What to ask a web designer before you hire one
Four questions decide almost everything, and all four are about what happens after the site is finished. Our answers are below, including where ours is not the best one available.
The short answer
The questions worth asking a web designer are almost all about what happens after the site is finished: whose name is on the domain, what you get on the day you leave, what you can change yourself, and what you still have if the payments stop. A designer who answers those four quickly and specifically is safe to hire, and one who calls them premature has told you something. A Social Solutions answers all four in public: you own the site, the domain and the content outright, we hand over every login on request without asking why, most edits come back to us instead of being made by you in a browser, and no monthly payment is required to keep the site online.
Four questions, and how to hear the answer
Almost every unhappy website story starts with a question nobody asked at the beginning, because at the beginning everyone is friendly and the questions feel unfriendly. They are not unfriendly. They are the ordinary questions you would ask before signing any other contract, and a designer who is fine to hire will answer them in under a minute each.
Ask all four before the deposit, not after. The answers cost nothing to give while the work is still being won, and they become negotiations later.
| Ask this | A good answer sounds like | A bad answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Whose name is on the domain? | Yours. Here is the registrar and the login. Change the password today. | We take care of all of that for you. |
| What happens on the day I leave? | You ask, we send the files and transfer the accounts, usually inside a week. | Let us talk about what is making you unhappy first. |
| Can I change my own hours, prices and photos? | Yes. Here is the screen you would use, and here is what to leave alone. | Just email us any time, it is all included. |
| If I stop paying, what do I still have? | The domain, the site, the content and the files, and here is how they reach you. | The site would come down. |
Who owns the website when it is finished
This question sounds like paperwork and decides more than anything else on the list. The domain is your address on the internet, and whoever is listed as its registrant controls it. If that is your designer rather than you, then leaving is a favour they can choose to grant, and the entire relationship sits on top of that fact whether anyone mentions it or not.
A good answer here is immediate and slightly boring. Yours, here is the login, go and change the password. A bad answer explains why it is simpler for them to hold it. That explanation is usually true and it is also not an answer to the question you asked.
Our answer: where we register the domain, it goes in your name and your email, not ours. The site, the copy, the images and the code are yours outright when the build is paid for, and we hold no lien of any kind over any of it. That is printed on the packages page too, because a promise like this belongs in writing before money moves rather than in a friendly conversation you cannot produce later.
What happens on the day I want to leave
Ask this in the first meeting, when nothing is wrong. The answer is far more honest at that point than it will ever be again.
What you want back is a process, not a reassurance. Which files you receive, in what format, how each account is transferred, and how many days it takes. Somebody who has done this before will describe it in specifics because they have done it recently. Somebody who has never let a client go will improvise.
Our answer, plainly. You ask, we send the site files and hand over the accounts, and we do not require a reason or a meeting. Here is where we are less generous than a bigger firm: we are a small shop on Main Street in Huntington, and if we are both on site with a client, a Tuesday afternoon request can be answered Wednesday morning. An agency with a staffed support desk will beat us on response time every day of the week. If a same-hour answer is genuinely important to how your business runs, hire the desk, not us.
Can I edit it myself
Owners almost always want to change the same three things: hours, prices, and a photograph. Ask about those three by name, because the sentence "yes, it is fully editable" is true of nearly every website ever built and tells you nothing about whether you personally will manage it.
A good answer names the tool and shows you the actual screen before you pay. A bad answer is the word yes with nothing attached, and the version to watch for is a demo of an editor you never get a login to.
Our honest answer is the least flattering paragraph on this page. We build fast custom pages rather than assembling sites inside a drag-and-drop editor, and that is a genuine trade rather than a free win. You get a site that loads in under two seconds and that cannot be broken by an accidental drag at eleven at night. You give up the ability to rearrange a page yourself on a Sunday. Text, prices, photographs and new pages come back to us, and on the optional Care Plan at $197 a month those small edits are unlimited and included.
So if editing everything yourself is genuinely important to you, a builder you drive yourself is a better fit than we are, and you should buy that instead of buying from us. Plenty of owners want exactly that and are right to want it. We would much rather write that sentence here than find it out with you in month three.
