comparison · HIRING A WEB DESIGNER: AGENCY, FREELANCER OR DIY

Three Ways To GetA Website.

I build websites myself, so I know where each of these three breaks. One of them is right for you and it may not be me.

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01 · how much does a web designer cost

What a web designer costs.

The three do not cost the same kind of money, which is why side by side quotes mislead people. An agency is a project fee. A freelancer is a project fee or a monthly. A builder is a small software bill plus your own weekends, which are the most expensive input here.

A site nobody finds is not finished, so search is the next question. With me it is a separate line at the same number: search is $1,000 a month, the website is $1,000 a month, and both together are $1,799.

Here is the decision rule nobody in this category will print. Fewer than about ten pages, nothing to book, no competitors ranking for what you do: a site builder is the correct answer. A phone that should ring, a calendar that should fill, competitors buying the same terms you need: one senior person beats both a template and a junior inside an agency.

What a web designer costs.
option	What it costs	What goes wrong
An agency	A project fee up front, then a monthly retainer	You buy a process built for a client many times your size, and a junior gets your account. Reporting improves, checkability does not
A freelancer	A project fee, or a monthly with no project fee	Capacity. One person is faster than a team right up to the week they are unavailable, and there is nobody to hand it to
DIY on a builder	A small software bill and your own time	The build finishes and the marketing never starts. Most DIY sites stall at launch because the tool has no opinion about what the pages should say
mineWorking with me	$1,000 a month for the Websites line, three months, then month to month	It is one person, so a genuinely enormous build is not the right fit and I will say so on the first call

evidence

A full marketplace I designed and built, live A brand and storefront I built end to end

02 · what a web designer does

What a web designer does.

An agency sells you a team and a process. A freelancer sells you one person's hands. A site builder sells you the software and leaves the work to you. All three end with a website. The difference is who does the thinking and who you call when it stops working.

Four different jobs get sold under the words web design, and the confusion is where most first time buyers lose money.

Design is how the site looks and how a visitor moves through it. Development is the code that makes it run. Hosting is the server it lives on. Marketing is getting anyone to see it. A beautiful site nobody sees is the most common thing I get called in to fix.

An agency

A firm with a strategist, a designer, a developer and an account manager. You get a documented process, a contract and a schedule. Day to day you talk to the account manager, and the person building your site is usually someone you never meet.

A freelancer

One person who designs and builds. You talk to the person doing the work, which is the whole advantage. The risk is capacity: one person on holiday, ill or overbooked is a project that stops with nobody to hand it to.

A DIY site builder

Squarespace, Wix, Shopify or WordPress with a bought theme. The software is genuinely good now. What you are buying is a tool, not a decision, and the tool has no opinion about which pages you need or what they should say.

03 · what to look for in a web designer

How agency, freelancer and DIY differ.

Five things separate the three options in practice, and only one of them is price.

Who actually does the work. Ask for the name of the person whose hands will be on your site, and whether you will speak to them after you sign.

Whether the work is checkable. A dated record of what changed and when is the difference between a vendor you can audit and a vendor you have to trust.

Who owns the result. The domain, the hosting login, the analytics and the files should be in your name from day one, not handed over as a bargaining chip at the end.

Whether anybody is responsible for the site being found. Design and search are separate jobs, and a site that ranks for nothing is a brochure nobody opens.

What happens after launch. A website is not a delivery, it is a thing that breaks quietly. Ask who fixes a broken booking form on a Saturday.

04 · questions to ask a web designer

Questions to ask before you sign.

Use them on all three options. The answers sort the field faster than any portfolio.

Who writes the words on the pages, me or you?

What is explicitly not included in this price?

How many pages, and how many rounds of changes?

What is in my name at the end: the domain, the hosting, the analytics, the files?

What happens if I go quiet for three weeks because a case blows up?

Who do I call when the contact form stops sending, and what does that cost?

Can you show me a site you built for a business my size, in The Valley, that is still live?

05 · web designer red flags

Web designer red flags.

A promise of a Google position. Nobody controls where Google puts you, and Google itself warns against anyone who says otherwise.

The domain or hosting registered in the builder's name instead of yours.

No written scope. If nothing says how many pages, nothing says when it is finished either.

A price that only exists on a call. A number that changes with how you sound on the phone is not a price.

A portfolio of sites that no longer exist. Click three of them. If two are dead or unbranded, the work did not last.

Nobody asks what the site is supposed to make happen. A designer who never asks about bookings, calls or forms is designing a picture.

06 · common questions about hiring a web designer

Web designer questions.

What are red flags when hiring a designer?

No published work under a real name, no answer to who does the work after you sign, and a proposal that will not say what happens in month two. Add one more: anybody who keeps the domain, the hosting or the analytics in their own name.

How much does SEO cost on top of the site?

$1,000 a month here, and the route you pick changes it more than the vendor does. An agency retainer is usually several thousand with a junior on the account, a freelancer is cheap until the month they go quiet, and doing it yourself costs the hours you bill clients for.

What is the average cost to hire a web designer?

There is no honest average, because the same words cover a one page template and a fifty page build with booking and payments in it. What you can compare is shape. Agencies quote a project fee plus a monthly. Freelancers quote a project fee or a monthly. Builders charge software. With me the Websites line is $1,000 a month with no setup fee, and you can read that here instead of booking a call.

Is web design still in demand in 2026?

Yes, and the demand moved. Building a page is easy now, so almost nobody is paid for that alone. What businesses pay for is a site that gets found, loads on a phone, and turns a visitor into a booking. That is design, search and conversion working together, which is why the work sits with a marketer more often than with a designer.

Is AI replacing web design?

It is replacing the slow parts, not the decisions. AI writes a first draft, generates variations and catches broken pages faster than any person, which is why one marketer can now do work that used to need four. What it cannot do is decide which twenty pages your business needs, or take responsibility when the booking form breaks. My name is on that part.

Should I hire a designer or a marketer?

If the site looks dated but the phone rings, hire a designer. If the site looks fine and nothing arrives, the problem is not design and a redesign will not fix it. That second case is most of the calls I get.

Can I start with DIY and hire someone later?

Yes, and it is often the right order. Keep the domain in your own name, keep the analytics connected, and do not write two hundred pages you will have to throw away. Everything else transfers.

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