Hiring a web developer comes down to 3 questions: can they show working sites they built, can they explain your project back to you in plain terms, and will they still be reachable in 6 months. Skill matters less than most buyers think. Communication and follow-through are what separate a project that ships from one that stalls at 80 percent.
We have been on both sides of this. We have taken over abandoned projects, and we have turned work down that was not a fit. Here is what we would check if we were hiring, including the cases where you should not hire a studio like ours.
What does hiring a web developer actually involve
You are buying 3 things: a decision about what to build, the build itself, and someone who stays responsible for it afterwards. Most bad hires happen because the buyer priced only the middle one. The scoping conversation before code, and the support arrangement after launch, are where projects are won or lost.
Cost depends entirely on scope, so treat any number quoted before a real conversation as a guess. What you can compare across quotes is what is included: design, content, migration, testing, deployment, training and a defined post launch period.
Freelancer, agency, or in house
Freelancer
Best when the scope is clear and contained. A brochure site, a WordPress build, a specific feature added to a system that already works. You get direct contact with the person doing the work and no account manager in between. The risk is capacity. One person gets sick, takes a better contract, or disappears. Ask what happens to your project if they are unavailable for 2 weeks.
Studio or agency
Best when the project needs more than one skill at once, or when continuity matters. Design, front end, back end, deployment, SEO. A studio also has process: version control, staging environments, code review, a defined handover. You pay more per hour and you should expect to. The risk is being sold a large package by a salesperson and then handed to a junior. Ask directly who writes the code and talk to them.
In house
Best when software is your product, or when your operation changes fast enough to need daily development. A full time developer only makes financial sense with continuous work to do. A single developer with no colleagues also has nobody to review their decisions, which is a real risk on anything security sensitive.
What to ask before you hire
Ask these and listen for specifics, not confidence.
- Show me 3 live sites you built and what your role was. Live URLs, not screenshots in a deck. Open them on your phone. Check how fast they load and whether the forms actually work.
- What would you change about the way that project went? Anyone with real experience has an answer. A blank stare means either no experience or no reflection.
- Who owns the code and where does it live? The correct answer is you, in a repository you can access, on hosting in your name.
- What is not included in this price? Content writing, images, translation, migration of old data, third party subscriptions. Get the exclusions in writing.
- How do you handle changes mid project? There should be a defined process. Any developer who says all changes are free is either padding the price or will quietly resent you later.
- What happens on launch day and the week after? A launch has DNS changes, redirects from old URLs, analytics, and a period of watching for breakage. If none of that comes up, they have not launched many sites.
- How do you handle updates and security after launch? Especially on WordPress. An unmaintained site is a liability with a countdown on it.
How to read a proposal
A proposal tells you how someone thinks. Good ones share a shape.
They restate your problem before proposing a solution. If the first page is about the agency and not about you, they wrote it once and send it to everyone.
They define scope in outcomes, not just technologies. Listing React, Tailwind and PostgreSQL tells you nothing about what you get. Pages, features, admin capability and integrations tell you a lot.
They include a timeline with dependencies on you. Real projects wait on content, logins, brand assets and approvals. A timeline that assumes you respond instantly is not a timeline.
They mention testing and browsers. Half of your traffic will be on phones. If mobile is not mentioned anywhere, expect a desktop site squeezed down.
They price in phases where the scope is uncertain. A fixed price on a vague brief protects nobody. It gets padded, then argued over.
How to spot someone who will disappear halfway
Some warning signs are visible before you pay a deposit.
- Answers get vaguer as the questions get more specific. The reverse should happen.
- The quote is far below everyone else. Underpriced work gets abandoned when a better paying client shows up. It is the single most common cause of the half finished sites we inherit.
- No written scope. If a friendly chat is the whole agreement, every disagreement later becomes a matter of memory.
- Everything is on their hosting, in their accounts. Domain, hosting, repository, analytics. If you cannot log in to the things you paid for, you are a hostage rather than a client.
- Slow replies before money changes hands. Responsiveness never improves after the deposit.
- No questions about your business. Someone who quotes without asking who your customers are is quoting on a template.
When not to hire us
We would rather say this up front than take the money.
- You need a single page and you have a tight budget. A good template on a hosted builder, set up carefully, will serve you. Come back when the site needs to do work.
- You want the cheapest option. We are not it, and we would be a bad deal if you are optimising only for price.
- You need daily changes on an ongoing product. At that volume, hire someone in house and let a studio consult on architecture.
- Nobody on your side can make decisions. If approvals need 5 people and 3 weeks, any agency will burn your budget waiting. Fix that first.
- You want guaranteed rankings. Nobody can promise a position in search results. Anyone who does is selling you something else.
Common questions
Should I pay a deposit up front?
Yes, that is standard, usually a portion at the start with the rest tied to milestones. What you should not do is pay everything before anything exists. Tie payments to deliverables you can see and open in a browser.
How do I check a portfolio is real?
Open the sites and look at who is credited in the footer, then search the developer or studio name alongside the client name. On platforms like Fiverr or Upwork the review history is public and hard to fake at volume. Our own profiles sit at 4.9 on Fiverr and 5.0 on Upwork, and we are PSEB registered, all of which you can verify independently rather than take our word for.
What if I do not know what I need yet?
Say that plainly. A short paid discovery phase that produces a written scope, a sitemap and a rough estimate is cheaper than a full project built on assumptions. Any developer who cannot work that way is not the right one for an unclear brief.
How long should a website take?
A straightforward business site usually runs a few weeks, a site with custom functionality runs longer, and the biggest delay is nearly always content. If you have text, images and approvals ready before the build starts, you remove the most common cause of a slipped date.
Can I hire someone to fix a site another developer abandoned?
Often yes, and we do this regularly. Get access to the hosting, domain and code first, because a takeover with no access means starting again. Expect the first task to be an assessment of what is there before anyone quotes the fix.
If you are comparing quotes right now, send us the brief and the other proposals. We will tell you what looks reasonable and where the risk is, even when the honest answer is that another option suits you better. Good clients come back, and we would rather be the studio you trust than the one that got one project.
