How to Choose a Web Developer in Ireland (Without Getting Burned)

Hiring a web developer is one of those decisions where the cost of getting it wrong only becomes obvious months later. By then the site's launched, the money's spent, and the developer's either disappeared or unreachable. The good ones aren't hard to find, but the bad ones are very good at looking like the good ones. This is the honest guide to telling them apart.

Why this decision matters more than people realise

For most small Irish businesses, the website is the first thing a prospective customer sees. Before they walk in, ring up, or send an email, they look at the site. A clean, fast, trustworthy site earns the second step. A slow, dated, broken one quietly costs you that customer without anyone telling you why.

The bigger problem is that bad website work is invisible until it isn't. The site launches, looks okay-ish on a laptop, and life moves on. Twelve months later you notice enquiries are lower than they should be, the site is slow on mobile, a plugin broke and no-one's fixing it, and the developer who built it isn't returning calls. Rebuilding from that position usually costs 1.5x to 2x the original budget — you're paying to undo decisions that should never have been made.

So the goal of this guide isn't to teach you to be a developer. It's to give you the few questions and signals that separate someone who'll do solid work from someone who'll cost you twice.

The five questions to ask before hiring anyone

If you only do one thing from this article, do this. Ask every developer you're considering the same five questions, and compare the answers.

1. Can you show me three live websites you've built in the last twelve months? Recent matters. Anyone showing you a polished portfolio of work from 2019 might not have shipped anything serious since. Ask for current sites, click through them, see if they're still maintained.

2. What's included in the quoted price, line by line? A real quote breaks down design time, development time, content, SEO setup, hosting, support. If the quote is one line that says "Website: €4,000," it's not a quote — it's an opening bid.

3. Who actually owns the code, the design files, the domain, and the hosting account? The answer should be: you. If they hedge on any of these, walk away. Owning your own digital assets is non-negotiable.

4. What's the process for changes during the build? How many rounds of revisions are included? How are changes priced after that? What's the handover process? You want a process that's been thought through, not invented mid-project.

5. What happens after launch — support, hosting, maintenance, updates? Software needs ongoing care. Either the developer offers that as a service (with clear pricing), refers you to someone who does, or is honest that you're on your own afterward. All three are valid; vagueness is not.

Red flags that should make you walk away

The warning signs are pretty consistent. If you see any of these, slow down.

No portfolio, or only template-style sites that all look the same. Everyone has to start somewhere, but you don't have to be their first paying client. And if all six sites in the portfolio share the same layout, the same fonts, and the same animations, what you're being sold is the same template six times with different logos on top.

Vague "websites from €500" pricing with no breakdown. No real custom build costs €500. What's actually on offer is a templated site with minimal customisation. There's nothing wrong with that if it's what you want, but be clear that's what you're buying.

No discovery process. If the conversation goes straight from "hello" to "here's a quote" without anyone asking about your business, your customers, or what the site is actually for, the quote is meaningless. You're being priced based on assumptions that haven't been checked.

Promises a complex site in a week. Custom builds take time. Anyone telling you they'll deliver a bespoke five-page business site with proper SEO and a CMS in seven days is either lying or about to deliver a template with a thin coat of paint.

Won't tell you who owns the code or domain. If the answer is anything other than "you do, in writing, with files handed over at launch," that's a real problem. Some developers like to keep clients on their hosting forever as a recurring revenue stream. That's their business model, fine — but they should disclose it upfront, and you should know what you're agreeing to.

Charges extra for SSL. SSL certificates are free via Let's Encrypt, and any decent host includes them automatically. If you see "SSL: €99/year" on a quote, the developer either doesn't know that or is hoping you don't.

Wants to host your site and won't let you migrate later. Some hosting arrangements are deliberately set up to be hard to leave. Ask explicitly: "If I want to move the site to a different host in two years, can I?" The answer should be an immediate, unqualified yes.

No contract or scope of work document. Handshake deals work right up until they don't. A proper engagement comes with a written scope, agreed payment terms, and a project agreement — not because everyone's going to fall out, but because clarity protects both sides.

Slow or vague communication during the sales process. This is the single best predictor of how the project itself will go. If they're slow to reply, hard to pin down, or vague on the details before you've signed anything, that won't improve once you have.

