How to choose your web design agency: 15 questions

A web design agency usually gets chosen on two criteria: the price and how the portfolio looks. Both are relevant and neither predicts how the working relationship will go. A handsome portfolio can belong to a firm that stops answering the phone after launch, and the cheapest quote can be the one that leaves you without access to your own domain.

This article is a list of fifteen concrete questions, grouped under four themes. You can send them as they stand, in writing, to any agency you talk to. The answers — and especially the hesitations — tell you more than any presentation. At the end you will find our own answers to all fifteen.

What the wrong choice costs you
The questions about process
The questions about ownership
The questions about what happens after launch
The questions about money
Freelancer, agency or platform
Eight warning signs in a quote
What the contract has to contain
What a good briefing conversation looks like
How to compare two quotes that look nothing alike
Our answers

What the wrong choice costs you

The consequences do not show up at launch. They show up eight to twelve months later:

You want a new page and cannot find anyone to make it.
You discover the domain is registered in somebody else’s name.
The site needs a security update and you have no access.
You want to change supplier and find you cannot take anything with you.
The firm that built your site no longer exists.

Every one of those situations costs money and time, and none of them is visible in a quote. The questions below exist to bring them into the light before you sign.

The questions about process

1. What does the process look like, stage by stage, and what do I approve at each one?

What to look for: named stages, with a concrete result at each and a point of approval. A supplier who says “we’ll get started and show you something in two weeks” has no process.

2. Who writes the copy?

What to look for: an explicit answer. “You supply it” is an acceptable answer, if it is said clearly and you know it is your job. Ambiguity here is the number one cause of stalled projects — see The stages of a website project.

3. How many rounds of changes are included, and what happens after that?

What to look for: a number. “Unlimited changes” sounds generous and is, in practice, either a promise that will not be kept or a sign that the price already has headroom for it.

4. Are you using a bought template or building the design?

What to look for: honesty. Both are legitimate at different prices. The problem is when a $50 template is sold as a bespoke design. Ask directly and ask for the template’s name, if applicable.

The questions about ownership

The four most important in the whole article.

5. Whose name is the domain registered in?

What to look for: “your company’s”. Any other answer is a problem. Whoever owns the domain controls your online presence. Details in How to choose a .ro domain.

6. Do I get full access to the hosting and to the site?

What to look for: yes, with the login details handed over. A supplier who keeps exclusive access is securing a dependency, not quality.

7. What happens to the site if we stop working together?

What to look for: “you take it with you”. Ask for it to be in the contract. Ask concretely: do I get the complete archive of the files and the database, in a format another supplier can use?

This is where closed platforms come to light: some subscription solutions cannot be exported at all. If you stop paying, the site disappears. That is not necessarily wrong, but you have to know.

The questions about what happens after launch

8. What does the warranty cover and how long does it last?

What to look for: a period (30–90 days is usual) and a clear line between “we fix what does not work as agreed” and “we make new changes”. The first is warranty; the second is new work.

9. Who does the security updates and what do they cost?

What to look for: a clear answer, with a price. A site on a platform with plugins needs regular updates. If nobody does them, it becomes vulnerable within months.

10. Can I change the copy myself? What exactly?

What to look for: an exact boundary. “You can change everything” is rarely true and rarely desirable. A good answer sounds like: “the copy and images in the content pages, yes; the structure and the components, no”.

11. How long does a reply to a request after launch take?

What to look for: a timescale. “As soon as possible” is not a timescale. Ask what happens in August and between Christmas and New Year too.

The questions about money

12. What is not included in the price?

What to look for: a list. Domain, hosting, font licences, stock images, maintenance, additional content, translations. A quote that mentions no recurring costs is incomplete, not cheap. See How much a business website costs in Romania.

13. What are the annual costs, from year two?

What to look for: a figure. The total cost over three years is the correct basis for comparing quotes, not the build price.

14. How is payment staged?

What to look for: instalments tied to stages, not to dates. A deposit of 30–50% is normal. Paying in full up front is a risk; paying in full at the end is a risk for the supplier and usually shows in the price.

15. What happens if the project stalls because of me?

What to look for: a written rule. Most projects stall on content, on the client’s side. A serious agency has a clause for it — usually invoicing the completed stages after a period of inactivity. It is in your interest that it exists: it obliges you to deliver and removes the arguments later.

Freelancer, agency or platform

	DIY platform	Freelancer	Agency
Initial cost	very low	low–medium	medium–high
Annual cost	a permanent subscription	low	low–medium
Your own time invested	high	medium	low
Bespoke design	limited	variable	yes
Technical optimisation	limited	variable	yes
Continuity	as long as you pay	risk of unavailability	better
Several specialisms	no	rarely	yes
Portability	usually no	yes	yes

How to choose

A DIY platform — if you have under 5 pages, time to invest and no budget. Perfectly reasonable for a start. Check first whether you can export your content.

A freelancer — if you have a clearly defined project, know what you want, and accept the availability risk. Very good value with the right person. Ask what happens if they are unavailable for a month.

An agency — if you need several specialisms at once (design, development, content, optimisation), continuity over several years, and someone who answers contractually.

There is no option that is better in the abstract. There is a fit with your situation.

