How to Vet a Web Designer Before You Hand Over Money

Somewhere around once a month I get a version of the same phone call. A business owner, usually calm at first, explaining that their old web designer stopped answering emails eighteen months ago, and now they can't log into their own website, and actually — hang on — they're not even sure they own their own domain name. Every time, the fix costs more time and money than ten minutes of phone calls would have cost before they ever signed anything. That's the whole article, really: vet a web designer like you'd vet a contractor before they gut your kitchen, because a website is exactly as easy to hold hostage as a half-finished renovation.

How do I vet a web designer before hiring them?

Call two or three of their past clients directly, not just their portfolio testimonials. Ask if they got full logins on day one, whether the final price matched the quote, and whether they'd hire that designer again without hesitating. Ten minutes of real phone calls tells you more than an hour of scrolling a polished portfolio site ever will.

A portfolio only shows you the work a designer is proud of. Every portfolio looks great — that's the entire point of a portfolio, it's a highlight reel, nobody puts the site that's still 404-ing since 2023 on there. It doesn't show you what happens when you ask a question they don't like, or what the invoice looks like in month four, or whether you'll actually be able to leave if you're unhappy. Past clients will tell you all three, usually within the first minute, because people who've been burned want to warn the next person. I've never had a reference call go badly for the designer being honest — only for the ones hoping nobody would ask.

The hostage pattern I get called about almost every month

Here's the pattern, and I want to be specific because "get held hostage" sounds dramatic until it's your business. A designer builds the site. Somewhere in the process, the domain name gets registered — but under their registrar account, using their email as the contact. The hosting goes on their server, billed to their credit card, resold to you at a markup you don't see. Everything works fine. Then, a year or two later, you want to switch designers, or add a feature they won't build, or you're just done paying them — and suddenly there's a "transfer fee," or the login "isn't ready yet," or they've simply stopped replying and your website is legally, technically, sitting in someone else's account.

None of that is a hypothetical. I've rebuilt four sites from scratch this year alone because the original owner genuinely could not get their domain back — the designer had vanished, the registrar wouldn't talk to anyone but the account holder, and rebuilding on a new domain was faster than fighting for the old one. I wrote the full mechanics of who legally controls what in who really owns your website — read that after this one, because vetting a designer and owning your site are the same problem from two different angles.

A bad design job is annoying and fixable. A designer who controls your domain is a business risk — and you can screen for it in a single phone call, before you've paid anyone a dollar.

The exact call script — what to actually ask past clients

Don't overthink this. You're not conducting an interrogation, you're having a two-minute conversation that starts with "Hi, I'm considering hiring [designer] and I saw you worked with them — do you have five minutes?" Almost everyone says yes. Here's what to ask, in order:

1. "Did you get full logins to your domain, hosting and website when the project finished?" This is the whole ballgame. A confident, immediate "yes" is the best possible answer. Any pause is data.
2. "Was there anything you didn't expect on the final invoice?" This surfaces scope creep and hidden add-on fees before you're the one discovering them.
3. "How did they handle it when something went wrong?" Every project has a hiccup. You're not testing for perfection, you're testing for how they behave under a little pressure.
4. "How fast did they actually reply once you'd paid?" Response speed before the deposit and after it are famously two different numbers. Ask about after.
5. "Would you hire them again, no hesitation?" If the answer isn't an instant yes, that hesitation is the whole answer. Listen for the pause, not just the word.

If a designer can't or won't give you two past clients to call, that's not proof of guilt on its own — some are new, some work mostly under NDA. But it does mean you lean harder on the other checks below. Portfolio sites like real project case studies should show actual client names and results, not just pretty screenshots with the logos blurred out.

Red flags vs. green flags on that call

Most of what you're listening for boils down to four things. None of them require you to know anything technical — you're just listening for confidence versus hesitation.

What to check yourself before you even pick up the phone

The phone calls matter most, but they take five minutes each to arrange, so do these first — they're free and instant:

• Search their business name on the Ontario Business Registry if they're claiming to be an incorporated Ontario company. A designer who's been "in business for 10 years" should exist somewhere on paper.
• Read the Google reviews, not just the star rating. Skim for words like "logins," "domain," "hostage," "wouldn't give me," or "ghosted" — they show up more often than you'd think, and they're the reviews people write when they're finally free to.
• Look at three actual client websites, not just mockups on the portfolio. Do they still work? Are they still online? A trail of dead links tells you what happens after the invoice clears.
• Ask for a written quote before any deposit. A real designer can put a price and scope in writing in a day. "I'll figure out the price as we go" is not a quote, it's an open tab — and open tabs are how you end up owing $3,000 for a five-page site because "the third revision round" apparently costs extra now.

Is it worth the time to vet a web designer first?

Yes — the math isn't close. Vetting properly costs you about 20 to 30 minutes: ten minutes on reviews and past projects, two calls at five to ten minutes each. Skipping it and getting it wrong costs you months, sometimes a rebuild from zero, and always a headache you didn't need.

If you'd rather skip the guesswork entirely, that's what my own process is built around: a written scope before a deposit, your domain and hosting registered in your name from day one, and full logins the moment the project wraps — no exceptions, no "release fee." See how I structure a project on web design, check real numbers on pricing, or just ask me anything before you sign with anyone — including someone else. I'll tell you honestly if a quote looks fair.

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