Insights · August 2026
How to read a web design quote.
A quote for a website is easy to get and hard to read. Prices arrive without billing terms, features arrive without definitions, and the small words (“free”, “optimised”, “included”) do the heavy lifting. Five questions sort an honest quote from a vague one, and none of them needs any technical knowledge.
1. Is this price one-off, or monthly?
Plenty of price lists never say. A number with no billing terms usually means a one-off build, but “usually” is not something to sign. Ask which it is, in writing. If any part is monthly, three follow-ups: is there a minimum term, what does leaving cost, and is the exit price published or “negotiable”? Our cost guide covers what the honest versions of both models look like.
2. Whose name is the domain registered in?
Your domain is your business name on the internet. If it gets registered in the designer’s account rather than yours, you cannot leave with it: every future decision about your own website happens on their terms. The good answer is boring and specific: registered in your name, in your account, from day one. Anything vaguer than that is a leash.
3. What does “free hosting” mean, and for how long?
Hosting costs somebody money every month, so “free hosting” is never free; it is unpriced. Unpriced means the terms can change whenever the provider likes, and by then your site (and often your domain, see question two) lives on their servers. Ask what hosting costs after year one, what happens if you stop paying, and how you would move the site elsewhere. A provider with nothing to hide has answers ready.
4. What exactly does “SEO-optimised” include?
Quotes love graded vagueness: one tier gets “light SEO”, a dearer one gets “SEO-optimised pages”, and neither term is defined anywhere. Ask for the list. A real answer names concrete work: page titles and descriptions written for your services and area, a properly set-up Google Business Profile, structured data, speed on a real phone. If the list doesn’t exist, neither does the feature.
5. What happens after the first month?
“One month of SEO marketing included” has a second half the quote doesn’t print: month two is a sales call. The same goes for included support, updates and “maintenance”. Ask what continues, what stops, and what anything ongoing costs once the included period ends. The answer is where the real price of a cheap build tends to live.
The pattern
None of these questions is hostile, and a good provider answers all five without flinching, because the answers were already written down. Vagueness in a quote is not an oversight; it is where the margin hides. If asking reasonable questions makes the conversation awkward, the quote has told you what you needed to know.
For the record, here are our five answers: both routes priced one-off or monthly with the billing stated, your domain in your name from day one, hosting priced in plain sight, the SEO work itemised, and nothing that expires into a sales call.