Choosing a web contractor: 10 questions to ask before you pay
In short
- A portfolio shows what someone can build, not what they are like to work with.
- The questions that matter most are about code ownership, revisions and what happens after launch.
- The worst signal is a firm price quoted before a single question is asked.
Choosing a contractor is hard because you are evaluating something that does not exist yet. A portfolio only helps so far: that beautiful site may have been built by a designer who left long ago, and no screenshot tells you what the team is like to deal with.
Ten questions
- Who owns the code and the credentials after handover? The right answer is you, entirely — hosting, repository and all.
- What will the site be built on? If it is the contractor’s own closed CMS, you are tied to them forever.
- Can I change text and add pages myself? If not, every comma will cost money.
- How many revision rounds are included? Two or three per stage, written down, is reasonable.
- Who exactly will do the work? Often one person sells and another builds.
- What happens if the deadline slips? Look less at the promise and more at whether the contract answers the question at all.
- What does the warranty cover and how long does it last? A month of fixing your own mistakes free is a sensible minimum.
- Who writes the copy? This unresolved question is the single most common cause of delay.
- Will analytics be configured? A site without tracking is a site you will know nothing about.
- What would you advise us not to do? The most useful question here — the answer shows whether they are thinking about your problem or their invoice.
A contractor who names an exact price in the first minute without asking about the job has priced their rate card, not your project. What follows is either “that was not included” or quietly reduced quality.
Three red flags
- “We will do it in three days.” In three days you can stretch a template over your content. Nothing more.
- No questions about your customers. Then the site will be built to look good, not to sell.
- Refusing to show the admin panel before payment. Ask for a demo — you should see what you will be living with.
What to check yourself
- Open two or three portfolio sites on your phone. Most problems show up immediately.
- Run them through PageSpeed Insights — free and takes a minute.
- Check whether those sites are still live. A portfolio full of dead links is a bad sign.
We answer all ten questions before you pay anything. Tell us about the project — we start with a conversation, not an invoice.