| Who this article is for If you are a business owner, startup founder, or marketing manager in India who is about to spend money on a website and wants to make sure you do not get burned, this article is written specifically for you. These questions apply whether you are hiring a freelancer, a small studio, or a large agency. |
The Indian web development industry is enormous, talented, and largely unregulated. There are thousands of agencies and freelancers operating across every city and tier, offering everything from a Rs. 5,000 template swap to a Rs. 20,00,000 enterprise platform. The quality gap between providers is genuinely staggering, and the problem is that from the outside, it is almost impossible to tell them apart before you have already paid.
Slick websites, polished portfolios, glowing testimonials, and confident proposals are table stakes in this industry. Every agency has them. What separates a trustworthy partner from a frustrating mistake is almost never visible on the surface. It is buried in how they answer specific questions, what their contracts say, how they handle scope changes, and whether their process is real or improvised.
These ten questions will not guarantee you find the perfect agency. But they will reveal, with remarkable consistency, which agencies have built a real practice and which are selling you a projection of one. Ask all of them. Watch not just what is said but how confidently and specifically it is said. Vague answers to precise questions are information too.
The Ten Questions
Question 1
Can I see live examples of websites you have built for businesses similar to mine?
A portfolio on an agency website is a starting point, not a proof of capability. Screenshots can be borrowed, redesigned, or misrepresented. What you want are live URLs you can visit yourself, test on your phone, check the loading speed of, and explore as a real user would.When you visit those live sites, look at how fast they load, whether they work properly on mobile, whether the contact forms are functional, and whether the overall experience feels professional or cobbled together. A website that looked good in a screenshot but loads in six seconds on mobile tells you something important about what you would get.Ask specifically for examples in your industry or with similar functionality to what you need. An agency that has built ten restaurant websites will understand your requirements faster than one that has to figure it out from scratch. Experience with similar projects reduces your risk significantly.
Red flag to watch for: An agency that cannot show you live URLs, only screenshots or PDF mockups, or that is evasive about which projects they can share publicly.
Question 2
Who exactly will be working on my project, and what is their experience?
Sales presentations in the web development industry are often done by the most polished communicators in the organisation, not by the people who will actually build your website. It is completely normal for an agency to have a persuasive business development person who closes deals and then hands the project to a junior developer you have never met.Ask directly who will be designing your site, who will be writing the code, who will be managing the project day to day, and what their backgrounds are. Ask to see work specifically attributed to those individuals if possible. This is not an unreasonable request. It is due diligence on a significant investment.In smaller agencies and studios, which often represent better value for small and medium businesses in India, you might be working directly with the founders. That is often a positive. In larger agencies, ask about team stability and whether the people presented to you during the pitch are the ones who will actually be involved throughout.
Red flag to watch for: An agency that is unwilling to tell you who will work on your project, or that gives you generic answers about their team without naming specific people and their roles.
Question 3
Who owns the website files, code, and database when the project is complete?
This question catches more business owners off guard than almost any other. Many assume that because they paid for a website, they own it entirely. In practice, a significant number of agencies in India retain ownership of the code, host the site on their own servers under their own accounts, and structure the relationship in a way that makes it very difficult or expensive for you to leave.What you want to hear is that on final payment, all website files, the WordPress installation, all custom code, the database, and all associated assets are transferred fully to you or to a hosting account you own and control. You want confirmation that no part of your website depends on a proprietary system that the agency controls and that you cannot access independently.Ask specifically: will I have full admin access to my WordPress dashboard from day one? Will the hosting account be in my name? Can I take this website to a different developer or agency after the project is done without your involvement? If the answers to any of these are complicated or evasive, treat that as a serious warning.
Red flag to watch for: Agencies that host your site on their own shared servers without giving you independent access, or that use proprietary builders that cannot be migrated. This is one of the most common ways clients get trapped in India.
Question 4
What does your development process look like from brief to launch?
Agencies that have built multiple successful projects have a process. They can describe it to you clearly and specifically. It might include a discovery call, a written brief, a formal proposal, wireframes or design mockups for your approval, a staging environment where you review the build before it goes live, a testing phase, and a structured handover with documentation.Agencies that are improvising or working informally cannot describe this process in any detail because they do not have one. They will say things like we are flexible, we work with your needs, or we figure things out as we go. These sound like positives but they are usually a sign that your project will be managed reactively rather than proactively.A clear process protects you as much as it protects the agency. It means you know what to expect and when, you have defined moments to give feedback and request changes, and there is a shared agreement about what done actually means.
Red flag to watch for: An agency that cannot explain their process in a specific, step by step way, or that frames having no process as a feature rather than a limitation.
Question 5
How do you handle revisions, and how many are included in the quoted price?
