How to Hire a Freelance Web Developer (and the Red Flags to Walk Away From)
A practical hiring guide for non-technical business owners: what to ask, how to compare quotes, the contract terms that matter, and the warning signs that predict a failed project.
Most failed website projects I get called in to rescue did not fail because the developer could not code. They failed because nobody agreed what was being built, who owned it, or what happened when the scope changed.
You do not need to be technical to avoid that. You need to ask about six things and know which answers are bad.
Start by writing down what you actually need
Before you talk to anyone, write a single page covering: what the site is for, who visits it, what you want them to do, roughly how many pages, anything it must connect to (booking, payments, a CRM), and your deadline and budget range.
People hide the budget because they think they will be quoted up to it. What actually happens is you get three quotes built on three different assumptions and no way to compare them. A range β "somewhere between β¬2,000 and β¬4,000" β gets you proposals that are actually comparable, and lets an honest developer tell you early if your expectations and your number do not meet.
What to ask, and what a good answer sounds like
"Can I see three live sites you built?" Live URLs, not screenshots. Open them on your phone. Do they load fast? Do they work? Then ask which parts they did personally β on agency work, plenty of people show portfolios they contributed one page to.
"What would you do differently on that project now?" My favourite question. Anyone who has genuinely shipped has regrets and can name them. "Nothing, it was perfect" means either no reflection or no involvement.
"What is not included in this price?" Good developers answer this immediately and specifically: content writing, photography, ongoing hosting, third-party subscriptions, revisions past a certain round. Vagueness here is where surprise invoices come from.
"What happens if I want to change something halfway?" You want to hear about a written change process with its own price. "We'll figure it out" sounds friendly and reliably ends in an argument.
"Who owns the code and the accounts when we're done?" The correct answer is you, on standard technology, in accounts registered in your name. Be very careful with anyone who keeps the domain, the hosting, or the repository under their own account.
"What does month three look like?" Who fixes it when it breaks, what it costs, how fast they respond. A site is not a delivery, it is a thing that keeps running.
Comparing quotes that look nothing alike
You will get numbers that vary by 5x. That is normal, because they are quoting different products. Normalise them before comparing:
| Check | Why it matters | | --- | --- | | Number of pages / templates | "A website" can mean 1 page or 15 | | Custom design or template | Enormous cost difference, legitimate either way | | Who writes the content | The most commonly excluded item, and the most common delay | | Rounds of revisions | "Unlimited" is rarely real; two named rounds is honest | | CMS or developer-edited | Decides whether you can change text yourself later | | Year-one running cost | Hosting, plugins, subscriptions, maintenance | | Ownership | Code, domain, hosting, analytics - in whose name |
Once every quote is expressed in those terms, the cheap one is often the most expensive by month twelve.
The red flags
These are the ones that, in my experience, predict a bad outcome most reliably:
They will not give you a number. Discovery calls are reasonable. Refusing any indication of range until you have paid for a workshop is a sales funnel, not a scoping process.
No written scope. If what you are buying exists only in a chat thread, you will disagree about it later. Guaranteed.
Slow replies before you have paid. This is the single most predictive signal I know. Communication is never faster after the deposit clears.
Portfolio of mockups, not live sites. Beautiful designs that were never built are a design portfolio. Building is the hard part.
They own your accounts. Domain registered to them, hosting on their account, analytics under their login. This is how people end up hostage to a developer they no longer want to work with.
No questions about your business. Someone who quotes without asking what the site is for is quoting a template, whatever they call it.
Everything is "no problem." Every real project has trade-offs. A developer who never pushes back is either not listening or planning to cut something you assumed was included.
The contract terms that actually matter
You do not need a lawyer for a β¬3,000 website, but you do need these in writing:
- Scope, as an explicit list, including what is excluded
- Price and schedule β deposit, milestones, final payment on what condition
- Change process β how new requests get priced and approved
- Ownership β code, design files, domain, hosting, analytics, all in your name
- Definition of done β what has to be true for the project to be complete
- After launch β response times, what is free, what is billable
Missing any of these is not automatically a dealbreaker. Missing ownership is.
A note on where to look
Marketplaces optimise for price, and you will get a lot of very cheap, very templated proposals. Referrals from other business owners in your sector are consistently the highest hit rate. Failing that, find someone whose published work you can actually inspect β a live site, a public project, articles that show how they think.
That last one cuts both ways, obviously. It is why I publish my prices and write these posts: you can judge how I think before you spend anything.
How I do it, for comparison
Fixed price, always, so the estimation risk sits with me. A free proposal and design mockup before you pay anything, so you see the actual design and the actual number before committing. Weekly demos during the build. Code and accounts in your name at the end.
If you are collecting quotes right now and want one more to compare against β or just a second opinion on the ones you have β send me what you're working on. I will tell you if one of the others is a better fit.
Related reading
Common questions
- How do I know if a freelance web developer is any good?
- Look at live sites they built, not a portfolio of mockups. Open them on your phone, check how fast they load, and ask which parts of each one they personally did. A developer who can explain their trade-offs on a real project is worth more than one with a prettier deck.
- What should be in a web development contract?
- Scope with an explicit list of what is included, the price and payment schedule, a change process for new requests, who owns the code and accounts at the end, what happens after launch, and a definition of done. If code ownership is not written down, assume it is a problem.
- Is the cheapest quote ever the right choice?
- Occasionally, but check what is missing. Cheap quotes usually exclude content, revisions beyond one round, post-launch support, or ownership of the code. Compare the total for year one, not the build number.
- Should I pay a deposit up front?
- Yes - 30-50% up front is normal and protects both sides. What is not normal is paying 100% before anything is delivered, or having no milestone between deposit and launch.
- What are the biggest warning signs?
- No written scope, no examples of live work, unwillingness to give a number, communication that is already slow during the sales conversation, and refusal to hand over accounts or code. Slow replies before you have paid do not improve afterwards.
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