How to choose a web development company: key questions before you hire
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What to ask about domain and code ownership, process, technical quality and maintenance, and the warning signs to spot before you sign.
Why these questions are worth asking
A website lasts for years and switching providers is expensive if you do not control your domain, hosting and code. Spending one meeting on these questions prevents most of the problems that appear after launch.
Ownership and access
Who will the domain be registered to? It should be you or your company, never the provider.
Will I receive the code and access to hosting, the content management system and analytics? What happens to the website if we stop working together?
Process and communication
What does the process look like, from the first meeting to launch? How many rounds of changes does the quote include, and what do extra ones cost?
Who will be my contact and how quickly do they usually reply? Will I see progress during the project or only the final result?
Technical quality
Can I see real, live projects? Open them on your phone and run them through Google PageSpeed Insights: within seconds you will know whether they are fast.
Will the website be accessible and mobile-friendly by design, not as an afterthought? Does it include technical SEO: sitemap, metadata, structured data and a URL structure planned for search engines?
After launch
Is there maintenance? How much does it cost and what exactly does it include: security updates, backups, content changes?
Does the website comply with GDPR and cookie rules, with a banner that lets visitors reject analytics, and does it have a legal notice and privacy policy?
Warning signs
A price far below the market with no explanation of what it includes. No real projects to show. The domain registered to the agency. A one-line quote with no breakdown.
And any promise of a "guaranteed first position on Google": nobody controls Google's algorithm, and anyone who guarantees it is not being honest.
These are the same questions we answer in our first meeting. If you want to ask them, get in touch.