10 Questions Before Outsourcing Your Website

Outsourcing a company website is one of the few purchases where a $500 quote and a $5,000 quote can look identical on paper. Both say "custom design," both say "source code included," both say "lifetime support." What separates them lives in the fine print nobody reads: whose name the domain is registered under, whether you get the source code at all, and what a one-line text change costs after launch. Those unanswered details are exactly why, two years later, sites end up unreachable, vendors unresponsive, and owners unable to change so much as a phone number.

We don't recommend judging a web agency by price — expensive isn't automatically better, and cheap isn't automatically a trap. There is exactly one reliable method: ask your questions before you sign. Here are ten, each with what a good answer sounds like and what a warning sign sounds like. Ask them all, and you'll know whether the vendor across the table treats your website as their one-time order or your long-term asset.

The ten at a glance:

• Ownership: whose name are the domain and hosting registered under? Is the source code delivered?
• Scope: how many pages and revision rounds? Is a second language included? What does a small edit cost later? What's the recurring yearly spend?
• Engineering: will they hand over performance numbers at delivery? Are HTTPS, backups, and form spam protection included by default? Is basic SEO in scope?
• The long run: how fast do they respond when something breaks? Can they show client sites that have been live for over a year?

Start with ownership: whose name is on the domain, the hosting, and the code

These two questions are worth the most and get skipped the most. Most website disputes trace back to them.

Q1: Whose name are the domain and hosting registered under?

Good answer: registered to your company (or you personally), with the admin credentials handed over at delivery. The vendor only operates them on your behalf. A domain runs about $10–20 a year, hosting $50–150 — not big money, but they are your assets.

Warning sign: "We register and manage everything for our clients." Managed means you can't take the domain with you when you leave — and transferring it out starts with a "release fee." Your domain is your address on the web; if someone else holds the address, you're minding their shop no matter how nice the building is.

Q2: Do you deliver the source code? After delivery, can I hire someone else to modify it?

Good answer: the full source code and design files are delivered, copyright terms are written into the contract, and the vendor puts no obstacle in the way of whoever you hire next.

Warning sign: "The code runs on our platform — it won't work anywhere else," or "source code is proprietary, we can't hand it over." That means your site is locked into their closed system: the day they vanish or reprice, your only way out is a full rebuild. A lot of budget pricing is built on the assumption that you'll be too polite to ask this question.

Then pin down the scope: what bills come after the one-time payment

The body of the quote decides what you pay; the attachments and verbal promises decide what you pay in total. These three questions settle a five-year account.

Q3: How many pages and revision rounds are included? What about a second language?

Good answer: pages, revision rounds, and language coverage are itemized in the contract, with unit prices for anything beyond scope.

Warning sign: "We'll work it out." The trap is the word "round" — does one round mean fixing a sentence, or redoing an entire design? And a bilingual site is double work: two sets of copy, two sets of SEO, not a "quick translation." Anything the quote doesn't spell out becomes a change order after kickoff, and every "we'll work it out" arrives with a price attached.

Q4: After launch, what does it cost to change a sentence or swap an image?

Good answer: a clear price list — small edits free or bundled into a yearly fee, larger changes by the hour, with a stated line between "small" and "larger."

Warning sign: "We'll figure that out later." A company website is a living thing: products change, campaigns change, certifications change. Charging for edits isn't the sin — springing the price on you after the fact is.

Q5: Beyond this invoice, what fixed costs come due every year?

Good answer: a yearly bill, itemized — domain renewal, hosting, whether a maintenance fee exists, and who collects each.

Warning sign: "Not much." Multiply the yearly cost by five before comparing quotes: an $800 build with $300 a year in extras totals $2,300 over five years, while a $1,500 build with $50 a year totals $1,750 — the pricier start ends up cheaper. If a site-builder platform is involved, ask point-blank whether you're buying the site or subscribing to it: the year you stop paying, the site goes offline.

Probe the engineering: three questions you can verify with numbers

"Professional," "polished," "premium" can't be verified. Numbers can. This section turns "is it any good" into "does it meet the bar."

Q6: At delivery, can you hand over performance numbers? How fast is the mobile first screen?

Good answer: instant fluency — which tool they test with (PageSpeed Insights, for instance), which metric they watch (Largest Contentful Paint, LCP, with 2.5 seconds as the passing bar), and a test report delivered with the site.

Warning sign: "Our sites are all fast." Google's research is blunt: on mobile, 53% of visits are abandoned after three seconds of loading1. Your customers are the people who find you on a phone and decide whether to call — first-screen speed converts directly into inquiries. Put the acceptance criterion in the contract: mobile LCP under 2.5 seconds2. If you want to test it yourself, the method is in "Why Your Website Is Slow: A 5-Minute Audit."

