Getting a website built is one of those purchases where you cannot judge the product before you pay for it. You are buying a promise, from someone whose work you can only partly evaluate, in a field full of words you do not use.
The good news is that most bad website projects fail for the same handful of reasons, and almost all of them are visible before any money changes hands.
Here is how to check.
First decide: DIY, freelancer, or company
Before you compare quotes, work out which of these you actually need. Paying an agency for something a template could do is waste. Using a template for something that needs building is worse.
DIY platforms — Wix, Squarespace, Shopify and the like. You pick a template and fill it in. Genuinely fine for a personal portfolio, a single-page profile, or testing an idea. Cheapest to start.
What people miss is the rent. You pay monthly forever, and the site lives on their system. If you stop paying, the site goes. If you outgrow the platform, you cannot pick up your site and move it — you rebuild. Also, on the cheaper plans, the platform’s branding sits on your site.
A freelancer is usually the best value for a straightforward business site. One person, direct communication, lower cost. The risk is availability. When they take a bigger project or fall ill, you wait. Ask what happens if something breaks six months later — the honest ones will tell you they may be busy.
A company costs more and buys you continuity, several skills in one place, and someone to call when the developer is unavailable. Worth it when the site is central to how you get customers, or when it needs to connect to bookings, payments or a CRM.
For most local businesses in Bihar, a freelancer handles a simple site well and a company makes sense once the website is expected to actually bring enquiries.
Check the portfolio properly
Everyone shows screenshots. Screenshots prove nothing — anyone can design a picture of a website.
Ask for live URLs and then do this, which takes four minutes:
- Open them on your phone, on mobile data, not wifi. Count the seconds. If their showcase sites are slow, yours will be too.
- Check the sites are still live. A portfolio full of dead links means clients left and replaced the work.
- Try to call the business in one tap. If the phone number is not tappable on mobile, they build for looks, not for enquiries.
- Look for someone in your line of work. A team that has built for clinics understands appointments and trust signals. One that has only done fashion pages will learn on your money.
If you like a site, call that business and ask two questions: were they on time, and do they still respond when something breaks. Owners are usually happy to tell you.
Ask who owns what — before you pay anything
This is where businesses lose the most, and it never feels urgent until it is.
Four things must be in your name:
- The domain. Registered to you, in your own account, with your email. If a developer registers it under his account, he controls your address. Recovering it later ranges from awkward to impossible.
- The hosting. In your name, paid by you. Bundled hosting inside a developer’s reseller account means your site lives at his mercy.
- The admin login. Full administrator access, not an editor account.
- The files. Whatever was built for you — theme, design files, images — handed over at the end.
None of this is hostility toward the developer. Good ones offer it before you ask. It only becomes a problem when you want to change providers, which is exactly when you have no leverage.
Ask what happens after launch
A website is not a delivery, it is a thing that keeps running. Plugins update, forms break silently, hosting expires, the SSL certificate lapses.
Ask directly: what is covered after handover, for how long, and what does it cost after that? A month of free support is common. What matters is knowing where the line is, so a broken contact form in month four does not turn into an argument.
Also ask — and this is the one people forget — can I edit the site myself? Changing a price, adding a photo, updating festival timings. If every small change means paying and waiting two days, your site will slowly go out of date. It always does.
Understand what is in the price
Two quotes for the same site can differ by three times, and usually the difference is not quality but scope. Get these in writing:
- How many pages, and what happens if you need a seventh
- Who writes the content. This is the biggest hidden cost. Most quotes assume you supply the text. If you cannot, writing is a separate job
- Photos. Stock images, your photos, or a shoot? A shoot is a separate line item
- Revisions. How many rounds are included, and when does the meter start
- Domain and hosting — included for the first year, or billed to you
- Tracking setup — Analytics and Search Console connected, or not
- Maintenance — monthly, and what it covers
A cheap quote that excludes content, photos and tracking is not cheap. It is a partial job you will finish at full price later.
Timelines, and why they slip
A standard business site takes two to four weeks. An online store takes longer.
Projects almost never run late because of coding. They run late waiting for the business — service descriptions, photos of the premises, team names, price lists, the logo file nobody can find.
If you want it fast, gather your material before the project starts. A folder with photos, a list of services with two lines each, and your logo in a decent size will cut the timeline more than any developer can.
Ask about speed and mobile, specifically
Most of your visitors will be on a phone, often on weak data. A site that looks beautiful on the developer’s laptop and takes eight seconds on a phone in a market has failed.
Ask what they do about it: image compression, caching, how many plugins they install, whether they test on real devices. If the answer is vague, run one of their live sites through Google PageSpeed Insights and see the score yourself.
Red flags
- Refusing to name the platform. “Custom coded” sometimes means a proprietary system only they can maintain. Ask plainly: is this WordPress, Shopify, or something of your own?
- The domain registered under their account. As above — deal-breaker.
- No written scope. Without a page list and a revision limit, both sides end up disappointed.
- Prices that are impossibly low. Nobody designs, builds, writes and launches a real site for a few thousand rupees. Something is being skipped.
- No questions about your business. A developer who does not ask who your customers are is going to hand you a template with your logo on it.
- “SEO included” with no detail. Ask what that means. Titles and meta descriptions is a fair answer. “We will rank you number one” is not.
Local or out of town?
Almost all of this work happens over calls, messages and screen shares. Meeting in person is pleasant but rarely decisive.
Where local genuinely helps is understanding your market — how your customers phrase things, which competitors you are actually up against, what a customer in your town expects to pay. It also helps if you want photos of your premises, since somebody has to physically turn up.
Where it does not matter: the building itself. Good work happens remotely all the time.
Frequently asked questions
WordPress or a DIY platform?
WordPress if you want to own and move the site, need real search visibility, or expect it to grow. A DIY platform if you want something simple online quickly and are comfortable renting it. The main trade-off is portability: a WordPress site can move hosts; a Wix site cannot move anywhere.
How much should a website cost?
It depends far more on scope than on who builds it. A four-page clinic site and a thirty-page school site are different projects. Compare quotes on what is included — pages, content, photos, tracking, support — not on the headline number.
Do I need to keep paying every month?
Hosting and the domain renew annually. Maintenance is optional but sensible: updates, backups, security and small edits. Nothing else should be recurring unless you asked for it.
What if I already have a website and it is not working?
Get it audited before rebuilding. Often the structure is fine and the problems are speed, missing service pages and no tracking — cheaper to fix than to start again. Rebuild only when the foundation is genuinely broken.
Will the site bring me customers?
By itself, no. A website converts people who arrive; getting them to arrive is the job of local SEO, your Google listing and ads. Build the site so those have somewhere worth sending people.
Before you sign
Ask for one document: a page list, what is included, how many revisions, the timeline, who owns the domain and hosting, and what support looks like after launch. One page is enough. Anyone unwilling to put that in writing is telling you how the project will go.
We build websites for businesses across Bihar, and every question above is one you should put to us as well. Tell us what you sell and where, and we will say honestly whether you need a full site, a single landing page, or just a fix to what you already have.