What to Check Before Signing With a Web Agency

Before you sign anything, check five things: who owns the domain and hosting once the site is live, what the contract says about revisions and timelines, whether the price includes basic SEO setup, what happens if you want to leave after launch, and whether you can see examples of sites the agency has actually built and kept live. Most disputes between business owners and web agencies in Pakistan trace back to one of these five not being settled in writing before work started.

A lot of small and medium businesses in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad pick a web agency the way they'd pick a tailor — on a referral, a quick WhatsApp chat, and a price. That works out fine most of the time. The times it doesn't are usually not about design taste. They're about ownership, scope and what happens after the invoice is paid.

Who owns the domain and the hosting

This is the single most common problem. An agency registers the domain "to make things easier," hosts the site on their own server, and six months later you want to switch agencies or just update your own phone number on the site — and you can't get in. You don't have the domain login. You don't have hosting access. You're negotiating with someone you've already paid.

Before you sign:

Ask for the domain to be registered in your name, under your own email, with your own payment method — even if the agency manages it for you day to day.
Ask which hosting account the site will sit on, and get admin access to it, even if you never log in yourself.
If the agency insists on holding both "for support reasons," get that in writing with an exit clause, not a verbal promise.

This isn't a comment on any particular agency's honesty. It's that businesses close, freelancers move abroad, and agency-client relationships end for ordinary reasons — a cheaper competitor shows up, you grow and need a different kind of site, the two of you just don't work well together. When that happens, you want to be able to walk away with your own website, not start over.

What the price actually includes

A quote of Rs 40,000 and a quote of Rs 150,000 for what sounds like "a business website" are often not quoting the same thing. Before comparing numbers, ask each agency to spell out, in writing:

Number of pages included, and the cost per extra page beyond that.
Whether the price includes a content management system (so you can edit text and images yourself later) or whether every future change goes back through the agency at an hourly rate.
Whether basic on-page SEO is included — proper page titles, meta descriptions, a sitemap, Google Search Console set up — or whether that's a separate line item.
Whether stock photography, copywriting and a logo are included, or whether you're expected to supply all of that.
How many rounds of revisions are included before extra rounds are charged separately.

None of this makes an agency dishonest if it's not included by default — it's reasonable for a lean quote to leave things out. The problem is only when it's left out of the conversation, not the quote, and you find out in month two.

Timeline and what happens if it slips

Ask for a written timeline with milestones, not just a final delivery date. "Six weeks" means nothing if you only find out in week five that nothing has actually started because the agency was waiting on your content. A reasonable structure looks like:

Week 1: content and structure agreed, sitemap signed off
Week 2–3: design concepts shared, one round of feedback
Week 4–5: development, your review
Week 6: revisions, testing, launch

If an agency can't give you something like this, or resists putting it in writing, treat that as information. It usually means the project will be managed reactively rather than on a schedule, and reactive projects are the ones that drift from six weeks to four months.

Can you actually see their past work, live

Ask for three to five links to sites the agency built, that are still live today, ideally for businesses similar in size to yours. Then actually open them — on your phone, not just on a laptop. Check:

Does the site load in a reasonable time on a normal 4G connection
Does it look the same on a phone as it presumably did in the pitch deck
Is there a WhatsApp or call button that actually works
Has the business kept using it — does the blog or product listing have anything from the last few months, or did it stop the week after launch

A portfolio full of screenshots is not the same as a portfolio of working sites. Screenshots don't tell you if the client is still paying for that agency's hosting, happy with the handover, or quietly looking for someone else.

What the exit looks like

Before you sign, ask one blunt question: "If I want to leave in a year, what do I get?" A fair answer includes the website files, the domain access, the hosting access, and any passwords for connected tools — without that being conditional on an extra fee you weren't told about upfront. If the honest answer is "you'd have to rebuild from scratch," that's a sign the agency is building the site to keep you, not to serve you. It's a legitimate business model on their end, but you should decide that trade-off knowingly rather than discover it later.

A short checklist before you sign

Domain registered in your name and email
You have (or can get) hosting access
Written scope: pages, CMS, SEO basics, revisions included
Written timeline with milestones, not just a deadline
Live examples of past work you've actually opened on your phone
Clear, fee-free answer on what you keep if you leave

None of this takes more than one direct conversation, usually over WhatsApp or a short call, before any money changes hands. Agencies that are used to working this way won't flinch at the questions — this is the kind of thing we scope in writing before we start at MS Digital Solutionz, and it's a reasonable thing to expect from anyone you're about to pay to build something you'll depend on for years.

If an agency gets vague, defensive or slow to answer any of the five questions above, that's more useful information than their price. A website is one of the few business assets that's supposed to outlast the person who built it — make sure the contract reflects that before you sign.