Website audit service: a second opinion before you pay
You have a quote in your hand. Here is what to check before you agree to it.
Six things that should be written in a web proposal and usually are not. None of them is a reason to distrust whoever wrote yours — they are six better questions to ask before the money moves. Read it, then send us the quote if you want a second pair of eyes on it.
Things to ask before you sign
6
Each one a question, not an accusation.
The six clauses
What should a web design quote say before you sign it?
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1
A price with no scope beside it
A number on its own is not a quote, it is an opening position. The scope is what stops it moving later.
Ask this Ask for the page count and the feature list the price is for, in writing, before you agree to the price.
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2
No date, or a date with "approximately" in front of it
A studio that will not put a live date in writing is a studio that does not know how long the work takes.
Ask this Ask when it goes live, and ask for it in the document rather than in the call.
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3
Everything payable up front
Money should move as the work does. All of it before anything exists puts every risk on the person who has not seen anything yet.
Ask this Ask to split it against something you can look at. Ours is 50% on approval of the direction and 50% when the site is live.
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4
Nothing about who owns the files
If ownership is not written down, you find out what you bought on the day you try to leave.
Ask this Ask, in writing, who owns the design files, the code and the domain when it is finished.
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5
A monthly fee with no exit named
A maintenance retainer is fine. A maintenance retainer you cannot leave without losing the site is not.
Ask this Ask what happens to the site if you stop paying, and how much notice ends it.
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6
No named person
Ask who actually builds it. If the answer is a company rather than a person, ask again.
Ask this Ask for the name of the person who will write the code, and whether you will ever speak to them.
Second pair of eyes
Send us the quote
Forward what you were sent. You get a plain answer on what is missing from it and what it would cost with us, and if the honest answer is that the quote you have is a good one, that is the answer you get. A reply comes within one business day. The same nine checks, run in public on a real site, are the teardown; what a build costs here is on the pricing page, in figures.