Revisions are one of the most common sources of conflict between clients and agencies in India. The client assumes that paying for a website means they can keep requesting changes until they are satisfied. The agency assumes that the quote covers a specific number of revision rounds and that anything beyond that is billable. Neither party is wrong exactly, but when this is not discussed and documented before work begins, it becomes a painful conversation later.Ask for this in writing before you sign anything. How many rounds of design revisions are included? How many rounds of development revisions? What counts as a revision versus a new feature request? What is the hourly or per-change rate if you go beyond the included revisions? What happens if the design needs significant changes after development has already begun?Good agencies have thought carefully about this and have a clear policy. They can answer these questions without hesitation and will document the answers in your contract. This clarity is in everyone’s interest.
Red flag to watch for: Agencies that say unlimited revisions are included. Either they are planning to deliver something so generic that no one would want to change it, or they will find a way to classify most of your feedback as out of scope when you try to use that unlimited allowance.
Question 6
What is included in the quoted price, and what will cost extra?
This is the question that eliminates the most confusion and saves the most money. A website quote in India can look competitive on the surface and be significantly more expensive in practice once you add everything that the quote assumed you would provide or pay for separately.Ask specifically about domain registration and renewal, hosting and what tier of hosting, SSL certificate, premium theme or page builder license, premium plugin licenses and their annual renewals, content writing, professional photography or stock image licensing, GST on the total invoice, post-launch support and bug fixes, and any integrations you have discussed such as payment gateways, CRM connections, or booking systems.A genuinely transparent agency will walk you through each of these line by line and tell you clearly what is in the quote and what is not. They may not include everything, and that is fine, but they should tell you about it proactively rather than waiting for you to discover it later.
Red flag to watch for: Quotes that seem unusually low compared to others you have received. The gap almost always lives in these excluded items. A Rs. 25,000 quote that excludes hosting, plugins, content, and GST often costs more in reality than a Rs. 45,000 quote that includes all of them.
Question 7
How will you communicate with me during the project, and how quickly do you respond?
Communication is where most web development projects in India break down. The build itself is often technically fine. What fails is the relationship around it. Updates stop coming. Questions go unanswered for days. Feedback gets lost. Timelines slip and explanations are vague.Ask how they prefer to communicate, whether that is email, WhatsApp, Slack, or a project management tool. Ask how often you will receive updates without having to request them. Ask what the expected response time is for questions or concerns during the project. Ask who your single point of contact will be and whether that person will be reachable throughout.The answers themselves matter less than the confidence and specificity with which they are given. An agency that has clear communication protocols will answer these questions immediately because they have answered them many times before. An agency that is figuring out communication as they go will answer vaguely because they have not thought about it.
Red flag to watch for: Agencies that communicate primarily through one person’s personal WhatsApp number with no backup contact, no project management system, and no documented update schedule. When that person becomes unavailable, your project becomes invisible.
Question 8
What happens if the project goes over the agreed timeline?
Delays are common in web development everywhere in the world, including India. A good agency will not promise you that delays are impossible. What they will do is explain their process for managing them, communicating about them, and ensuring they do not spiral.Ask what the most common causes of delay are in their experience. Ask whether the timeline in their proposal is a firm commitment or an estimate. Ask what happens to your payment schedule if they deliver late. Ask whether there are any penalties or protections built into their contract if the timeline slips significantly.Client-side delays are also a real factor. Late content delivery, slow approval of designs, and unclear feedback from the client side push timelines out just as often as developer-side issues. A mature agency will discuss this openly and will include client responsibilities and deadlines in the project agreement alongside their own.
Red flag to watch for: Agencies that give you an overly confident timeline with no discussion of dependencies, milestones, or what they need from you to stay on track. Confidence without specificity is usually optimism, not planning.
Question 9
Do you provide support and maintenance after the site goes live, and what does that cost?
Launch day is not the end of the relationship, it is the beginning of a different one. A website requires ongoing attention: WordPress core updates, theme and plugin updates, security patches, performance monitoring, backup management, and occasional fixes when something breaks or a third-party integration changes.Ask whether the agency offers a maintenance plan and what it covers. Ask what the cost is per month. Ask what the response time is for urgent issues like the site going down or a security breach. Ask what is not covered by the maintenance plan and what those things would cost if they arose.Even if you plan to manage the site yourself after launch, ask for a proper handover session where someone walks you through the WordPress dashboard, explains how to update content, and documents any custom features or settings you need to know about. This is a reasonable thing to expect regardless of whether you take a maintenance plan.
Red flag to watch for: Agencies that disappear after launch with no handover documentation and no stated policy for post-launch support. This is particularly common with budget providers who built your site quickly and are already focused on the next project.
Question 10
Can I speak to two or three of your previous clients directly?
References are the most underused tool in the hiring process for web development in India. Testimonials on a website are curated. Google reviews can be encouraged. But a real conversation with a previous client, unprompted by the agency and conducted privately, is the closest thing to ground truth you will get before committing.Ask for references from projects that are similar in scope to yours. Ask the references specific questions: did the agency deliver on time, did the final cost match the quoted cost, how did they handle problems when they arose, would they hire the agency again, and is there anything they wish they had known before starting the project.Most references will be positive because agencies select clients they believe will speak well of them. What you are listening for is the nuance. A reference who says they were great but communication was slow in the middle tells you something real. A reference who says everything was perfect with no caveats at all is worth probing further.
