The questions that separate a good quote from a bad one — who writes the copy, fixed price or hourly, who owns the code and the domain at the end, what happens if the project stalls — and this studio's own answer to each, including the things it does not do.
Search for web design companies in Grand Rapids and you get a page of names, a few published prices and a lot of "contact us for a quote". Price is a weak signal in both directions, and a portfolio screenshot tells you what a site looked like on launch day, not whether it brings in work. This page is the list of questions we would ask if we were hiring a web design company, what a good answer sounds like, what a fixed quote should contain, and how this studio answers each question — including the ones where the honest answer is "we do not do that".
The one question that predicts whether the project ships. If the answer is "you do", the hardest part of the job is yours and it has no deadline.
A fixed price in writing means the risk of a slow build is theirs. An hourly rate with an estimate means it is yours, and an estimate is not a price.
Code, content, domain and every login should be in your name. If any of them is not, leaving costs you the site.
Every project has a cancellation clause or it has none. Ask to see it before the deposit, not after.
Almost no website project is late because the developer is slow. Our article on why website projects stall goes through where the months go on a typical small-business build: the design and the build are a few days of work, and the longest single stretch is the gap between a content request going out and the owner sending back photos, service descriptions and page copy. That request lands on the busiest person in the business, with no deadline and no template, and it loses to every task that has a customer attached.
So ask each company what it needs from you before it can start. The good answer is short: access to your domain, your existing site or listings, your services and prices, and a twenty-minute conversation. The bad answer is a content questionnaire, a photo package and written copy for every page. The second answer means the hard part is yours and there is no date attached to it.
A fixed price and a date in writing before you commit puts the risk of a slow build on the builder. An hourly rate with an estimate puts it on you. Neither model is dishonest, but you should know which one you are signing. Ask for the total, the payment schedule, and what is quoted separately.
The published local rates are in what Grand Rapids web designers charge: most small-business sites in the city land between $3,000 and $15,000, local freelancers commonly quote $2,500 to $6,000 for a hand-built five-to-seven-page site, and maintenance runs $50 to $300 a month. The article's point is that the gap between an $8,000 site and a $999 site is mostly the number of people who have to be paid to talk to each other about it, not the quality of the code. A higher price usually means more people, and only two of them touch your website.
The answer should be you, unambiguously, and it should be true from day one rather than after a final payment. Check four things: the domain is registered in your name, the hosting account is yours, you have the source code or can take it with you, and every login — analytics, the Google Business Profile, the form service — is yours. A company that hosts your site on its own account and registers the domain for you has built a site you cannot leave with. Ask what happens if you leave, and listen for a pause.
Ask two things: what the cancellation terms are, and what the company does when a project sits in limbo. A written clause that says what you pay if work stops halfway is normal; the absence of one is not. And a company with a plan for a stalled project — drafting the missing content itself, launching with placeholder photographs and swapping them in later — will finish more projects than one that waits for you.
A fixed quote is a document, not a number in an email. Before you pay a deposit to any web design company in Grand Rapids, it should state each of these, and you should be able to point to the line.
The pages, by name. "Up to five pages" is a count. "Home, services, about, gallery, contact" is a scope, and it is the only kind you can hold anyone to.
The price and the payment schedule. The total, when each part is due, and what is quoted separately.
The date, and what it depends on. A date that assumes you reply within a stated time is fair. A date with no assumptions stated is a guess.
Revision rounds. How many are included and what happens after them.
What is not included. Photography, logo, domain, third-party subscriptions, hosting after launch. A quote that lists none of these has not thought about them.
Ownership. Who owns what at the end, and in whose name the domain and hosting are registered.
The cancellation terms. In the agreement, not in a conversation.
How long a website should take suggests one more question for the timeline line: of those weeks, how many is the company working on your site? The production work on a five-to-seven-page service site is two to five working days. The rest of a long timeline is queue time and waiting, and you are entitled to know which part is which.
Not publishing prices is not a red flag on its own; scope genuinely varies and there are decent reasons to quote each job. These are red flags.
Hosting or a domain in the company's name, or a "platform" you cannot leave with your site intact.
A content questionnaire as step one, with no date on it and no offer to draft for you.
A maintenance plan that is required rather than offered.
A timeline with no breakdown of working days against calendar weeks.
A portfolio you cannot open. Screenshots are not a site. Open the live site on your phone, on cellular, and search the client's business name plus the city to see whether the site the company built ranks for its own business.
Reviews you cannot verify, on the company's site or on a client's.
"We will add tracking later." A form that lands in a spam folder and analytics that were never installed are both things you discover months in.
The pricing article also has a list it calls the floor: responsive on phones including the forms, fast on a cellular connection, a contact method you have tested, unique page titles and descriptions, structured data, a sitemap, SSL, analytics installed and reporting, and ownership of the domain, content and code. Anything missing from that list means the quote was incomplete, whatever it cost.
