u/RealisticWorth3567

I hired agencies and worked in one so I know how they work. And most people do the first mistake is they only compare prices. In my opinion that's the last thing you should look at

Start with checking their real work. Dribble shots, case studies are wrong things to check. Ask for URLs of websites they built and open them. Does the website exist? Does it load fast on your phone? Is it a real business or just a demo done for portfolio? If half of the links don't even open or super laggy it means they are a bad agency.

Then ask who actually writes the code. Most agencies are 2-3 sales guys who resell the work to freelancers they never met. Not saying it's bad but you should know. Ask if you can talk directly to the person building it

After that ask them to explain the stack in normal words and why they chose it. Good devs can explain wordpress vs custom coded without making you feel stupid. If they just throw a bunch of buzzwords at you they hide something

Also ask for the ownership. Who owns the code? Do you get the repo? Is the domain and hosting in YOUR account or theirs? Seen all the time how businesses stick with bad agencies just because they have access to their domain

Red flags are full payment upfront, no contract, no discovery calls, promise a custom CMS in a week, portfolio is full of template websites

Green flags if they ask you a bunch of questions about your business before quoting. They push back on stuff you ask for or they tell you when something is a bad idea

then about AI. it's not that bad when agencies use AI to speed up the process, everyone is using it now. Just make sure they actually know the coding. Ask a random question about the page they built, they should answer instantly without problems.

What you can do if not sure, u can pay for a small piece of the work to see how they communicate, work and hit deadlines. One landing page, a small feature. Will cost you a few hundred and you can make a final decision

For local vs remote choice, local helps with trust and meetings since you can meet up in human and talk to people face to face. But a good remote is way better than a bad local one. Just make sure u check if timezones are good and sign an agreement that's legally valid

That's all you need to ask I think. I hope u found that valuable!

I've done a lot of migrations and most people ask the wrong question. it's not really that no code is bad, it just not a fit when you need something complex or too custom

most people migrate too early cause they feel insecure or too late cuz they are scared to rebuild the whole app

stay on no code if your app is just forms, dashboards, simple CRUD and basic workflows. migrating here is just wasting money

migrate when you need custom logic the platforms doesn't support. when you stack plugins on top of each other to do something platform doesn't really support you overwhelm the website and performance decreases

then if you have data heavy pages, big tables and a bunch of statistics you need to migrate

or if you need real ownership, security, access control or just don't want your whole business rely on someone else's platform

and never ever migrate using AI if you have zero experience in web development. you will just vibe code a website that's worse than your no code one.

i do these migrations at Minimum Code, and 30-40% of the people who come wanting to rebuild i tell to just stay on no code

im not that technical, have a startup based in europe. need a dev agency for a complex web app, not just a landing page

worked with 2 freelancers before and both left everything half done

don't think I can handoff it to the next dev, so need like a team. not a single person having too many clients

budget is mid range, not looking for the cheapest option. want someone with experience

anyone worked with a solid agency before? prefer european based company. but open to remote if they are good

hey guys, my friend owns a simple physical business and he wants to build a custom CMS for it plus good pages with info to show his customers

with what happens with ai nowadays he's not sure if he'll receive junk done in 2-3 days... he'm too afraid to lose money on the website built by the person who has no idea how to code

can anyone recommend me a good dev agency? with real work done before. he's located in Germany, want someone local so he can trust them. if they are in other European country that works too