Eight warning signs in a quote

A price with no list of deliverables. A figure on its own is not a quote.
A guarantee of first place in Google. Nobody can guarantee that. Anyone promising it either does not know or is targeting terms nobody searches for.
“Unlimited changes”, “unlimited space”, “unlimited support”. Nothing is unlimited.
No questions about your business. A quote produced without anyone asking what you sell and to whom is a quote for a generic site.
No verifiable portfolio. Ask for real addresses, not screenshots. Visit them.
No contract. A project worth thousands of euros on the basis of an email is a risk for both sides.
Artificial time pressure. “The price is valid until Friday” is a sales technique, not an economic condition.
A refusal to answer question 5 or 7. The ones about ownership. Hesitation there is the clearest signal on this list.

How to check a portfolio

Ask for three addresses of sites they built. Then:

Visit them. Do they exist? Do they work?
Check the speed on a phone.
Look in the footer for a note on who built it.
If it is a domain that no longer works, ask why.
Call an old client. Ask for the reference directly. A good agency gives it without hesitation.

What the contract has to contain

The reasonable minimum:

The subject, with a concrete list of deliverables and the number of pages.
The stages, with deadlines and approval points.
Who supplies the content and what happens if it does not arrive.
The number of rounds of changes included.
The price and the staging, tied to the stages.
Ownership: domain, code, content, graphic material — whose they remain.
The warranty: duration and what it covers.
Maintenance: whether it is included, for how long, what it covers.
The termination conditions and what you receive in that case.
Confidentiality, if you work with sensitive data.

An individual or a company

Ask directly who you are contracting with. Both are legitimate, but they have different implications for invoicing, VAT and recovering any damages. It is information you have a right to before signing, not on the invoice.

What a good briefing conversation looks like

The first contact says more than the portfolio. Here is what should happen.

What they should ask you

What the company sells and to whom, concretely.
Who the customers are and what they ask before buying.
How customers reach you now.
What you want to happen on the site.
What does not work about the current situation.
Who takes the final decision.
What budget you have in mind.
When you need it and why then.

The most important signal

An agency that asks nothing about your business will build a generic site. It cannot do otherwise — it does not have the information.

If the first conversation is about colours, typefaces and “which sites do you like”, with no question about customers and about what has to happen, you have an execution supplier, not a partner. That can be fine, if that is what you are after and the price reflects it.

The budget question

Many clients refuse to say the budget, afraid the quote will rise to meet it. It is an understandable fear and, in practice, counter-productive.

Without a range, the agency either guesses or quotes the full scenario. Either way you get a number unrelated to what you could have bought. A stated range makes the quote relevant and, more importantly, tells you what cannot be done for that money — the most useful information in the whole conversation.

What you should get afterwards

A written recap of what was discussed, before the quote. It is the best test of understanding: if the recap describes your business correctly, the agency listened. If it is a list of standard services, it did not.

How to compare two quotes that look nothing alike

The practical problem: two quotes, completely different structures, impossible to set side by side.

The method

1. Make a list of everything appearing in either of them. All the deliverables, from both, in a single column.

2. Tick what each quote includes. You will see the gaps immediately.

3. For each gap, ask. “Is the copy included?” gets a clear answer. A gap left unfilled becomes an unpleasant conversation in week four.

4. Add up the costs over three years. Build + hosting + domain + maintenance + licences, ×3. That is the number to compare.

5. Note what cannot be compared. Response times, availability, who your contact is. They matter, but they have no price.

An example comparison table

Item	Quote A	Quote B
Number of pages	12	12
Bespoke design	?	✓
Copywriting	✗	✓
Photography	✗	✓
Structured data	?	✓
Analytics configured	✗	✓
Rounds of changes	unspecified	2
Warranty	unspecified	60 days
Domain in the client’s name	?	✓
Annual costs stated	✗	✓
Price	€850	€2,400

The question marks are what decide it. Each one is a question to ask before choosing.

The practical conclusion

The difference between two quotes is almost always scope, not quality. And what is not included in the quote does not disappear — it turns into your time, into delay, or into a weaker result.

Our answers

So this is useful rather than merely theoretical, here are digitalART’s answers to all fifteen:

1. The process — seven stages, described in the dedicated article. Each has a result you approve before moving on.

2. The copy — any of the three options: you write it, you give us the raw material and we write it, or we write it from an interview. Settled at the brief, not as we go.

3. Changes — two rounds included on the design stage. Beyond that, estimated separately, in advance.

4. Template or design — we build the design. We do not sell bought templates as original work.

5. The domain — registered in the client’s company name, with their contact details. No exceptions.

6. Access — complete, handed over at the end of the project.

7. If we stop working together — the site stays the client’s, with the complete archive. We hold nothing hostage.

8. The warranty — we correct what does not work as agreed. New changes are estimated separately.

9. Security — for the sites we host, we do it. For the others, we quote separately.

10. Making your own changes — it depends how the site is built; it is settled at the brief, because it changes the architecture.

11. Response time — the next working day for ordinary requests; immediately for a site that is down.

12. Not included — the domain, the hosting (if not contracted), commercial font licences, stock images, additional content after launch.

13. Annual costs — domain and hosting. Maintenance, only if you contract it.

14. Payment — in instalments, tied to stages.

15. If the project stalls — after an agreed period of inactivity we invoice the completed stages, and the project resumes when the material is ready.

About us

We have been doing web design since 2000, and the company — Digital Dreams SRL — has been running since 2005. We work from Constanța, with clients across the country. You can see the work in the portfolio and who we are in about us.

Have a quote in front of you and want a second opinion? Write to us. We will look over it and tell you what is missing — including when the other quote is a good one.