The quote you cannot evaluate
A developer has sent a quote for fixing, rebuilding or maintaining your website. It is a number, or a few numbers, and you have no way of knowing whether it is fair, high, or suspiciously low. Web work has no published rate card and the same site can be quoted at a fifth or five times another developer's price, both in good faith.
You do not need to become a developer to evaluate it. You need to know what a good quote contains, which questions expose a weak one, and how to get a second opinion that is actually useful rather than just a second number.
What a good quote contains
Regardless of price, a quote you can trust has:
A scope you can read. Deliverables listed, not summarised. "Rebuild the website" is not a scope. "Twelve pages as listed, a booking integration with Fresha, a contact form to your inbox, migration of the existing blog posts, redirects from all current URLs, launch on hosting in your name" is.
Assumptions stated. What they expect from you and when. What they assume about the existing site. What platform and hosting.
Exclusions stated. What is not included: copywriting, photography, fixing pre-existing problems, ongoing maintenance.
A timeline with your part in it. When it starts, when it ends, and what depends on you.
Ownership in writing. You own the site, the design and the content. The domain and hosting are in your name.
What happens after. Handover, documentation, warranty period for defects, and what maintenance costs if you want it.
A change process. How extra requests are handled and priced.
A quote missing most of these is not necessarily dishonest, but it is not something you can compare or hold anyone to.
Questions that reveal padding
- "What is the breakdown?" A fair quote can be split into its parts: design, build, migration, integrations, project management. A developer who will not itemise at all may be hiding a large margin, or may simply not have scoped it.
- "Why does the site need to be rebuilt rather than fixed?" If the answer is specific (the theme is abandoned, the builder cannot be made fast, the content is trapped in shortcodes), it is probably right. If it is "it's old" or "we always start fresh", ask for the diagnosis.
- "Which of these items could I drop to reduce the price?" A scoped quote has optional parts. A quote that is all-or-nothing at a round number was probably not built from parts.
- "Is hosting and maintenance included, and in whose name?" A low build price with hosting in the developer's name at a high monthly fee is a known pattern.
- "What plugins or services will the site depend on, and what do they cost annually?" Hidden recurring costs are common.
Questions that reveal under-scoping
The dangerous quote is not the expensive one. It is the cheap one that cannot deliver what you think you are buying.
- "Does this include moving my existing content and setting up redirects?" The cheapest rebuild quotes often assume you re-enter content and ignore SEO. You lose your rankings and find out after launch.
- "Does it include making the site pass Google's speed thresholds on mobile?" If the answer is vague, speed is not in scope.
- "Will the booking / payment / form be tested end to end before launch?" A yes should come with how.
- "What happens if I need a change after launch?" No warranty period, no stated rate, means every fix is a negotiation.
- "Can I see a site you built that is similar, and can I speak to that client?" Not a trick question. A developer with a portfolio and happy clients will say yes quickly.
- "Will the domain and hosting be in my name?" If not, walk away, whatever the price.
How to get a useful second opinion
Asking another developer "is this quote fair?" produces a second quote, often lower, because they want the work. That is not a second opinion; it is a competing bid, and the lowest bid is not the best answer.
A useful second opinion is a paid, short review by someone who is not bidding: an hour or two of a developer's time to read the quote, look at your current site, and tell you whether the scope matches the problem, whether anything important is missing, whether the approach is sensible, and whether the price is in the range they would expect. They should decline to quote the work themselves, or at least say so up front, so the advice is not shaped by wanting it.
Bring them: the quote, access to your site's admin and analytics, and a plain statement of what you are trying to achieve (more enquiries, a faster site, a booking system that works). The output is a page: what is good about the quote, what is missing, what to ask the developer, and whether to proceed.
What second opinions usually find
In our experience of reviewing other developers' quotes: most are honest and competent. The common problems are under-scoping (redirects, speed and testing missing from cheap quotes), hosting lock-in, and a proposed rebuild where the diagnosis would have said fix, or a proposed fix where it would have said rebuild. The price itself is rarely the issue; what the price buys is.
Where this sits
We offer this as a fixed-price review under our diagnosis, with the explicit position that we will not bid on the work being reviewed. It is a small fee against a decision that is usually several thousand, and it turns a number you cannot evaluate into a scope you can. If the quote turns out to be good, you proceed with confidence. If it does not, you know what to ask for.