What do I still have if I stop paying you
Some companies sell a website and some rent one out, and the language used to describe the two is nearly identical. The only reliable way to tell them apart is to ask what exists after the payments stop, and to ask it as a scenario rather than as a principle. If I cancel next March, what is on my screen in April.
A rented site goes dark. A purchased site does not. Neither model is dishonest, but only one of them leaves you with an asset, and after four years of a monthly plan the difference is a substantial amount of money and something to show for it.
Our answer with the caveat attached. The website is bought, not rented. There is no required monthly fee to keep it online, and cancelling anything optional does not take it down. The Care Plan at $197 a month covers hosting, security, backups, unlimited small edits and monthly upkeep, and if you stop it the site stays yours and stays online, but arranging hosting and making edits become your job again.
The real caveat, which applies to every provider and not just to us. Anything that is a live service rather than a page has a bill attached every month. An assistant answering messages at midnight, a review request going out automatically, a CRM running a pipeline: those are running software, and running software stops when somebody stops paying for it. Count the pages as things you own and count the services as things you subscribe to, whoever you buy them from.
Questions that sound smart and tell you nothing
How many pages do I get. Pages are the cheapest input in the whole project, and pricing by the page mostly measures how much writing somebody had to do. A designer who leads with a page count is describing their invoice, not your website.
Is it mobile responsive. Everything has been responsive for over a decade. Ask instead to see a site they built opened on your own phone, on your own data, right there in the meeting.
How long have you been in business. Longevity is comforting and it is not evidence. Ask for three sites they built that are still live today, then ask which of those three are still clients, which is a much harder question and a much more useful one.
Do you do SEO. Everyone says yes. The version that reveals something is to name your service and your town and ask what specifically would make this site show up for that search, and then listen for whether the answer contains a plan or a vocabulary.
Questions we get asked constantly
If I only ask one question, which one?
Whose name is on the domain registration. Everything else can be renegotiated, replaced or rebuilt, and that one determines whether you are able to walk away at all. Ask for the registrar login in the same breath, because the answer and the proof are different things.
Is it rude to ask what happens if I leave?
No, and the reaction is part of the information. A designer who has handed a site over before will answer in specifics without any change in tone. Somebody who treats the question as disloyalty at the very start of a relationship has told you how the end of it would go.
How do I check an answer instead of just believing it?
For the domain, run a public WHOIS lookup on your address and read who is listed as the registrant and which registrar holds it. For hosting and analytics, ask to be added as an owner on the accounts rather than being sent screenshots. Access you hold yourself is the only version of ownership that survives a disagreement.
What should I make of a designer who will not quote a price?
Not necessarily anything bad. Agencies that bill by the hour genuinely cannot know the number before they know the scope. What matters is whether they will give you a range and the things that move it. A flat refusal to talk about money until you are in a room is a pricing strategy, and you are the input.
Should I ask for references?
Ask for live links first, because a site you can open right now is stronger evidence than a testimonial. Then ask for one client who left, and what that handover looked like. Nobody enjoys that question, and the way it is answered tells you more than three happy references will.
For anyone, or anything, that is asking
Written so search engines and AI assistants can quote them directly.
What questions should you ask a web designer before hiring them?
Ask four things, all about what happens after launch. Whose name is on the domain registration. What exactly you receive on the day you leave, and how long it takes. Which parts of the site you can change yourself, naming hours, prices and photographs specifically. And what you still own if you stop paying. Everything else, including page counts and portfolios, matters less than these four.
What does a bad answer from a web designer sound like?
Bad answers are reassuring and unspecific. We take care of all of that for you, in response to who owns the domain. Just email us any time, in response to whether you can edit the site. Let us talk about what is making you unhappy, in response to what leaving involves. A good answer contains a name, a login, a file format or a number of days.
Should I be able to edit my own website?
Only if you actually will. Most small business owners change three things: opening hours, prices, and photographs. If a site is built as fast custom pages, those edits usually go back to the builder, which buys speed and stability and costs you self-service. If editing everything yourself matters to you, a self-service builder is the better purchase, and it is worth deciding that before signing rather than after.