What to check in a website quote before you sign

Before you sign a website quote, check three things. It should spell out in writing what you’ll get, say what isn’t included and make clear what stays yours when the job is done. The price alone tells you little, because two quotes with very different totals often aren’t describing the same site. Comparing them only makes sense if you line up the same items side by side.

What drives the cost of a website

A business website can be three well-written pages or a project with a catalogue, bookings and five languages. The amount of work depends first on the number and type of pages. An “about us” page is one job, a service page that has to persuade and get found is another, and a catalogue with hundreds of products is another again.

Content comes next, meaning who writes the copy, who takes the photos and who does the translations. Then there is design, which can be an off-the-shelf theme adapted to your logo or a design built around your business. And there are features, such as bookings, e-commerce, a customer area or connections to your management software or your CRM, the software where you keep customers and deals.

Every extra language means more copy, more checks and more maintenance. Being found takes work as well, with SEO for Google and GEO, which means making the site something AI answers can cite. And a site that’s fast on phones and usable by everyone takes deliberate work, because it doesn’t happen by itself.

Not every site needs everything. A good quote starts from what the site has to do for your business, and if nobody asked you, it was written without knowing.

The items that are often missing or vague

Plenty of quotes look complete until the site goes live, so it pays to look for these items and ask about any that aren’t there.

• Hosting and domain should say where the site will live, who pays the renewals and whose name they’re registered in.
• Maintenance should say who updates the software, who takes backups and who steps in if something breaks, for how long, and on what terms after the first year.
• Copy and photos need to be settled, because “content supplied by the client” means you’re writing it. That’s fine, but content is very often what delays the launch, so it’s best to know beforehand.
• Privacy and cookies call for a privacy notice and, if tracking tools are involved, consent management in line with the Italian data protection authority’s guidelines. If the provider will handle data collected by the site on your behalf, such as enquiries from the contact form, the GDPR requires a written agreement too.
• Revisions should state how many rounds of changes are included before launch.
• Training should say whether someone shows you how to update text and photos or you’re left to work it out.

Who owns the site when the job is done

This is the part people look at least, and the one that matters most the day you want to change provider. The quote, or the contract that goes with it, should make four things clear.

First, the domain is registered to you or your company, not to whoever builds the site. Second, you get the logins to everything, including the domain, hosting, the site’s admin panel, email accounts and linked profiles such as your Google Business Profile. Third, it’s written down who owns the code, the design, the copy and the photos, and whether stock images come with a licence that covers you too. Finally, it’s written down what happens if you switch provider, meaning what you’ll be handed, in what form and how quickly.

Be careful with sites built on platforms the provider owns. They work as long as you keep paying that provider, and when you stop, the site often can’t be moved anywhere else.

If you don’t have the logins, the site is in someone else’s hands.

The red flags in a quote

Some signs deserve an extra question before you sign.

• A very cheap all-inclusive offer with no detail deserves a closer look. The costs come back later as extras, or the site turns out to be a template with your logo on it, or there’s a fee that ties you in for years.
• A scope that isn’t written down leaves you unprotected. With “complete website” or “professional website” and no list of pages and features, one of your requests can become “not in the quote” halfway through the job.
• A domain registered in the provider’s name, often “to make things easier”, or logins that never get handed over (“we keep the passwords”) mean the site isn’t really under your control.
• Vague timelines, such as “a couple of weeks” with no milestones and no mention of what you need to provide, give you nothing to hold anyone to.
• A promise of guaranteed Google rankings should make you look elsewhere. Google itself states that no one can guarantee a top ranking in its results and advises finding someone else if a provider promises one.

The questions to ask every provider

The same questions, put to everyone, get you quotes you can actually compare.

• What’s included, page by page and feature by feature, and what isn’t?
• Who writes the copy and who provides the photos?
• Where will the site be hosted, who pays for hosting and the domain, and whose name will they be in?
• After launch, who updates the site, who takes backups, how quickly do you respond and what does it cost?
• Will I be able to edit text and photos myself, and is training included?
• How do you check that the site is fast on phones and accessible?
• At the end of the job, do I get the code, the logins and the documentation, and what happens if I change provider?
• What are the stages of the work, and what do you need from me at each one?

How a provider answers these questions already tells you a lot about how they’ll work.

How I put a quote together

I don’t have a standard price, because every site has a different job to do. After a first call where I get to know your business and what the site needs to do, I prepare a detailed quote with costs, timeline and goals. It covers the pages, the features, what’s included and what isn’t, the stages and what happens after launch.

The project is yours. I hand over the code, the database, the documentation and the logins at the end of the job, and you’re free to carry on with me or with another developer. If you already have quotes in hand and can’t make sense of them side by side, get in touch and we’ll go through them together.