Red Flags When Hiring a Web Developer: 12 Tests You Can Run in One Message

How do you know if a web developer is legit?

You test them, before money moves. There is no licence to lose here and no register to be struck off, so credentials sort nothing. What sorts them is whether they put specifics in writing when a stranger asks.

Every flag below has one question attached. Send all twelve in a single message. The answers, and how fast they come back, tell you more than an hour on a call.

A flag is a question, not a verdict. A good developer with an ugly website is common. A polished pitch with no answer to question five is what costs you money.

The 12 red flags, and the question that tests each

1. No fixed price, only “it depends”

Refusing to put a number on a defined scope asks you to fund an open-ended process. The cost is not the rate. It is that once you are three payments in, walking away means losing all three.

Ask:

What is the fixed price for exactly this list of pages, and what would change it?

A clean answer sounds like: A number, a scope list, and one or two named triggers for a change order.

2. A deposit before anything is written down

No document means every later disagreement is your word against theirs, and you are the one holding a paid invoice. A deposit is fine. A deposit against nothing written is not.

Ask:

Can you send the scope, price and payment schedule in writing before I pay anything?

A clean answer sounds like: It arrives the same day, one page, and it lists exclusions as clearly as inclusions.

3. The domain gets registered in their name

Quiet until the day you want to leave. Whoever owns the domain holds your email, your traffic and your Google listing, and getting it back becomes a negotiation instead of a login.

Ask:

Will the domain be registered to my name and my email, in an account I control?

A clean answer sounds like: “You buy it yourself, on your own card, and invite me. I never need to own it.” Anything else is a no.

4. Hosting you cannot see, at a price you cannot check

Reselling hosting is normal. Not naming the provider is the flag. A plan that runs 60 to 200 dollars a year on the host's public pricing page can land on your invoice at 40 a month, and with no login you cannot check the plan or the backups.

Ask:

Who is the actual host, what does that plan cost on their public pricing page, and can the account be in my name?

A clean answer sounds like: They name the provider, state the real price, and say what their share pays for. A mystery line item is not an answer.

5. No repository access, no code handover

Code that lives only on their laptop is a rental with no key. The bill arrives when they get busy and the next developer starts over. Handing over a repository takes two minutes, and GitHub documents it in one page.

Ask:

Which account will the repository live in, and will I own it from the first commit?

A clean answer sounds like: “Yours. I push to your GitHub from day one and you read every commit as it lands.”

6. “SEO included” with no named deliverable

Sometimes it means titles, descriptions, a sitemap and Search Console, which is real work. Sometimes it means a plugin box someone ticked. Google's own guidance on hiring an SEO tells you to demand specifics.

Ask:

List the SEO deliverables. Which can I check as a file or a screenshot on launch day?

A clean answer sounds like: A short concrete list. If the answer is “we optimise for the algorithm”, it is decoration.

7. A monthly retainer with no report attached

Most owners do not lose money on a bad build. They lose it on maintenance nobody can describe: 150 a month for four years is 7,200. Retainers with no monthly artefact are a subscription to hope.

Ask:

What arrives in my inbox each month, and what happens to the money in a month where nothing breaks?

A clean answer sounds like: “A one-page report: updates, uptime, backups, traffic, hours left. Unused hours roll over once. Cancel with 30 days.”

8. No working demo before each payment

The big reveal is where budgets die. You pay, you wait six weeks, and what you see is not what was in your head, except now the money is spent. Working software at every milestone is what keeps the power on your side of the table.

Ask:

Will I see a working link, on a real URL, before each payment is due?

A clean answer sounds like: “Staging URL, updated as I go. Payment two is due after you have clicked through it on your own phone.”

9. They will not say who actually writes the code

Subcontracting is not the flag. Hiding it is. Sold a senior and handed a junior working nights, you get different code and a different handover, and you priced for neither.

Ask:

Who writes the code, are they employed or subcontracted, and can I message them directly?

A clean answer sounds like: Names and a structure. Ours: Ishan Rana on the relationship, Vikas the CTO on technical calls, you in the same thread as the builder.

10. A portfolio that does not survive two clicks

Screenshots are not proof. Open three links: live, still that design, actually built by them? One dead link means nothing. Three, or a row of pages whose source names the same site builder, means plenty.

Ask:

Send me three live URLs you built in the last year, and what you personally did on each.

A clean answer sounds like: Working links and an honest split. Also fine: “most of my work is under NDA, here are two and a reference you can call.”

11. “Unlimited revisions” and no change process

It sounds generous and behaves like the opposite. Nobody works for free, so infinite rounds are already in the quote, and nothing closes because no stage does.

Ask:

How many revision rounds are included per stage, and what does an extra round cost?

A clean answer sounds like: “Two rounds per stage. After sign-off, changes are billed at a stated rate, quoted before I start.” Countable beats generous.

12. They are slow to reply before you have paid them anything

The sales phase is the fastest a supplier will ever move. A three-day reply now is a three-week reply in month two, when there is a typo on your pricing page and a campaign running.

Ask:

What is your response time and channel, and what happens if you are away for a week?

A clean answer sounds like: A stated window, a real channel, and a named backup.

The scoring sheet (copy this into a doc)

Send the questions, paste the replies, count the passes. Nine or more is a shortlist. Under seven, keep looking. A fail on rows 3, 5 or 8 is worth stopping over on its own: those are the ones you cannot undo later.

