Hiring someone to build your website is a high-stakes decision you probably make once every several years, with no easy way to compare options. Get it right and you barely think about your site again. Get it wrong and you lose months, a chunk of money, and end up back at square one. Here’s how to choose well.
Know what you’re actually hiring for
A brochure site, an online store, and a full business platform are three different jobs, and not everyone who builds one builds the others. Be clear up front about whether you need a website or the system behind it — it changes who’s the right fit and what it should cost.
Questions worth asking
- Will the site be custom-built, or a template with my logo on it?
- Who writes the copy, and who handles SEO — or is that “on me” later?
- Do I own the site and the domain outright when we’re done?
- What happens after launch — updates, fixes, hosting, support?
- Can I see real work you built, live, and talk to those clients?
Red flags to walk away from
- No clear scope or price — just “it depends” with no willingness to pin it down
- You won’t own the finished site, or you’re locked into their platform to keep it running
- A portfolio of sites that all look the same, or that you can’t actually visit
- No plan for what happens after launch — a site is a living thing, not a delivery
Freelancer, agency, or a small team
A solo freelancer is affordable but a single point of failure. A big agency has depth but you’re a small account paying for a lot of overhead and hand-offs. A small, senior team is often the sweet spot — the same people who design it build it and support it, so decisions happen in minutes and nothing gets lost between departments. That’s why a lean shop can ship a real site in a week that an agency quotes two months for.
The real test
Ask to see the work, live, and ask who’ll actually be doing yours. You can see ours running end to end on the website and dashboards pages, and meet the two people who’d build it on the about page. When you’re ready, tell us what you need.