12 Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Web Developer
The questions that separate a professional from a liability. Ask these before you pay anyone to build your website, and the good developers will thank you for it.
Most bad website projects could have been avoided in the first conversation. The client did not know what to ask, so they judged on price and portfolio screenshots, and found out about the problems later. Here are the twelve questions that surface those problems before you pay. A good developer welcomes every one of them. Watch how someone reacts to these questions as closely as you watch their answers.
On ownership and lock-in
One. Do I own the source code and all the content at the end of the project? Two. Whose accounts are the domain, hosting and email registered under, mine or yours? Three. If we stop working together, can another developer take over cleanly, or am I locked to you?
These three questions expose the most common trap in web development: the developer who keeps you dependent by owning your infrastructure. The right answers are that you own everything and can leave anytime. Anyone who hedges here is telling you how the relationship ends.
On what you are actually getting
Four. Is the design custom, or a template or theme? Five. What page speed and Lighthouse scores do you deliver, measured on mobile? Six. Is the site built for SEO, with proper structure and schema markup, or is that extra? Seven. Will it be genuinely fast on a mid-range phone on 4G, not just on your laptop?
These separate a real build from a template drop. A professional has specific answers with numbers. A cheaper option gets vague here, because vagueness is where the corners are cut.
On the process
Eight. Can I see a written scope that names every page and feature before we start? Nine. How are payments structured, and are they tied to delivered work? Ten. How will I see progress, and how often?
A written scope is the single best predictor of a project that finishes on budget. If someone resists putting the plan in writing, the plan does not really exist yet, and you will be negotiating scope mid-project, which is where budgets and relationships die.
On what happens after launch
Eleven. What support is included after launch, and for how long? Twelve. Who do I call when something breaks in six months, and what does that cost?
A website is not a one-time delivery, it is an asset that needs maintenance. The developers worth hiring have a clear answer for life after launch. The ones who go quiet on this question are the ones who disappear.
The meta-question
Underneath all twelve is one real question: will this person still be accountable to me in a year? Ownership, clear scope, honest pricing and defined support all point at the same thing. You are not just buying a website. You are choosing whether to build a relationship with someone who will still answer the phone when your business depends on the site they built. Choose for that.
Written by Abhinav Saxena, founder of Kodinav, an independent software studio. Need this built properly? Book a free discovery call.