Q7: Are HTTPS, automatic backups, and form spam protection included by default?

Good answer: all three by default at no extra charge — HTTPS via a free Let's Encrypt certificate, daily automatic backups, and basic anti-bot protection on the contact or inquiry form.

Warning sign: "What's a backup?" Also: if the vendor's own website doesn't show the padlock in the address bar, you can end the meeting early. The form matters more than most owners assume — an unprotected inquiry form hears from bots before it hears from customers. We ran a live test on our own site; the story is in "Bots find your inquiry form before customers do."

Q8: Is basic SEO part of this delivery?

Good answer: page titles and descriptions you can edit yourself, an auto-generated sitemap, and alt text on images — pass-grade basics that belong in scope, not a four-figure add-on.

Warning sign: "We can guarantee first-page rankings on Google." No legitimate provider guarantees rankings — what can be guaranteed is either a short-lived fake or the word "guarantee" being free of charge. Basics included, rankings unpromised: that's what an honest answer sounds like.

Test the long run: response time, and client sites still alive after a year

The first eight questions measure craft. The last two measure whether this company is still on its game three months after delivery.

Q9: The site is down, hacked, or the form stopped emailing — who do I call, and how fast?

Good answer: a stated response window — "outages acknowledged same day," say — written into the contract, with a phone number or ticketing channel, not just a chat app.

Warning sign: "Just message me, I'll reply when I see it." Outages wait for no one's orders: if a customer can't open your site during business hours, whose loss is that? "I'll reply when I see it" is not a service commitment; it's a mood.

Q10: Can you show me three client websites that have been live for more than a year?

Good answer: actual URLs — not screenshots — of sites that are still up, still fast, and still doing business.

Warning sign: a folder of retouched case-study screenshots, or "client privacy, we can't share." New work shows design; old work shows survival. Whether clients renew a year on and whether their sites still open says more than any brochure. While you're there, run the Q6 performance test on those old sites — two checks in one visit.

Ask all ten, then talk about the website contract

Bring this table to your next vendor meeting and walk down the rows before discussing price:

#	Question	Good answer	Warning sign
1	Whose name is the domain under?	Yours, credentials handed over	"We manage it for you"
2	Is source code delivered?	In full, in the contract	"It only runs on our platform"
3	Pages, rounds, second language?	Itemized, with unit prices	"We'll work it out"
4	Post-launch edit pricing?	A price list with a small/large line	"Figure it out later"
5	Fixed yearly costs?	An itemized annual bill	"Not much"
6	Mobile first-screen speed?	Tool, metric, and a report	"Our sites are fast"
7	HTTPS, backups, form protection?	All three by default	"What's a backup?"
8	Is basic SEO in scope?	In scope, rankings unpromised	"Guaranteed rankings"
9	Response time when it breaks?	A stated window, in the contract	"I'll reply when I see it"
10	Client sites over a year old?	Live URLs you can visit	Screenshots only

We'll go first: our own answers

A bar is only worth setting if you'll stand in front of it yourself. Here are Arshtech's answers to the ten questions today:

1. Domain and hosting — registered in your name, and we'll guide you through the purchase. If you'd rather not manage them yourself, we'll do it for a separate management fee.
2. Source code — delivered for everything we build except SaaS products. On your own server, the code is yours by default; if you host with us, you get the live site, and the code is available on request.
3. Revisions — unlimited edits in the first month after delivery: you describe exactly what to change, and we aim to get it right in one pass. After that, up to three rounds within the first year. The contract governs; where it's silent, this page is the reference.
4. Small edits — copy tweaks and image swaps are common courtesy: usually free, and they don't count as revision rounds. Whether a change counts is our judgment call; repeated changes are billed per change.
5. Yearly cost — a single ops fee. Year one runs from delivery to the end of the next calendar year, then by calendar year. The fee is never billed up front: it's charged only when you request service during that year. A year with no requests costs nothing.
6. Performance — measured on PageSpeed Insights mobile: we target a green score (80 or above), with 60 as the floor.
7. HTTPS, automatic backups, form spam protection — standard, at no extra charge.
8. Basic SEO — titles, descriptions, and sitemap are standard: we set them on fixed pages, you control them on CMS-managed pages. SEO audits and tuning are a separate service.
9. Response time — we commit to responding within 7 days, on any issue.
10. Year-old cases — we're a young company and don't yet have a case that's been live for a full year. Client sites currently in operation are yours to inspect — ask us for the URLs.

None of these ten questions is hostile. A serious agency welcomes them — the more detailed the questions, the smoother the project; a vendor scared off by this list was never going to deliver anyway. A website is an asset you pay to own, not a service they rent back to you — and these answers decide whether, five years from now, you make the changes you want, or start over from zero.