One recorded twenty-minute call, and we write the whole site from it and from what you already have: your old site, your Google Business Profile, your reviews and listings. You correct a draft rather than write from nothing, by clicking on the draft and typing. Three rounds of revisions are included, and anything after that is quoted before a minute of work happens. This is the reason our projects do not stall on content, and it is in the terms on every project, whatever the size.
The prices are on the web design page before you call: a Starter Site from $999, a Business Site from $2,499, a Growth Site with one custom tool from $4,999, and a Care Plan from $199 a month. 50% to start and 50% on launch, negotiable on larger builds. The Starter Site can instead be paid as $149 a month for twelve months, after which the payments stop and the site is yours. A fixed price and a date go in writing before you commit, and there is no hourly meter. The affordable web design page goes through what the cheapest package does and does not include, and if you are not sure what you need, the Site & Business Audit, $750, is a written report in three business days that is yours to hand to any agency.
Domain, hosting, code, content and every login are registered in your name from the start, not transferred at the end. If you leave, you keep all of it and we help you move. A static site can be handed to you to host free.
Cancellation before work starts is a full refund of the deposit. After work starts, you pay only for work done, and anything already paid beyond that is refunded; this is in the signed project agreement. On the $149-a-month plan, if the site is never delivered, every payment made is refunded and nothing transfers. And because we draft first, a project here cannot sit waiting on your copy.
Photography and logo design are not included: you supply images and brand assets, or we use stock, and logo work is quoted separately. We do not build native iPhone or Android apps; the tools we build are web-based, and the app development page says why. We do not sign off regulated copy — medical, legal or financial claims need a specialist. We do not run a payment processor, a booking platform or a giving provider; those are third parties, and their fees are yours. We take few clients at once, which is part of why the prices are what they are, and it also means we are sometimes unavailable.
There are also jobs we would rather send elsewhere, and the pricing article names them: many stakeholders who need managing, original photography and video as part of the deliverable, e-commerce with real inventory complexity, a guaranteed support level, or migrating a large established site where a botched redirect map costs rankings you spent years earning. If your project is one of those, we say so on the first call.
The pricing article's advice for checking any company works on us too. Run our site through PageSpeed Insights. Open the three demonstration builds on your phone: a roofing company, a restaurant and a salon. All three are demonstrations of fictional businesses, each says so on the page, and none is a client; we do not present demonstration work as client work and we do not name businesses we have not worked for. The about page lists the products we have actually shipped, which are live and can be opened.
The two case studies are about marketing rather than web design, and we say so. One is a Meta lead-form campaign that produced 47 home-tour leads on $179 of ad spend; the other is a small store, run in 2018 and 2019, where organic Instagram drove roughly two thirds of the revenue. Both list their own caveats at length. They are there because a company that publishes its numbers, including the small ones, is easier to check than one that publishes adjectives.
If the site is already built and the question is whether to keep it, the redesign page covers when a redesign is the answer and when it is not. If you are hiring for what happens after launch, the website maintenance page lists exactly what the care plan covers and what it does not. The engineering that makes a site fast and makes the form arrive is on the web development page.
One call, a written proposal, a draft you comment on by clicking, and a handover in your name.
Twenty minutes. You describe the business; we keep the recording so nothing is lost. No content planner.
The pages by name, the price, the date and what is not included, in writing, before you commit. 50% to start.
We write it; you click anywhere on the draft and type. Three rounds of revisions are included.
Domain, hosting and every login registered to you from day one. 50% on launch.
Published local rates put most Grand Rapids small-business sites between $3,000 and $15,000, and local freelancers at $2,500 to $6,000 for a hand-built five-to-seven-page site. Our prices are published: a Starter Site from $999, a Business Site from $2,499, a Growth Site with one custom tool from $4,999, and a Care Plan from $199 a month. Every project gets a fixed quote in writing before work begins.
Hire an agency when you have many stakeholders who need managing, when original photography and video are part of the deliverable, when you run e-commerce with real inventory complexity, when you need a guaranteed support level, or when you are migrating a large established site. Otherwise most of an agency price buys coordination between people, and a five-page site for a local business does not need much of it.
Run their own site through PageSpeed Insights. Open a site they built on your phone, on cellular, rather than a screenshot. Search a client's business name plus the city and see whether the site ranks for its own business. Ask who owns the code and the domain, and what happens if you leave. Ask what happens after launch and whether fixing a broken form in month four is billed.
The pages by name, the price and payment schedule, a date and what it depends on, the number of revision rounds, what is not included, who owns what at the end and in whose name the domain and hosting are registered, and the cancellation terms. Ask how many of the quoted weeks the company is actually working on your site.
Yes. The build happens over a call and a shared link, so the town changes the local search setup rather than the site. There are separate pages for Kent County and West Michigan, and the work is done remotely for anyone in the United States.
Send me your current site or your Google listing. I'll send back the pages by name, the price and a date, in writing — useful whichever company you choose.