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How to choose a web studio: 10 questions to ask before you sign
Ownership, price, deadlines, technology, SEO and proof: the questions that separate a website you control from one you rent.
- By
- Jovan Milivojević
- Published
- min read
- 10 min read
- Planning
- Contracts
- Ownership
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Most people choose a web studio by its portfolio and its price. Both matter, but neither tells you what happens when you want to change hosts, add a page or leave. Those answers live in the contract. We learned this as clients: before we built websites for anyone else, our family's architecture practice needed one, and the agencies we met offered templates and vague promises. These are the ten questions we would ask any studio, us included.
10 questions to ask before you choose a web studio
- Who will own the domain, the code and the design?
- Is the price fixed, and what isn't included?
- Is the launch date in the contract, and what if it slips?
- Who will actually build the site?
- What is it built with, and can I leave?
- Which speed targets will you commit to in writing?
- Is SEO included, and how will you protect my rankings in a redesign?
- What will hosting and maintenance cost after launch?
- Who provides the texts, photos and translations?
- Which live sites and results can I check myself?
Ownership, price and deadlines
1. Who will own the domain, the code and the design?
The domain decides where your website and email point, and the code and design are what you paid for. If the studio keeps any of them, leaving means starting over. In the US, a site built by an outside studio is usually not a “work made for hire” (Circular 30), and a copyright transfer must be in writing and signed (17 U.S.C. § 204). So the contract should transfer the rights in plain words.
Check the domain too. ICANN Lookup shows the registrar, but owner details are often hidden, so the real test is logging in to the registrar account yourself.
Red flags: the domain sits in the studio's account “to keep things simple”; the contract only gives you a “license” to use the site; nobody can say where the code lives.
A good answer: “The domain is registered to your company from day one. After the final payment, the code repository, design files and content are yours, and the contract says so.”
2. Is the price fixed, and what isn't included?
A fixed price protects you only when the scope is written down: pages, languages, features, revision rounds, content entry. Hourly billing can be fair for open-ended work, with an estimate, a cap and regular reports. Either way, surprises hide in what the quote leaves out: copywriting, photos, the domain, subscriptions, changes after sign-off.
Red flags: one number with no list of inclusions; “unlimited revisions,” which usually means undefined ones; no hourly rate for work outside the scope.
A good answer: “The price is fixed for this scope, listed page by page. Here is what's excluded, and here is our hourly rate for anything outside it.”
3. Is the launch date in the contract, and what if it slips?
An estimate is not a date. If the launch matters for a season, a trade fair or a campaign, put the date in the contract, with what you get if the studio misses it through its own fault, such as a weekly credit with a cap. Dates also slip when texts or approvals arrive late, so the contract should say what you deliver, and by when.
Red flags: “about a month” with nothing in writing; no list of what the studio needs from you; no design approval step in the schedule.
A good answer: “Launch is on March 14 if we have your content by February 10. If we're late through our own fault, you get a credit for every week, up to a cap.”
People and technology
4. Who will actually build the site?
Some agencies sell the project and pass the build to freelancers or a partner company. That can work, but you should know, because the person you meet is then not the one who fixes a bug on a Friday. Ask who designs, who codes and who answers after launch, by name.
Red flags: a team page with stock photos or no names; every question goes through an account manager who has never opened the code.
A good answer: “The designer and the developer will be on the first call. If we bring in anyone else, a photographer for example, the proposal says so.”
5. What is it built with, and can I leave?
Lock-in is less about one technology being bad than about whether you can move. Wix, for example, says a Wix site can't run on another host, because it depends on Wix's own technology (Wix Help Center). A studio's proprietary CMS is similar: only that studio can maintain it. A page-builder site can move hosts, but it usually needs that plugin for life.
Ask what another developer would get if you switched: a code repository, a database export, admin logins, licenses in your name. Our Next.js vs WordPress comparison covers the two most common stacks.
Red flags: an in-house CMS with no export; theme or plugin licenses in the studio's name; the answer to “can I leave?” is a price for leaving.
A good answer: “It's a widely used, open-source stack. The code lives in a Git repository in your account, and any developer who knows the stack can take over.”
6. Which speed targets will you commit to in writing?
“Fast” means nothing in a contract; a number does. PageSpeed Insights runs Lighthouse, which scores performance from 0 to 100 and rates 90 or above as good (Chrome for Developers). Ask for a mobile score at handover, since mobile is the harder test, and for what happens if the site falls short. Scores vary between runs, so agree on the median of several. After launch, real-visitor data counts more: Google's Core Web Vitals are good at LCP of 2.5 s or less, INP of 200 ms or less and CLS of 0.1 or less.
Red flags: only desktop scores in the portfolio; a promise without a number; no plan if the target is missed.