Red flag to watch for: An agency that cannot provide any direct client references, that only offers written testimonials, or that asks you to read their Google reviews instead of speaking to someone directly. A strong portfolio of successful client relationships should produce clients who are willing to advocate for the agency personally.
What to Do With the Answers You Get
Asking these questions is only useful if you pay careful attention to what comes back. The content of the answers matters, but so does the manner. An agency that answers confidently, specifically, and without defensiveness has almost certainly navigated these conversations many times because they have the processes and track record to back it up.
An agency that becomes evasive, that reframes your questions as mistrust, that gives you very general answers without concrete details, or that rushes past these conversations to get back to selling you is showing you something important about how they operate under pressure. The pitch phase is when agencies are trying hardest to impress you. If communication is unclear now, it will not improve once you have signed and paid.
It is also worth paying attention to whether the agency asks you good questions. A capable web development partner wants to understand your business, your customers, your goals, and your constraints before they propose a solution. If an agency is ready to quote you a price and a timeline after a twenty-minute call without asking much about what you actually need, they are probably selling you a standard package, not a considered solution.
Do not let price be the dominant factor in your decision. We understand budgets are real. But a website built by the wrong agency at a low price almost always costs more in the long run than a website built by the right agency at a fair price. Rebuilding a site that did not work costs money. Fixing security vulnerabilities from a poorly maintained site costs money. Starting your SEO from scratch because the first build had no technical foundation costs time and money. The savings at the beginning rarely survive contact with reality.
A Note on Contracts
Every conversation you have with a web development agency should ultimately be documented in a signed agreement. This is not about distrust. It is about clarity. A good contract protects both parties by establishing shared expectations in writing before any work begins.
At minimum, your contract should state the full scope of work, the payment schedule tied to specific milestones, the timeline with key dates, who owns the deliverables on completion, how revisions and change requests are handled, what constitutes project completion, and what happens in the event of a dispute or early termination.
If an agency asks you to proceed on the basis of a WhatsApp conversation, a rough email, or a verbal agreement with no formal documentation, that is a reason to pause. Not because every informal arrangement ends badly, but because when things go wrong and they sometimes do, you will have nothing to stand on. A written agreement is your most basic protection as a client.
Frequently Asked Questions
Look for verifiable evidence rather than surface-level signals. Check whether their portfolio shows live URLs you can visit. Search for the agency name independently and read reviews on Google and platforms like Clutch. Ask for direct client references and actually call them. Verify that the agency has a registered business address and a consistent online presence. Legitimacy is demonstrated through specifics, not through the quality of a sales presentation.
For simpler websites under Rs. 40,000, a skilled freelancer is often the more cost-effective choice because agencies at that price point carry overhead without delivering proportionally more value. For more complex projects above Rs. 60,000, especially if the website is a core business tool, an agency with dedicated roles and a structured process typically delivers more reliable results. The key in either case is verifying the track record rather than assuming the category determines the quality.
A solid web development contract should cover the full scope of work in detail, a payment schedule tied to deliverables rather than calendar dates, ownership of all files and code on completion, the number of revision rounds included, the timeline with key milestones, what happens if either party needs to terminate the agreement early, and the process for handling change requests that fall outside the original scope. Any agency that resists putting these things in writing is telling you something about how they intend to handle disagreements later.
A basic five to seven page business website takes two to four weeks with a professional developer who has a clear brief and prompt client feedback. A medium-complexity WordPress site with custom design, blog, and integrations takes four to eight weeks. An e-commerce site or web application takes two to five months depending on scope. These timelines assume the client provides content and approvals promptly. The single most common cause of delays on the client side is late content delivery.
The most consistent red flags are: an inability to show live website URLs from their portfolio, vague answers to specific questions about process or ownership, hosting the site on their own servers without giving you independent access, no written contract or resistance to formal documentation, promises of unlimited revisions without any defined boundary, unusually low quotes that exclude hosting and plugins without disclosing this upfront, and disappearing after launch with no handover documentation or support plan.
No. A reasonable payment structure ties payments to project milestones rather than to a calendar or to a single upfront payment. A common structure is 30 to 40 percent at project kickoff, 30 to 40 percent at design approval or mid-project milestone, and the remaining balance on final delivery and your sign-off. Paying the full amount before any work is delivered gives you very little leverage if things go wrong. Any agency that insists on full payment upfront for a significant project is asking you to take a risk they are not willing to take themselves.
At Inspired Monks, we welcome every one of these questions. We have clear answers about ownership, timelines, costs, processes, and post-launch support because we have built those answers into how we work. We would rather earn your trust with transparency than win your business with a low number.Get Your Free Consultation at inspiredmonks.com
Inspired Monks is a WordPress and custom web development agency helping businesses across India build websites that perform, convert, and grow. We have delivered 50+ projects across cybersecurity, interior design, manufacturing, retail, and more.
Written by the Inspired Monks Team
