Questions to ask a web agency, and why it asks about your budget first

About twenty minutes into every first call, the agency asks what your budget is, and the person on the other side goes quiet. That pause says more about the questions to ask a web agency than any checklist, because the budget is where both sides are most afraid of being played. Studio Ubique is a web design and SEO agency from Zwolle, active since 2012, building custom websites, webshops and applications for Dutch SMEs and international clients. Over the past months the team sat through a long run of first and second calls with new leads, and four subjects kept coming back: money, hiring someone yourself, the portfolio nobody can show, and the website that grew by patches. The names below are made up and the details blurred, because what’s said in a first call stays there.

A budget you won’t name doesn’t protect you. It forces the agency to guess, and guesses are never in your favour.

Why we ask about your budget first

We ask about your budget because scope follows money, not the other way round, and a number from you tells us which project to write. It isn’t a trick to find your ceiling and quote just under it. A custom WordPress site, a webshop and a web app with logins can all be called “a website”, and they sit thousands of euros apart.

The answers are almost always a version of the same three. “Make sure you don’t price yourselves out.” “If it runs into tens of thousands, I’ll do it myself.” “At twenty thousand I’d be a lot less happy.” All three are useful. They’re budgets, just shy ones.

Studio Ubique rates are 60 to 65 euro per hour. That makes the arithmetic fairly dull: a custom WordPress site usually lands between 4,000 and 7,000 euro, a web application with user accounts nearer 8,000 to 10,000. The ranges on our rates page are indications, not sums you can redo with a calculator. Naming a budget doesn’t change the rate. It changes what gets written into the scope, the document that says what’s built and what isn’t.

Guessing goes wrong in a fixed order. The quote comes in low to win the job. In week four the first extra invoice arrives. By week six every change turns into an argument about what was “included”, and the relationship is spent before the site is live. Guess high instead and the lead simply never replies. Neither is a good afternoon.

One hire or a whole agency

Sometimes hiring someone is the smarter move, and an agency that never says so isn’t being straight with you. We mean that. If your site is simple, stable and mostly text, and someone on your team likes tinkering with it and has a few hours a week, a junior hire or a well supervised intern can cost less than any agency.

The trouble starts when the site isn’t simple. One person rarely carries UX, design, frontend, backend, SEO and hosting in one head, and every gap shows up later as a bill. The hire who builds nice pages doesn’t know the contrast rules for older readers. The one who knows WordPress has never looked at why the server is slow on a Monday. And when that person leaves after eight months, which people do, the knowledge walks out with them.

So you’re weighing a one-off project against a salary that keeps running, and one pair of hands against a team where designer, developers, SEO and hosting sit under one roof and have to agree before anything goes live. At an agency, somebody checks the checker. With a single hire, you’re the checker.

Decision box

Best if: your site has to sell, recruit or take bookings, and nobody in-house covers design, development, SEO and hosting together.
Not ideal if: the site is simple and stable, and someone on your team enjoys the work and has the hours for it.
Likely overkill when: all you need is a handful of text changes a year.

Over-the-shoulder view of a person sketching a website page structure on paper

Cheap, expensive, and the actual complaint

When people switch agencies, the complaint is almost never the invoice. It’s the waiting.

Last month a company with several careers sites came back to Studio Ubique after first picking a cheaper freelancer. The sites got built, but deadlines he’d set himself slipped, obvious bits were missing and every step needed someone looking over his shoulder. Their own verdict: cheap sometimes means paying twice. Another lead had the reverse problem, a previous developer who was expensive, slow to reply and vague about what the money bought. Different price tag, same complaint.

What both missed was predictability. A fixed scope in writing. A reply you don’t have to chase. Someone who keeps a list of new wishes, each with what it does to price and planning, instead of quietly adding them or quietly billing them. That costs a bit more than a student with a laptop, and a lot less than building the thing twice.

