Written from the rescue side
Most of this desk's emergency work starts with a red flag somebody ignored because the price was right. These are the fourteen that predict trouble, in the order they tend to appear.
Before you pay
- 1. No scope document. "Unlimited revisions" with no written list of what is being built. Unlimited means undefined, and undefined means the fight comes later.
- 2. A price that is 5× below every other quote. Not efficiency, omission. The missing line items surface as "additional requirements" after you have paid.
- 3. 100% upfront. Milestones exist for both sides. A developer who fears milestones is planning to skip them.
- 4. No questions about your business. A developer who can build without asking what the site must achieve is building a template, not your site.
- 5. Portfolio that cannot survive one question. Ask what THEY personally built on each project and what broke after launch. Real answerers exist; rehearsed ones deflect.
During the build
- 6. No staging URL. Work you cannot watch is work you cannot course-correct.
- 7. Silence for weeks, then a delivery date. Communication patterns during the build are a preview of support patterns after.
- 8. Scope keeps growing in their favor, then shrinkage in yours. The scope document that only ever moves one way.
- 9. Accounts in their name. Domain, hosting, analytics bought by the developer. You are building a hostage situation, see the hosting guide.
At and after launch
- 10. No handover. No credentials, no documentation, no admin account in your email. The site is yours legally and theirs practically.
- 11. "Maintenance mandatory with us." Care plans are legitimate; captivity is not. See what AMCs should cost.
- 12. Break-fix pricing revealed only after launch. Emergency rates should exist in the contract, not be invented during your outage.
- 13. They cannot explain the site to you. Every owner deserves a plain-language tour of what was built, what it costs to run, and where the buttons are.
- 14. The developer disappears. The most common rescue in the book. Prevent it with milestone structure, staging access from week one, and your name on everything, see the payment terms this desk publishes openly.
The meta-skill: walking away early
Every red flag on this list is cheaper to act on before payment. The vendors who trigger two or more flags will trigger the rest. There is always another developer; there is not always another budget. Compare any quote against the calculator's bands first, then against this list, then decide.