Flag	Test question	Pass answer	Fail answer
No fixed price	What is the fixed price for exactly this scope?	A number plus named change triggers	“Depends how it goes”
Deposit before scope	Can I see scope, price and schedule in writing first?	Document arrives before money moves	“Pay the deposit and we start”
Domain in their name	Will the domain be registered to me?	You buy it, they get invited	“We handle all that for you”
Marked-up hosting	Who is the real host, and the list price?	Provider named, markup explained	No provider name, no login
No repo access	Which account owns the repository?	Yours, from the first commit	“We keep the code our side”
Vague SEO	Which SEO deliverables can I check on launch day?	A short concrete list	“SEO optimised” and nothing else
Retainer, no report	What arrives in my inbox each month?	One-page report, cancel terms stated	“Ongoing maintenance and support”
No demo before payment	Will I see a working link before each payment?	Staging URL you open on a phone	“You will see it when it is ready”
Unnamed builder	Who writes the code, and can I message them?	Names, roles, direct channel	“Our team handles it”
Weak portfolio	Three live URLs, and your part in each?	Live links plus an honest split	Screenshots only, or dead links
Unlimited revisions	How many rounds, and what does an extra cost?	A number and a rate	“Unlimited, do not worry”
Slow pre-sale replies	What is your response time and channel?	Stated window plus a backup plan	Days of silence during the quote

Hourly or fixed price: which is safer for you?

Fixed price, for anything with a defined scope. Hourly moves the risk of a bad estimate onto you, and you are the one person in the deal who cannot tell whether six hours was fair for that job.

Hourly is honest in two cases: ongoing work after launch, and a real unknown such as untangling someone else's code. Ask for a cap in both. We quote fixed and eat the estimate when it is wrong. It is the only way two quotes stay comparable.

What should a website proposal include?

Eight things. Missing three or more, it is a brochure, not a quote.

Section	What it has to say
Scope	Every page and feature by name, plus what is excluded
Price	One fixed number for that scope, tax treatment stated
Payment schedule	Milestones tied to something you can see, not to dates
Timeline	Start date, milestone dates, what your delay does to them
Ownership	Code, design files, domain and every account in your name
Revisions	Rounds included per stage, and the price of an extra
Post-launch	Warranty length, bug versus change, response time
The exit	What you get if you stop: files, repo access, account handover

The exit row is the one nobody writes and everybody needs. A supplier relaxed about how you would leave is usually one you will not want to.

Is no portfolio a red flag?

Not by itself. Plenty of good developers spent five years on NDA work or internal systems nobody outside the company will ever see. What matters is whether they can show something: a repository, a side project, a reference you can call.

The real flag is a portfolio built to be believed rather than checked. Dead links. Sites rebuilt by someone else since. Pages whose source says they all came out of one builder with a new logo. Worse than no portfolio.

How long should a website take?

A one-page to few-page small-business site: a day to a week. A multi-page site with per-service and per-area pages: two to four days of build once the content exists. A Shopify store: one to three weeks. A custom application: months, and anyone promising otherwise has not read the requirements.

Copy and photographs stretch all of those, and both sit on your side of the table. That is why our Overnight Site is $399 and live in 24 hours or free: the clock starts when the content is in, or the promise means nothing.

Ask for milestones, not a finish date. A single date tells you nothing until it is missed. Check the launched site against Google's Core Web Vitals on a phone before you sign it off.

What to do if your web developer disappears

Move fast, in this order, and keep it all in writing.

1. Secure the domain first. Log in to the registrar. If you cannot, run a WHOIS lookup and start account recovery today. Everything else can be rebuilt.
2. Then the accounts. Hosting, DNS, Google Business Profile, Search Console, analytics, payments. Reset what you can, list what you cannot.
3. Take a full backup. Files and database, onto your own machine, before anything expires.
4. Send one written deadline. Email, not WhatsApp: deliverables, date, what happens next. Seven days is fair.
5. Chase the money through the payment rail, not the person. Card and PayPal disputes have a filing deadline that runs from the payment date, not from the day you gave up. Look yours up this week. Missing it is where the loss happens.
6. Hire the next one on the handover, not the rebuild. Pay someone two hours to inventory what exists before commissioning anything.

Where we stand on each of these

We are one option. Run the twelve questions at us the same way, and hold this answer sheet against the others.

Fixed price against your scope. Payments at 40, 30 and 30, with a working demo you open on your phone before each one. Code, domain, hosting and every account in your own name from day one, so leaving us costs a password change. A written progress report as we go. A 30-day warranty. WhatsApp, same working day, Ishan on the relationship and Vikas on technical calls.

The cheapest way to test all of that is the smallest job. The Overnight Site is $399, live in 24 hours or free, and you own it either way. If we are wrong for the job we say so and point you somewhere better.

What to do next

Get your own side straight first: what to have ready before you hire a web designer lowers the numbers you get quoted. What a small business website costs has the ranges, hiring someone to build a website covers freelancer versus agency versus builder, and who owns your website is the ownership checklist. Our numbers are on pricing.

Or send the messy version. WhatsApp +91 79069 95127 or email ishan@dappasol.com with the quote you were handed and get a straight read the same day. No pitch attached.