# What to ask before you hire a web designer By [Josh Goldberg](/about/#josh). Published October 17, 2026. Ask whose name everything will be in, what the price is and what happens to the site if you leave. A good designer answers all three plainly and puts the answers in writing before you pay. The eight questions below cover the rest. None of these questions take any technical skill. Ask them on the first call, before any money changes hands, and listen for straight answers. A designer who does good work will not mind a single one. ## 1. Whose name will the domain, hosting, site and Business Profile be in? Four things make up your business on the web, and each one can end up in a different person's name. The domain is your web address. The hosting is the account the site runs on. The site files are the pages themselves. The Google Business Profile is your listing on Google Search and Maps. Start with the domain. ICANN, which accredits the companies that register domain names, says the registrant is the person or company that holds the rights to a domain. It also says that a developer you hire may have registered your domain with their own contact details, even if you paid for it. In that case they may be listed as the registrant, not you. ICANN's advice is to ask your registrar who the registrant of record is. Google is just as clear about Business Profiles. Its rules say anyone who manages a profile on the owner's behalf must never claim it without the owner's express consent, and must transfer ownership to the owner right away when asked. A profile has owners and managers. A manager can do most of the day-to-day work but cannot add or remove users or delete the profile. Manager is the role a designer should have. Google Search Console and Analytics belong in your name too. Google's own guide to hiring an SEO says that if someone offers you an audit, give them read access to Search Console, not write access. **A good answer:** "All four go in your name, in accounts you log in to. We get added as a manager and removed when you say so." **A bad sign:** "We register everything for you. It's simpler that way." That puts your web address in their account. ## 2. Will I get the price in writing before you start? A written quote should say what you are buying, what it costs, when you pay and what counts as extra. If the scope is vague, the final bill can be anything. **A good answer:** "Yes. You get a written quote with the price, what it covers and when each payment is due. The number on the quote is the number we invoice." **A bad sign:** A discovery call before anyone will name a number, then a range that keeps moving. Or a low build price with the real cost tucked into a monthly fee you cannot drop. Our own prices are published on our [home page](/#pricing). ## 3. What happens to my site if I stop paying or leave? Some designers build your site on their own platform, or license the design to you instead of handing it over. When the payments stop, the site stops. You keep the domain if it was in your name, and nothing else. **A good answer:** "You keep all of it. The site, the domain, the hosting account and every login are already yours. If you leave, we take ourselves off your accounts and send you a full copy of the site." **A bad sign:** "You'd need to buy out the site." Or "The design belongs to us." ## 4. Can I change my own phone number on my own site? It sounds small. It is the fastest test of who controls the site. We have met an owner who could not change the phone number on his own website, and could not leave without losing it. Ask for an admin login of your own. You may never use it, but you should have it. Even if you plan to email every change to the designer, your own login means you are not stuck when they are slow to answer or go out of business. **A good answer:** "Yes. Here is your login and here is where the phone number lives. Call us if you get stuck." **A bad sign:** "Just send us your changes and we'll handle them." That is fine as a service. It is not fine as the only way in. ## 5. Who pays for hosting, and where does the site live? Look at who will send the hosting bill. If it comes from the designer and not from a hosting company, the site lives in their account and you are their customer. On some platforms there is no separate hosting at all. The site is a feature of the vendor's service and goes away when the service does. **A good answer:** "The hosting is bought in your name, on your card, with a company you can call. You can log in and see it. We can run it for you, but the account is yours." **A bad sign:** "Hosting is included." Ask whose account it is in and how you would move the site to another host. If they cannot tell you, assume you could not move it. ## 6. What does the monthly fee cover, and how do I cancel? A monthly fee is fine when you know what it buys. Ask for the list in writing: hosting, software and security updates, backups, edits, a report on what changed. Ask what costs extra. Then ask how you cancel and what happens the day you do. Google's guide to hiring an SEO tells you to ask whether they will share every change they make to your site. Ask anyone who charges you by the month the same thing. **A good answer:** "Here is what every month includes, in writing. You cancel by email, any month. Your site and accounts are already in your name, so nothing has to be handed back." **A bad sign:** A long contract that renews on its own, a fee to cancel or a monthly charge nobody can itemize. For comparison, our [Monthly support](/monthly-plans/) follows a Tune-Up or Full Rebuild, runs $500 to $1,000 a month depending on the site and has no contract. You can cancel any month. ## 7. Can you promise me a ranking? No one can, and Google says so in its own guide to hiring an SEO: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google." The same guide says that if someone guarantees their changes will put you in first place, find someone else. Google also says it does not accept payment to rank a site higher, and that it costs nothing to appear in its results. The same is true of AI answers. When someone asks ChatGPT or Google's AI who to call for your service in your town, the answer names three to five businesses. No one can promise you will be one of them. What a designer can control is whether your pages can be found and whether the facts on them are right: your name, phone, address, service area, license and hours. **A good answer:** "We can't promise a position. Here is what we will do, and here is how we will show you what changed." **A bad sign:** "Page one, guaranteed." Or talk of a special relationship with Google, which Google's guide also names as a warning sign. ## 8. Can I see sites you have built? Google's hiring guide suggests asking for examples of past work and asking past clients whether the service was useful. Do both. Ask for three live sites and permission to call the owners. Then check the sites yourself. Open each one on your phone. Search for the business by name and see what comes up. When you call an owner, ask two things: can they change their own site, and whose name is the domain in? **A good answer:** Live web addresses. Owners who take your call and say they hold their own logins. **A bad sign:** Screenshots and mockups only. No live sites. No owners willing to talk to you. ## Bring this list to the first call - Whose name will the domain, hosting, site files and Business Profile be in? - Will I get the price in writing before you start? - What happens to my site if I stop paying or leave? - Can I change my own phone number on my own site? - Who pays for hosting, and where does the site live? - What does the monthly fee cover, and how do I cancel? - Will you promise me a ranking? (The right answer is no.) - Can I see sites you have built, and call those owners? Get the answers to 1, 2, 3 and 6 in writing, in the quote or an email, before you pay anything. **Sources.** ICANN, "General Questions," [icann.org/resources/pages/faqs-84-2012-02-25-en](https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/faqs-84-2012-02-25-en). Google Business Profile Help, "Business eligibility and ownership guidelines," [support.google.com/business/answer/13763036](https://support.google.com/business/answer/13763036). Google Business Profile Help, "Manage your Business Profile owners & managers," [support.google.com/business/answer/3403100](https://support.google.com/business/answer/3403100). Google Search Central, "Do you need an SEO?" [developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/do-i-need-seo). Google Search Central, "In-depth guide to how Google Search works," [developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works). Google Search Central, "Google Search Essentials," [developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/essentials).