How to choose a web designer in the UK: a buyer's checklist

Most people choose a web designer by looking at the design. It is the obvious thing to judge, and it is the least important. A good-looking site that nobody maintains, that you cannot get the files for, and that costs a fortune to change in year two, is a worse outcome than a plainer site that is owned, fast and quietly looked after.

The website is the easy part. The two years after launch are where the money and the misery live, and that is the part most buyers forget to ask about. So this is a buyer’s checklist written from the other side of the table: the questions that actually predict whether you will be happy in eighteen months, the red flags that should make you pause, and an honest look at the three kinds of supplier you are choosing between.

I run a one-person managed studio, so I have a horse in this race. I will be straight about where a managed service is the right answer and where it is not. The goal here is for you to make a good decision, not for me to win every reader.

The questions to ask before you sign anything

Ask these of any designer, freelancer or agency. The answers matter more than the portfolio.

1. Who hosts it, and do I own the files?

You want a plain answer to two things: where the site will live, and whether you own the work when it is done. Ownership of the domain especially is non-negotiable. The domain should be registered in your name, on an account you control, not buried inside the designer’s reseller account where you cannot reach it.

If a supplier is cagey about handing over the domain, the code or the content, treat it as a warning. You are not asking for anything unreasonable. You are asking to own the thing you paid for.

A fair nuance: in a managed service the supplier often runs the hosting for you on purpose, because that is the service you are buying. That is different from hostage-taking. The test is simple: can you leave and take your domain and content with you if you ever want to? If yes, you are fine. If the honest answer is no, walk away.

2. What happens after launch?

This is the question that separates a project from a partnership. A one-off build ends at launch, by design. From that day the updates, the security patches, the broken contact form and the “can we just change this one thing” are all yours to organise.

Ask directly: after you launch my site, what is your involvement? If the answer is “raise a new quote each time”, you are buying a project, not ongoing care, and you should price the rest of the relationship accordingly.

3. Who fixes it when it breaks, and how fast?

Sites break. A form stops sending, a plugin update conflicts, the site goes down on a Friday afternoon. The question is not whether something will go wrong, it is who you call when it does and how quickly it is sorted.

If nobody can tell you who fixes it when it breaks, the answer is nobody, and the person who finds out is you, usually at the worst possible moment. Ask for a realistic response time and ask whether it is included or charged by the hour.

4. Is it genuinely fast and mobile-first?

Most of your visitors are on a phone, and a slow site quietly loses you work before anyone even reads a word. Ask how the site performs on mobile and what page-speed targets they build to. A good answer is specific. A vague “oh it will be fine” usually is not.

This matters for being found, too. Speed and mobile experience feed directly into how you rank, which is its own subject: see getting found on Google for how that fits together, and five things every small-business website needs for the non-negotiables every site should clear.

5. What do years two and three actually cost?

This is the most important money question and the one buyers ask least. A cheap build is not cheap if the running of it costs a fortune. Get the full three-year picture in writing: hosting, the domain, SSL, any plugin or platform licences, and the price of changes when you need them.

We wrote a full breakdown of this, because the headline price is so often the small part of the real cost: see how much does a website cost in the UK in 2026. Run the numbers across three years before you compare quotes, not after.

6. Is there lock-in?

Lock-in is anything that makes leaving painful: a long minimum contract, a proprietary platform you cannot export from, a domain you do not control, or content trapped in a system only they can edit. None of these are dealbreakers on their own, but you should know they exist before you sign, not after.

The fair version of a long relationship is one you stay in because it works, not because leaving is engineered to hurt.

The red flags worth walking away from

Some signals reliably predict a bad eighteen months.

• The £200 build, then silence. The very cheap one-off is a real trap. Someone builds a site, takes the money and moves on, and a year later there is nobody to call, no updates, and a domain you cannot find. Cheap up front, expensive in worry. If a price looks too good to be true, ask what happens in month thirteen, and watch the answer.
• WordPress with a tower of bolted-on plugins. WordPress can be fine in the right hands, but a site held together by fifteen plugins from fifteen authors is a maintenance liability. Every plugin is a thing that can break, conflict or open a security hole, and keeping them all patched is a job somebody has to do forever. Ask who is doing it.
• No clear ongoing care. If nobody owns the updates, backups, security patching and monitoring, then nobody is doing them, and the site slowly rots until something breaks in public. “We will sort it if you call us” is not a plan.
• Foreign data hosting with no clear answer. If you are a UK business handling customer data, you want to know where that data lives and that it is handled lawfully. A supplier who cannot tell you where your site and its data are hosted is a supplier who has not thought about it. UK or EU hosting is the calm default for a UK business.

None of these guarantee a disaster. All of them are worth a direct question before money changes hands.

Freelancer, agency, or a managed one-person service?

Here is the honest part: the right answer depends on you. These three suit genuinely different buyers.

A freelancer

Often the best value for a one-off build, and you usually work directly with the person doing the work. The risks are capacity and continuity: one person with other clients, holidays and a life, and if they move on, your site can be orphaned. Brilliant for a defined project. Ask them specifically what happens after launch, because that is usually where the freelance model thins out.

An agency

More people, more capacity, more services under one roof, which suits larger budgets and bigger projects. The trade-offs are cost and distance: you often pay agency rates and overheads, and you may be handed to an account manager rather than the person building the thing. Excellent when the scope is large and the budget matches. Heavy for a small business that just needs a good site that is looked after. For more on that trade-off, see managed website versus a traditional agency.

A managed one-person service

This is what I do, so read it with that in mind. You get one accountable person who designs the site and then runs it: hosting, SSL, updates, backups, monitoring and changes, all on a monthly plan with no lock-in. It blends the directness of a freelancer with the ongoing care of an agency, without the agency overhead or the freelancer’s after-launch gap.

It is not for everyone. If you have an in-house team who will maintain the site themselves, you do not need the managed layer, and a one-off build from a freelancer may suit you better. If you want the running of it handled so you can get on with your business, it is usually the calmest answer. The honest comparison against the freelance route is here: managed website versus a freelance designer.

How a managed plan answers the checklist

To make the case plainly, here is how the managed model maps onto the questions above:

• Hosting and ownership: the hosting is run for you, on UK and EU infrastructure, and your domain and content stay yours. You can leave and take them with you.
• After launch: there is no “after”, in the sense that matters. The plan is the ongoing relationship.
• Who fixes it: one named person, me, with changes and fixes included rather than re-quoted each time.
• Fast and mobile-first: built to real page-speed targets, because slow sites lose work.
• Year two and three: a predictable monthly figure, not a surprise. Plans run from Get Online at £49 a month up to Local Domination at £695 a month, and they are set out on the pricing page.
• Lock-in: none. You stay because it works.

The full picture of what is and is not included lives on the managed website service page.

Start with the questions, not the quote

Whatever you choose, lead with the checklist. Ask who hosts it and whether you own it, what happens after launch, who fixes it and how fast, whether it is fast and mobile-first, what the next three years cost, and whether you are locked in. A good supplier will answer all of those plainly and without flinching. The answers will tell you more than any portfolio.

If you would like a clear read on where your current site stands before you decide anything, start with a free Site Score: an honest assessment of speed, mobile, being found and the basics, with no obligation. When you are ready to talk it through, get in touch or tell me about your business and I will set out exactly what a managed plan would look like for you.