Freelancer, agency, or founder-led

Three rough categories, each suited to different kinds of project.

A freelancer works best when the scope is clear, the relationship is direct, and the work doesn't require multiple specialists. The risk is single point of failure — illness, bigger client, holiday, all of these can stall a project. The upside is no overhead, direct communication, and usually lower cost.

An agency works best when you need multiple disciplines running in parallel — design, development, content, SEO, paid media — and the project is large enough to justify the overhead. The downside is that you're often not talking to the person actually building the site. Decisions filter through layers, and the layers cost money.

Working directly with the founder sits between the two. You get the directness of working with the person doing the work, with a bit more capacity and process than a single freelancer. For most small Irish business projects in the €3,000–€15,000 range, this is the sweet spot. You can read more about how we work here.

None of these is universally right. The right fit depends on your project, your timeline, and how much hand-holding you want. What matters is that the answer fits your situation — not someone else's preference for one model or another.

How to verify a portfolio is real

Portfolios are easy to fake. Five minutes of due diligence usually reveals which ones are real.

Click the live links. If a portfolio piece links to "example.com" or doesn't link anywhere at all, it might not be live work. Real client sites should be reachable.

Compare to the screenshots. Does the site you land on actually look like the screenshot in the portfolio, or has it been completely redesigned by someone else since? Both can happen, but it's worth knowing.

Test on mobile. Cheap or rushed builds tend to fall apart on a phone. A site that looks fine on the developer's MacBook can be unusable on an iPhone. Pull up the portfolio links on your phone and see for yourself.

Run them through PageSpeed Insights. Google's free tool at pagespeed.web.dev will give you a quick Performance score out of 100. A developer whose sites consistently score in the 80s and 90s on mobile is doing solid technical work. Sites in the 30s and 40s are warning signs.

Look for diversity. If every site in the portfolio uses the same fonts, the same hero layout, the same animation, that's a template being recycled. If the sites genuinely look different from each other while still being well-built, that suggests real custom work.

What a proper proposal looks like

A solid proposal isn't a price tag in a PDF. It's a short document that demonstrates the developer actually understood your project. Look for:

A short discovery summary showing they listened to what you said about your business and your goals. An itemised scope showing what's in and what's explicitly out. A timeline with milestones, not just a final delivery date. Transparent pricing broken out by category, not lumped into a single number. A revisions allowance specified ("two rounds of feedback included; further changes billed at €X/hour"). Post-launch terms covering what they'll do after launch and what they won't. Ownership terms in writing covering the code, design files, domain, and hosting.

If the proposal you receive ticks all of those, you're dealing with someone who's done this before. If it's a one-pager with a number, you're going to be filling in the missing detail yourself for months.

The conversation that tells you everything

The biggest signal isn't on paper — it's in the first conversation. A few things to listen for.

A good developer will push back on bad ideas. If you suggest something that doesn't make sense for your project, they'll say so — diplomatically, but clearly. A bad developer says yes to everything because they don't want to risk losing the sale.

A good developer asks about your business before talking about technology. They want to understand your customers, your sales process, what success looks like for you. A bad developer leads with the tech stack, the frameworks, the buzzwords — because that's where they're comfortable, and they hope it impresses you.

A good developer is honest about uncertainty. They'll tell you when something is risky, when an estimate might be off, when a decision is a judgement call. A bad developer is suspiciously certain about everything, until the project is underway and reality shows up.

Comparing three quotes like-for-like

Cheapest is rarely best. The pattern is usually that the lowest of three quotes is missing things the others include — not because the cheap developer is cheating, but because they've left chunks of scope out and assume you'll either notice or pay extra later.

When comparing, lay all three quotes side by side and mark whether each one includes design, development, content, SEO setup, accessibility checks, mobile testing, training, ownership transfer, and a post-launch fix window. Most of the gap between quotes lives in those columns.

A quote that's 40–50% lower than the other two isn't a bargain. It's a smaller scope wearing the same job title. The honest comparison is "what does this project look like at launch and twelve months in," not "what's the lowest price on day one."

If you'd like a sense of what real, properly broken-out pricing looks like, our companion piece on how much a website costs in Ireland goes into the bands and what's typically included at each level.