How to review a website development quote

Before you start

• The quotes to compare
• Your brief, to check against

The steps

1. 1

   Step 1: List what each quote excludes

   Explicitly and by omission. This is where the price difference usually lives.

2. 2

   Step 2: Check content

   Who writes the copy, who supplies photography. Content is the most common hidden cost.

3. 3

   Step 3: Check hosting and domain

   Included for how long, at what cost after, and in whose name.

4. 4

   Step 4: Check the revision policy

   How many rounds, what counts as a revision, what a change costs after.

5. 5

   Step 5: Check post-launch support

   What is covered, for how long, and the hourly rate afterwards.

6. 6

   Step 6: Check ownership terms

   Do you own the code and content outright on final payment. Get it in writing.

7. 7

   Step 7: Check the payment schedule

   A deposit is normal. Full payment before work starts is not.

8. 8

   Step 8: Normalise and compare

   Add the missing items at market rates to each quote, then compare the totals.

The clause worth the most money

Ownership on final payment. Without it, "your" website is licensed, and leaving means rebuilding. It costs nothing to ask for and everything to discover you did not have.

Where quotes hide cost

• Content excluded — often several thousand words you must write
• Hosting free for a year, then priced well above market
• Two revision rounds, with everything after billed hourly
• Support for 30 days, then a retainer that was never mentioned

Ask for the exclusions in writing

If a quote does not list what is excluded, ask for that list explicitly before signing. The response tells you a great deal: a considered list is a sign of someone who has scoped the work, and a vague reassurance that everything is included is the setup for a change-request conversation in week three. Put whatever you are told into the agreement rather than the email thread.

The background behind this

How much does a website cost, and what drives the number? covers the reasoning in about 4 minutes — free, ungated, written from client work.

Who wrote this

Anas Bin Masud builds e-commerce sites and does technical SEO for businesses in the UK, Canada, Ireland and Pakistan. These procedures are the ones I run on client work, written down rather than invented — including the ones where the honest answer is that the fix is not available on your current hosting.