A good answer: “Lighthouse mobile Performance of 90 or more at handover, measured in PageSpeed Insights. If we miss it, we fix it at our cost.”
SEO, costs and content
7. Is SEO included, and how will you protect my rankings in a redesign?
“SEO included” can mean anything from a plugin to months of work, so ask for a list: page titles and descriptions, headings, structured data, a sitemap, Search Console setup, and hreflang for several languages. For a redesign, ask for the redirect plan. Google recommends permanent server-side redirects (301 or 308) from every old URL to its new one, kept for at least a year (Google Search Central). Without them, a relaunch can throw away traffic that took years to earn.
Red flags: a guarantee of first place on Google; no mention of redirects when your URLs will change; a monthly SEO fee with no list of what gets done.
A good answer: “Technical SEO is part of the build, item by item. We map every old URL to a new one and check Search Console after launch. Nobody can honestly guarantee rankings.”
8. What will hosting and maintenance cost after launch?
The build is paid once. Hosting, the domain, email, updates, backups and small changes cost money every year. Ask for the first-year total, the price of a small change once the warranty ends, and what happens if you stop paying for maintenance: does the site keep running, and can you move it?
Red flags: free hosting for a year and an unknown price after that; maintenance contracts with long minimum terms; no word on backups or updates.
A good answer: “Host it on your own account or with us, at this monthly price. Maintenance is optional, cancels monthly and covers updates, backups and a set amount of changes.”
9. Who provides the texts, photos and translations?
Content delays more launches than code does. Settle early who writes, who supplies photos, who translates and who enters it all. Even if the studio writes the copy, the facts come from you. Check the rights too: stock photos need a license, and a photo found on Google is not free to use. Our pre-build checklist lists what to prepare.
Red flags: content that “will be provided” with no date; placeholder text nobody is responsible for; photos with no license on record.
A good answer: “You send the facts and photos by this date. We structure and polish the texts, and full copywriting has a fixed price per page.”
10. Which live sites and results can I check myself?
Screenshots prove little. Ask for live links, open them on your phone and test them in PageSpeed Insights. Check that the studio really built them: a footer credit, a call with the owner, or the Wayback Machine to see when the site changed. For results, ask for numbers with a source and a date range, not “traffic tripled.”
Red flags: mockups instead of live sites; client logos you can't verify; results with no source, no period, or only percentages.
A good answer: “Here are the live sites and owners you can call. This is the analytics report, the tool it came from and the period it covers.”
We hold ourselves to the same test. Our live work so far is two sites for CAD ART, our family's architecture practice, and we say so. These are 12 months of analytics for projektikuce.rs, rounded down:
Template shop, freelancer or studio: how to choose
The answers to the ten questions tend to differ by type of provider. By template shop we mean a builder such as Wix, or an agency that installs a ready-made theme.
None of the three is wrong. What matters is that the answers are written down before you pay. Our pricing page lists what each package includes and excludes.
Our answers, in writing
This is how we answer the same questions. The details are on the pricing page and in how we work, and the contract repeats them.
| Question | Our answer |
|---|---|
| 1. Ownership | Domain in your name from day one. After the final payment, the code, design files and content are yours. |
| 2. Price | Fixed for a written scope, quotes valid 30 days. Out-of-scope work: €55/h. |
| 3. Launch date | In the contract. If we miss it through our own fault: 5% credit per week, capped at 20%. |
| 4. Who builds it | We do, Jovan and Branko Milivojević, with no account managers in between. |
| 5. Stack | Hand-written Next.js, no page builders, Sanity CMS from the Business package up. |
| 6. Speed | Lighthouse mobile Performance 95+ at handover, or we fix it for free. |
| 7. SEO | Technical SEO in every package, a 301 redirect plan on redesigns, no ranking guarantees. |
| 8. Hosting | Your own Vercel account, or a Care plan from €99/mo, cancelable monthly. |
| 9. Content | Copy polish included, full copywriting €120 per page. No photography. |
| 10. Proof | Two live sites, weekly Lighthouse scores, a year of analytics for projektikuce.rs. |
Frequently asked questions
What should a website contract include?
The scope, price and payment schedule, the launch date and what each side delivers by when, ownership of the domain, code, design and content, acceptance criteria such as a speed target, the warranty and the terms for work after launch.
Is a freelancer cheaper than a studio?
Usually at the start. Compare the first-year total, including hosting, maintenance and content, and ask what happens when that one person is unavailable.
Can I ask a studio to change its contract?
Yes. A reasonable studio will adjust clauses on ownership, dates and payments. If it won't put its own sales promises into the contract, that tells you something.
My current agency holds my domain. What now?
Ask in writing for the registrant to be changed to your company and for access to the registrar account or the transfer code, and keep the correspondence. Fix this before any redesign.
