By Brijesh Shukla · 20 August 2026 · 8 min read
Start with ownership, not portfolio
A beautiful portfolio tells you what an agency can design. It tells you nothing about what happens when you want to leave. Before anything else, ask who will own the source code, the hosting account, the domain, the analytics property and the ad accounts. The correct answer is always you.
Agencies that keep accounts in their own name are building a switching cost, not a website. Insist on ownership in writing before the first invoice.
The twelve questions worth asking
Ask these on the first call and compare the answers side by side across the shortlist.
- Who owns the code, hosting, domain and analytics after launch?
- Is the quote fixed scope, or hourly against an estimate?
- Who is my day-to-day contact, and are they in-house or subcontracted?
- What is included in post-launch support, and for how long?
- How do you handle scope changes mid-project?
- Can I see a site you built three years ago that is still maintained?
- What is your performance target for mobile page speed?
- How do you handle SEO migration if this is a rebuild?
- What happens to my project if my main contact leaves?
- Will you sign an NDA and a data processing agreement?
- What are the payment milestones tied to?
- What is your average response time for a production issue?
Red flags in a proposal
Guaranteed first-page rankings, unlimited revisions, a price quoted before any scoping conversation, no named team, and a proposal that describes deliverables in adjectives rather than in pages, features and dates. Any one of those is worth a direct question; two together is usually a reason to move on.
Offshore versus local
An offshore partner is usually cheaper, and the real question is whether the communication discipline exists to make that saving worth it. Look for a genuine working-hours overlap, written daily or weekly updates, a named project manager, a registered company you can invoice and contract with, and references you can actually contact.
Cost per hour is the least useful comparison metric. Compare cost per shipped outcome, and factor in what a rebuild costs if the first attempt fails.
Get the commercial terms right
A good contract names the deliverables, the milestone payments tied to them, the revision rounds included, the change request process and price, the support window after launch, the ownership transfer, and the notice period on any retainer. If a partner resists putting any of those in writing, that is the answer to the question you were really asking.
