How to choose a website design company

What you are buying

A website design company sells four things. Design is the part you see, and the build is the code under it. Hosting is the server the site lives on. Care is the work after launch, when a plugin needs an update or a form stops sending without telling anyone.

The first two are paid once. Hosting and care are paid every month for as long as the site is up, so over a few years they can cost more than the build. A quote can price the design down to the page and leave the rest as one line that says "ongoing support". Ask what that line costs per month and what it covers before you compare anyone. Our guide to what website maintenance includes lists the jobs that usually hide inside it.

What a website costs

Published price ranges are wide. Freelancers will cost between $500 and $5,000. Small agencies between $3,000 to $20,000, and larger firms starting above $10,000. A common build will tally up between 40 and 80 hours, or about $2,000 to $7,600. A site builder like Wix or Squarespace costs $17 to $120 a month, but you do the work yourself.

For a shop or a rental with a handful of pages, a quote where the freelancer and small agency ranges overlap, around $3,000 to $5,000, is normal. Above $10,000 you are paying for custom features or a bigger team. Under $500 you are mostly buying a template and spending your own evenings on it.

How the site is built also decides what you pay later. Ask about it on the first call. Our own sites use WordPress only as a place to write, on a separate subdomain the public never sees. A build turns each post into a plain HTML page, and the server just hands out files. That means no page builder license to renew and no database working on every visit. Fewer moving parts leave less to update, and less to pay someone to update.

Whoever you hire, get the scope on paper next to the price. A fixed quote is only fixed for what it lists. Check that it names these:

• Pages: how many, and which ones
• Text: who writes it
• Photos and video: yours, stock, or a shoot
• Forms: what they collect and where the messages go
• Hosting: who pays, and from when
• Changes: how many rounds before extra charges start

Ask what the timeline depends on, too. If it depends on your photos and text, have them ready before you sign. A build waits on whatever it is missing. If you run a real estate office, a hotel or a rental, our guide to real estate, hotel and rental websites covers the extras those sites need.

Test their own sites on your phone

A portfolio of screenshots tells you about taste. It says nothing about speed. Ask for links to live sites and open them on your phone, on mobile data, away from the office wifi. Count how long it takes before you can read the first line. Your customers will do the same thing on their way to calling you.

Ask for mobile scores as well. Lighthouse, Google's free page audit, gives every page a desktop score and a mobile score, and the desktop one is almost always kinder. A site can score in the 90s on a laptop and fall well short on a phone. Your customers are likely on the phone.

The usual causes are easy to name. Large images that were never sized for a small screen. Fonts loaded from another company's server, which hold the page back while the type arrives. Self hosting the fonts removes that wait in one change. So ask a designer what is dragging their mobile score down and what they have done about it. A good answer names the cause. A vague one tells you they have not looked.

A website is not set and forget

Every site needs looking after. Hosts change their settings. A plugin update shifts a layout. A small edit to a server file can take every page down while the upload tool reports success. A mobile menu can stop opening and nobody on a laptop will notice.

Each of those costs you twice. A customer who lands on an error page or a broken phone layout thinks less of the business behind it, and the one who was ready to book or buy goes somewhere else. You rarely hear about it. They just do not call.

So ask how the site gets checked, and make the questions concrete:

• Who controls the host's settings, and who controls the site's? When two people each own half the redirects, they can send visitors in a loop.
• What runs after every change? A live check that loads the home page, a policy page, a stylesheet and the sitemap catches a dead site in seconds.
• How far back do backups go? A dated copy saved with every publish means there is always a working version to go back to.
• When the site throws an error, who reads the server's error log? It names the file and the line, which beats guessing.

Then ask what broke on a client site last year and how they found out. If the answer is that nothing has ever broken, ask how they would know.

Make sure you own the keys

Your domain name should be registered in an account you control, with your email on it. The same goes for the hosting account and the logins to wherever you write. These are the keys to the business online.

We know an owner who did not hold hers. She paid far more than she should have for hosting. Then she lost the website, because the domain, the host and the logins were all in someone else's name. Not holding the keys is what turned that relationship into a fight. Once one side holds every key, the owner has no way to leave on her own terms.

Holding the keys also keeps the relationship friendly. You can leave, so your designer has every reason to do good work. Ask for this in writing before you sign. A company that goes vague on ownership or monthly costs is telling you how the relationship will go.

Questions to ask before you sign

Bring these to the first call. They follow from the sections above, and the answers will tell you more than the portfolio.

• What is the fixed price, and what does it include?
• What does the timeline depend on?
• Whose account holds the domain, the hosting and the code when you finish?
• What does hosting cost after launch? What does ongoing care cost, and what does it cover?
• Can I see two live sites you built and still look after?
• What are their mobile Lighthouse scores?
• What checks the site after every change, and how far back do backups go?
• Will you set up Google Search Console and walk me through it?

The last one matters because Google Search Console shows which pages earn clicks, and the answer is often not the page you expected. The report is how you find out which pages are doing the work.

Questions

How much should a small business website cost?

Freelancers run $500 to $5,000 and small agencies $3,000 to $20,000. For a handful of pages, a quote around $3,000 to $5,000 is normal. Ask what hosting and care cost each month on top.

Do I need WordPress for my website?

It is a good place to write. Visitors do not have to load it. Ask whether the public pages run on WordPress or are built into static pages. Static pages leave fewer plugins and updates on the public side to pay for.

Will a new website rank on Google?

Nobody can promise that, and it rarely happens on launch day. On our own sites, pages about one specific place rank first. Plan your first pages around specific places and topics. Broad money terms come later, through the ongoing work in what local SEO services cost.

Who owns my website when it is done?

You should. Put the domain, the hosting and every login in accounts you control, and get that in writing before work starts.

Should I hire a freelancer or an agency?

If the site is a page or two and you are happy to do the work, a builder at $17 to $120 a month will do. Once you want someone else to fix it when it breaks, hire a person or a studio. With a solo freelancer, ask who covers the site when they are away.

You are busy running the business and delivering what your customers pay for. The website, the hosting, the checks and the search setup all happen behind the scenes. Pulling them together so the most people find what you sell is the job to hand off.