Most business owners hire a developer once every five years. Developers do this every week. The information asymmetry is brutal — and it's where bad projects come from.

This is the cheat sheet we wish every business owner read before signing anything.

Red Flag 1: They can't show you live work

Portfolios should be links, not screenshots. If every example is "behind an NDA" or "from before the redesign" — you're looking at someone who can't ship.

Click the links. Open dev tools. Look at network tab load times. The work speaks louder than the testimonials.

Red Flag 2: They quote without asking what you sell

If a developer gives you a price after one 15-minute call about features and pages, they're guessing. Either the price will balloon mid-project, or the quality will. There is no version where they nailed it from a feature list alone.

A good quote requires understanding your buyer, your sales process, and what success looks like for your business. That conversation takes more than 15 minutes.

Red Flag 3: "We use [closed platform] for everything"

Some agencies build every project in their own proprietary CMS or an obscure builder you've never heard of. Convenient for them — disastrous for you. The day you stop working together, your site becomes orphaned.

Ask flat out: "What stack are you building this on, and can I hire any qualified developer to maintain it?"

If the answer involves the agency's name as part of the stack, walk away.

Red Flag 4: No talk about post-launch

A website launch is the start, not the end. Who fixes things when they break? How do updates happen? What's the plan when you want a new feature in six months?

If "post-launch" doesn't appear in the proposal, you're buying a one-shot deliverable that will rot.

Red Flag 5: Vague timelines

"It'll take 6–12 weeks" is not a timeline. It's a hedge. A real timeline includes:

Discovery & design milestones (with dates)
Development sprints (what's being built, when)
Review cycles (yours)
Launch criteria (what does "done" mean)

If you can't draw a Gantt chart from the proposal, the project will slip.

Red Flag 6: They oversell technologies

"We're using AI-powered blockchain serverless edge computing" is not a value proposition. It's bingo.

A good developer picks the boring tool that fits the job: Next.js because it's stable and the talent pool is huge. Postgres because it works. Stripe because nobody else has solved payments better. The technology should be the most uninteresting part of the conversation.

Red Flag 7: They won't put it in writing

Verbal commitments don't survive contact with reality. Every promise — scope, timeline, ownership, post-launch terms, what happens if either party walks — needs to be in the contract.

Ask for the contract early. If they push back, you have your answer.

The Green Flags (Briefly)

The opposite of all the above:

Live portfolio with diverse work
Strategic questions about your business, not your features
Open-source, mainstream stack you can hire for elsewhere
Documented post-launch plan
Specific timelines with named milestones
Boring, well-chosen technology
A real contract that protects both sides

The Bottom Line

Hire someone who treats your project like it's yours, not theirs. The right developer makes themselves replaceable on purpose — the wrong one makes themselves indispensable on accident.

If you'd like a second opinion on a quote you've already received, send it over. We're happy to look — even if you don't end up hiring us.