them to whoever quotes you, us included, and ask for the answers in writing.
Who owns what
1. Whose name will the domain be registered in?
Yours. The domain is your address on the internet and on every business card you have printed. Some designers register it in their own name because it is quicker, and the problem stays hidden until you fall out with them, or they retire, and you find you cannot move your own web address.
Ask for the domain to be registered to your business, with your email address as the owner contact, and for the login to the registrar. If a designer already holds your domain from an earlier job, ask for it to be transferred to you now, while everybody is still on good terms.
2. Once it is paid for, do I own the site?
You want a plain yes, covering the design, the content and the files. Watch for two things in the small print. Some designers license the site to you for as long as you pay a monthly fee, so you own nothing if you stop. Others build on a paid theme or plugin registered to their own account, which works fine until their licence lapses.
Photographs need the same question. A stock photo bought on the designer’s licence may not transfer to you.
3. Will I have the logins?
You should hold an administrator login to the site, the hosting account and the domain registrar, even if you never use them. A designer who keeps them all is a designer you cannot replace. Our piece on auditing the users on your WordPress site covers what to do with the list once you have it.
Leaving
4. What happens if I want to leave?
Ask the designer to describe it step by step. A good answer sounds like: you give notice, we send you a full copy of the site and its database, we hand over the domain, and there is no fee. A poor answer involves an exit charge, a minimum term you did not notice, or a pause before you hear “we can’t export it”.
5. Could another developer pick it up?
Some agencies build on their own in-house system, which only they can edit. That ties you to them for as long as the site lives. WordPress, a static site or a mainstream shop platform such as Shopify can be handed to any competent developer in the country. If you are torn between the first two, our post on WordPress or a static site goes through the choice.
What it costs after launch
6. Is hosting included, and where does the site live?
“Hosting included” can mean a decent server or a corner of a shared machine with hundreds of other sites on it. Ask which. On shared hosting, a neighbouring site that gets busy or gets hacked slows yours down too. We wrote about the difference in shared hosting against dedicated.
Ask too whether the hosting price is fixed or an introductory rate that rises in year two.
7. What will it cost me each year?
Get one number covering the domain renewal, hosting, any paid plugin or theme licences, and any monthly care fee. A £900 site with £40 a month of extras costs more over three years than a £1,500 site with none. Spread the build cost over three years, add the running costs, and compare the quotes on that.
8. What does a change cost after launch?
You will want something changed within a month: a new price, a staff photo, a page for a service you have started offering. Ask whether small changes are included, charged by the hour, or quoted each time, and what counts as small. An hourly rate with a fifteen-minute minimum is fair. A £75 minimum to change a phone number is less so.
Whether it will work
9. How fast will it load on a phone?
Most of your visitors will arrive on a phone, often on a weak signal. Ask the designer to show you the PageSpeed Insights score for two sites they built recently, on mobile, and for a promise about yours. A designer who builds fast sites will be glad to show you the number. One who changes the subject has told you something.
The difference shows up in enquiries. We moved one site from a 4.15 second average load to 0.52 seconds, and visitors on a slow connection stop waiting long before four seconds. Why your website is slow explains what drags a page down.
10. Who keeps it updated and backed up?
A WordPress site needs updates to WordPress itself, the theme and every plugin, most months of the year, and some of those updates close holes attackers are already using. Ask who applies them, who checks the site afterwards, and where the backups are kept. A backup stored on the same server as the site disappears with it. Our post on what website backups should do lists what to ask for.
If the answer is “that’s up to you”, factor in the cost of paying somebody, or your own evenings.
11. What happens to my old pages?
This one matters if you are replacing a site rather than starting from nothing. Google has your old pages indexed at their current addresses, and some of them may bring in enquiries. If the new site moves or renames them without redirects, those visitors land on an error page and the rankings drift away over the following weeks.
Ask the designer whether they will list your existing pages, keep the addresses where they can, and set up redirects for the ones that change. If they look puzzled, keep looking.
Reading the answers
The designer worth paying gives short, specific answers and puts them in the quote. You own the domain, the site and the logins. You can leave without a fee and take the whole thing with you. You know the yearly cost and the price of a change, and somebody named is responsible for updates and backups.
Vague answers on ownership and leaving are the ones to worry about, because those cost you most when you find out late. A slightly higher price with clear answers is usually the cheaper site.
Our own prices are on the websites page, from £1,295, and care and hosting is £49 a month on our own servers with migration free. Put the eleven questions to us as well. If you already have a site and want to know where it stands on them, ask for a free website review.
