Hiring a development agency is hard for one structural reason: you’re buying something you can’t inspect before you receive it. Every proposal promises the same things, “modern design, high quality, competitive pricing,” and the real differences only show up after you’ve paid.
The fix isn’t reading proposals more carefully. It’s asking questions the proposals don’t answer. These seven expose, within a single call, whether you’re talking to a professional partner or a reseller with a portfolio of screenshots.
1. Show me something live, and let me open it on my phone
Portfolio images are curated. Ask for URLs of products that are live right now, and open them on your phone during the call. Watch for three things: how fast the page loads, whether it makes sense on a small screen, and whether it looks maintained or abandoned.
An agency with no live work to show is asking you to be the case study.
2. Who owns the code when the project is paid?
This one question splits the market in half. The only acceptable answer: you own everything on full payment, code, design, and content, stated in the contract.
Watch out for the rental model: a monthly fee for a site that stays the agency’s property, where stopping payment means your site (and every ranking it earned) disappears. The only legitimate recurring fee is an optional maintenance contract on a product you already own. If you’re raising investment, this matters double: due diligence will ask who owns the IP, and “our agency does” is a bad day.
3. What happens when something breaks after delivery?
A professional answers with numbers and contract clauses: a defect warranty of so many days, included maintenance for so many months, response times in writing. An amateur answers with vibes: “we’re always here for our clients.”
The difference between those answers is the difference between a legal commitment and a pleasantry.
4. Will this rank on Google?
Listen carefully to how they answer. Anyone who guarantees rankings is lying, nobody controls a search engine they don’t own. The honest answer separates two things: the technical foundation the agency commits to (speed, correct structure, structured data, sitemaps), and the ranking itself, which depends on content, competition, and time.
A sharper version of the question: “what do your recent builds score on Google’s PageSpeed test?” Agencies that measure will answer with a number.
5. How long will it take, and what happens if you’re late?
For a business website, two to four weeks from kickoff is a reasonable range; an MVP runs longer depending on scope (we published real MVP cost and timeline numbers separately). More important than the estimate: is it written in the proposal, and is the work staged so you receive something functional at each milestone instead of waiting for a big reveal?
Projects managed in milestones arrive. Projects managed on promises evaporate.
6. What exactly does the price include, and exclude?
Ask for an itemised proposal. The questions that dissolve ambiguity: Is the domain and hosting registered in my name? How many post-delivery revisions are included? Who produces the content and images? Are there any recurring fees at all?
The rule: every dollar you will ever pay should be visible before you sign. Surprise costs mid-project aren’t bad luck, they’re a business model.
7. Who answers me after launch, and how fast?
During the sale, everyone replies in minutes. The real question is about after: a named channel, a named person, an agreed response time. Run your own test, send a simple technical question before signing and note how fast and how well it’s answered.
Red flags, any one of which ends the conversation
- No written contract, or one silent on ownership, warranty, and timeline.
- A price dramatically below everyone else’s: usually a recycled template, and you’ll pay the difference later in a rebuild.
- Full payment upfront: normal structure is staged payments tied to milestones.
- They can’t explain their approach in language you understand: whoever can’t simplify their work doesn’t fully understand it.
- Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed revenue: guarantees about systems they don’t control.
The bottom line
The right agency isn’t the cheapest or the most expensive, it’s the one whose answers to these seven questions are written, specific, and accountable. Collect two or three proposals, put the same questions to all of them, and the decision usually makes itself.
If you want to see how we answer them: our service pages state prices, warranties, and timelines in numbers, and the first consultation is free.