Most website projects that go wrong were in trouble before anyone wrote code. The scope was vague, nobody said who owned the hosting account, or the quote left out the work that ended up costing the most. A short list of questions asked up front catches nearly all of it.
These are the questions we'd want a client to ask us. They work just as well for comparing three agencies or for checking a freelancer someone recommended. Good answers are specific and a little boring. Vague answers are the warning sign.
1. Who will actually do the work?
Agencies often sell with senior people and then build with junior staff or offshore subcontractors. Neither is automatically bad, but you should know. Ask for the names and roles of the people who will design, build, and support your site, and whether any of the work is subcontracted.
A good answer: specific names, what each person does, and who your day-to-day contact is.
2. Can I see three projects like mine, and talk to those clients?
A portfolio shows taste. References show behavior: deadlines, communication, and how problems were handled. Ask for work that matches your platform and complexity. A B2B store with ERP pricing is a very different job from a five-page brochure site. Third-party review profiles such as Clutch are useful because those reviews are verified by interview.
3. Who will own the domain, hosting, code, and design files?
This is the most important question on the list. You should own your domain registration, your hosting account (or have admin access to it), the source code, and the design files. Some vendors register domains in their own name or lock sites into proprietary builders, and that makes leaving painful.
Get it in the contract: intellectual property transfers to you on final payment, and you get admin credentials to everything.
4. What platform do you recommend, and why that one?
A vendor who uses one platform for every client is selling what they know, not what fits you. Ask why their pick suits your business better than the obvious alternatives. For stores, see our comparison of WooCommerce vs. Magento vs. Shopify. For content sites, ask whether a CMS, a headless setup, or a static site makes the most sense.
5. What exactly is in the quote, and what is not?
Ask for a line-item scope: pages or templates, features, integrations, content migration, copywriting, photography, revision rounds, training, and launch support. The usual surprises are content entry, data migration, and third-party licenses.
As a reference point, a custom WordPress marketing site usually runs $8,000–$30,000 and a WooCommerce or Shopify store $8,000–$40,000. Integrations and custom features push past that. A quote far below those ranges usually means a template with your logo on it.
6. Is the price fixed, time-and-materials, or a mix?
Fixed-price works when scope is clear. Time-and-materials works when it isn't. Many good firms do a paid discovery phase first, then fix the price for the build. Whichever model you choose, ask how change requests are priced and approved before work starts on them.
7. What does your process look like week by week?
You want to see discovery, wireframes or prototypes, design, development on a staging site, content, QA, and launch, with a rough date for each. Ask how often you'll see working progress. Weekly or biweekly demos on a staging URL beat a big reveal at the end every time.
8. How do you handle SEO, and especially redirects if we're redesigning?
A redesign that ignores existing URLs can wipe out years of search traffic overnight. Ask whether the vendor will crawl your current site, map every old URL to a new one, carry over titles and meta descriptions, and set up 301 redirects. Our website migration SEO checklist lists what should happen. If they say "we'll install an SEO plugin," keep looking.
9. How will you make the site fast?
Speed affects rankings through Core Web Vitals, and it affects conversions directly. Ask what Lighthouse or PageSpeed scores they usually reach on mobile, how they handle images and fonts, and whether they'll show you field data after launch. Page builders and plugin stacks are the common reasons sites are slow.
10. Is the site accessible, and to what standard?
Accessibility lawsuits are routine in the U.S., and an accessible site is easier for everyone to use. Ask whether they build to WCAG 2.1 or 2.2 AA and how they test it. Automated scanners alone miss most issues, so keyboard and screen-reader testing should be part of the answer.
11. How do you test before launch?
Ask which browsers and devices they test, whether forms and checkout are tested end to end, and who signs off. For stores, ask for test orders through every payment method and shipping rule. "We look at it on our phones" is not a QA process.
12. Where will the site be hosted, and who is responsible when it goes down?
Get the hosting provider, monthly cost, backup schedule, and the person you call at 2 a.m. when checkout breaks. Cheap shared hosting is a common cause of slow, hacked, or unreliable sites, especially for WooCommerce and Magento stores.
13. What happens after launch?
Websites need ongoing care: core and plugin updates, security patches, backups, and small content changes. Ask whether they offer a maintenance plan, what it includes, and their response time. Typical WordPress care plans run $500–$1,200 a month, and Magento support costs more. Read why monthly maintenance matters before you decide to skip it.
14. How will we measure whether the site is working?
A new site should come with analytics you can trust: a GA4 property you own, conversion events for forms, calls, and purchases, and a baseline from the old site to compare against. Ask what "success" means in the proposal (leads, revenue, or calls) and how you'll see it.
15. If we part ways, how do we get everything?
A confident vendor answers this one easily. Ask what an exit looks like: code repository access, a database export, documentation, and credentials. If a vendor resists, you'd be dependent on them for as long as you keep the site.
Red flags to walk away from
- They won't put ownership of the domain and code in writing.
- The quote is one number with no scope underneath it.
- They promise page-one rankings or guaranteed traffic numbers.
- Nobody can explain how existing URLs and rankings will be preserved.
- All of the communication goes through a salesperson, never the people building the site.
A simple way to compare proposals
| Question | Vendor A | Vendor B | Vendor C |
|---|---|---|---|
| We own domain, hosting, and code | |||
| Line-item scope provided | |||
| Named team, no hidden subcontracting | |||
| Redirect and SEO migration plan | |||
| Accessibility standard stated | |||
| Post-launch support terms | |||
| References you actually called |
Want a second opinion on proposals you've already received? We're happy to review them. See how to pick a great web designer, or send them over and we'll tell you what we'd question.