Ask three companies to quote a website for a plumber with five service areas and you might get back $800, $6,500 and $28,000. They all say "custom website." They all promise "mobile-friendly." And you have no way to tell which one is a deal and which one is a trap.

I've built software as a solo indie developer, as one of six people at VC-funded startups starting on day zero, and on a six-person team at a Series B company that grew from 50 people to over 200 before it was acquired. At every one of those, the job was to build the smallest version of something that actually works and see what breaks. That habit carries over to small business websites. Most of what drives a quote has nothing to do with code. These five questions get you to the real differences fast.

Why one site gets three wildly different quotes

Building the pages is usually the cheap part. A competent developer can put together a clean five-page site for a service business in a few days. AI can do it even faster, generating a basic site in an hour or two.

The hours go to process. Collecting content is the big one: chasing you for photos, bios, a service list and the copy for your About page regularly takes longer than the build itself. After that come revisions and decisions: every "can we try blue?" means a change and a review, and some of them stall until the business partner who wants a say on the logo gets back from vacation.

The $28,000 agency is pricing in a project manager, a few rounds of meetings, and the assumption that you'll be slow to send content. The $800 freelancer is assuming you won't need any of that. Neither one is lying. They're quoting different jobs. Once the quotes are in, Read a Tech Proposal Like a CFO Would shows you how to compare them on more than the total.

Q1. "When this is done, where does it live and whose name is on it?"

  • Is the domain registered in your name, with a login you control at a registrar like Cloudflare, Namecheap or GoDaddy?
  • Whose account is the hosting on? If the developer's agency account hosts 200 client sites, yours included, then moving it out is up to them.
  • If the site is built on Wix, Squarespace or WordPress, whose email is the owner of that account?
  • If the developer set up your Google Business Profile, are you the primary owner, or just a manager they can remove?

Plenty of business owners find out about this two years later, when they try to leave and discover the domain was registered to the agency. I covered the ownership side in more detail in Who Actually Owns Your Website?. The short version is to get every one of those in your name, or with you as an admin at the very least. The 5 Accounts checklist walks you through checking each one in about ten minutes.

Q2. "What do I do when I need to change my hours?"

This one sounds small, but the answer tells you whether you're buying a website or signing up for a permanent dependency.

Good answers sound like "you log in here and edit this field" or "you text me and it's covered under your care plan." Either works, as long as it's spelled out.

The bad answer is vague. "Just reach out and we'll take care of it" can turn into a minimum-hour invoice every time you change a phone number, and for some companies that's the business model.

Ongoing help is fine, and for a lot of owners it's the right call. Just know what you're buying. If you're weighing a monthly arrangement against a one-time build, How Much Should a Small Business Website Cost? covers how the upfront and ongoing costs compare.

Q3. "How many revisions, and what counts as one?"

Most quotes say something like "two rounds of revisions." Ask what a round means.

A round should be one consolidated list of changes. You collect everything, your notes and your office manager's, and send it all at once. Then the developer makes those changes and sends the site back. A trickle of texts over three weeks is not a round, and it'll eat the budget faster than anything else.

Owners sometimes read a revision limit as stingy, but it protects you too. When revisions are undefined, the developer has to guess how many you'll want and price that guess into the quote. You end up paying for those revisions whether you use them or not. A clear limit with a clear price for extras means you only pay for what you actually ask for.

Q4. "What's not included?"

A good answer to this question is a specific list, and the person gives it without getting defensive. If they hesitate or say "oh, we cover pretty much everything," keep asking until you get specifics.

For a sense of what a straight answer looks like, here's the kind of thing I put in writing on a standard small business build:

  • Logo and brand design. I'll work with what you have.
  • Professional photography. I can recommend local photographers.
  • Copywriting. I place and organize the content you provide rather than writing it for you.
  • Managing paid ads on Google or Meta.
  • Link building. I refer that out to a partner I trust.
  • Online stores with large product catalogs.

None of these items is a trick. Each one has its own price, sometimes from a different specialist. Once they're written down, you can compare one quote to another properly. If one company includes photography and another doesn't, you've just found a chunk of the price gap.

Q5. "What happens if you get hit by a bus?"

It's a morbid question, but it's a fair one, especially when you're hiring a solo operator. Marshland is a one-person shop, so I get asked this too.

Reassurance is not an answer. "Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere" doesn't help you if they do go somewhere.

A real answer is documented access. You should have the domain login, the hosting login, the CMS admin account and a short written note covering how the site is built and where the code lives. With that, another developer can usually get oriented in an afternoon rather than spending a week on forensics. If the person you're talking to can't describe that handoff, they probably haven't set it up. If it's already too late for that question, What to Do When Your Web Guy Disappears covers getting your site back.

What the site actually needs to do

Before you collect any quotes, figure out what the site is for. For most service businesses it's simple: show up when someone searches for what you do, prove you're legit, and make it easy to call or book. A site that does that well can be small.

The startup habit applies here too. Build the version that works, then add to it once you know what people actually use. Most bloated quotes come from building for imagined needs. What a Website Should Actually Do for a Service Business walks through the short list.

Take these questions to every quote

  • Ownership: listen for "we handle all that for you" with no mention of your name on anything.
  • Small changes: listen for "just reach out" with no price attached.
  • Revisions: listen for "as many as you need," which means the cost is hidden in the quote.
  • Exclusions: listen for "pretty much everything is covered."
  • Handoff: listen for "don't worry, I'm not going anywhere."

Use this list on me, on the agency in Scottsdale, or on your nephew who "does websites." If my answers aren't the clearest you hear, hire whoever's are. And if you're talking to agencies about marketing rather than a build, I wrote a companion piece: Five Questions to Ask a Marketing Agency Before You Sign.

One thing you can do today: look up who owns your current domain. Run your website address through ICANN Lookup. The owner's name and email will probably be hidden for privacy, but the registrar name will show, and that tells you where to log in. If it comes back empty, which happens with some country-code endings like .co or .io, try your registrar's own WHOIS tool. Then log in to that registrar and confirm the account is under your email. If you can't log in, or don't know which registrar it's with, sort that out first, before you talk to any web designer.

If you get stuck on that, send me your domain and I'll tell you who actually controls it and what it would take to get it into your name. It's free, and there's no pitch attached.