The portfolio we’re not allowed to show

Studio Ubique has delivered more than 120 websites for recruitment agencies, HR and staffing firms, and a large share of them carries another agency’s name. They were built white-label, meaning under the other agency’s brand, and under an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. So when a lead asks for “a few live links in your sector”, the honest answer is awkward. We did the work, and we can’t point at it.

A portfolio is the weakest proof an agency can offer anyway. It shows a site on launch day, after the client approved every colour, and says nothing about the deadline, the budget, the bug in week three or whether anyone still picks up the phone. We know how that sounds from an agency with a half empty portfolio page. It chafes. It’s still true.

Proof you can check does more. A call with a client who is in the middle of a project right now, not one who was happy three years ago. A before and after of a site you can open yourself. And the wireframes, the black and white floor plan of your own site, shown in the second call, so you judge the thinking behind your project instead of someone else’s finished one.

When a website has grown by patches

A website that grew for years through small fixes usually still works, and that’s exactly why nobody replaces it. Every patch made sense on the day. Then someone notices the shopping cart lives under “Contact”, the English version shows a layout from two redesigns ago, and Google still finds pages for locations that closed.

The signs repeat. Changes to one language version never reach the others. Plugins nobody has updated since the person who installed them left. A checkout that asks for your country, your shipping method and your payment method on separate pages before it asks who you are. That last one is costly: Baymard Institute’s research finds that nearly one in five online shoppers has abandoned an order because the checkout was too long or complicated (2025).

Patched sites also tend to forget the people who struggle most. If grandparents are meant to order from you, the WCAG guidelines (the international rules for accessible websites) on contrast and readable type decide whether they finish. Light grey text on white is a decision against them.

You don’t have to rebuild everything at once. Most patched sites can be cut into phases: first a version that works and earns money, starting with the checkout or the page that brings in the most enquiries, then the rest spread over the year. It makes the budget question from the first section a lot less frightening.

Person comparing two views on a laptop at an office desk, one hand raised mid-gesture

What to ask any agency, us included

Ask questions that make an agency commit to something you can check later. Most first calls drift into features and taste, which is pleasant and tells you very little. These five do more work.

What do you need from me to put one price on this, and what happens to that price if I name a budget?
Can I speak to a client who is in the middle of a project with you right now?
Who does the design, the development, the SEO and the hosting, and who checks their work?
Where do new wishes go once we’ve started, and who decides what they cost?
What happens if the person I’m talking to today leaves?

Then answer theirs, the budget one especially. An agency that has to guess will pad the quote to be safe or trim it to win, and you’ll find out which halfway through the project.

What to monitor monthly

Once you’ve chosen, keep an eye on the working relationship, not just the website.

Hours used against hours agreed, and what they went to.
The list of new wishes, each with a price and a planning impact you approved in writing.
How long your last three questions waited for a first reply.
Which updates ran, and whether someone tested the forms and the checkout afterwards.
Whether the scope document still describes what’s actually being built.

Person checking a laptop at a quiet desk by the window, reaching for a coffee cup

The most useful question in a first call with a web agency is the budget question, because scope follows money. Where the money leaks is often mundane: Baymard Institute (2025) finds nearly one in five online shoppers has abandoned an order over a checkout that was too long or complicated. Studio Ubique asks for a rough budget first, so the fix that matters most fits the money that’s there.

FAQs

Why does a web agency ask about my budget?

Because the same request can mean a 4,000 euro site or a 10,000 euro web application, and your number tells the agency which one to write; at a fixed hourly rate it changes the scope, not the price per hour.

Is it cheaper to hire a developer myself?

Sometimes, yes: for a simple, stable site with someone in-house who enjoys the work, a hire can cost less, but once the site has to sell or recruit you need design, development, SEO and hosting working together, and one person rarely covers all four.

Why can’t some agencies show their best work?

Much of it is built white-label under an NDA, for other agencies who sell it under their own name, so ask for a live reference call and a before and after instead of a longer list of links.

Should I rebuild my old website in one go?

Not necessarily; most patched sites can be split into phases, starting with the part that earns or loses the most money, such as the checkout or the main enquiry page, and spreading the rest over the year.