Choosing who builds your website decides more than the brief does. The same specification given to two teams produces two different products: one brings enquiries for years, the other has to be rebuilt in eighteen months. We at SUDUS·TEAM have been on both sides of this — building sites since 2015, and rescuing a steady stream of projects abandoned by someone else.

Below are 12 concrete criteria for judging a studio, seven red flags that should stop a deal, a list of questions to ask in negotiation, and the extra checks that apply when the team is in another country.

Why the choice is 80% of the outcome

A website is not a boxed product you can inspect before buying. You are paying in advance for work that does not exist yet, judged on a portfolio of other people's projects. That is why the usual selection criterion — price — is the worst one available. The cheapest quote and the most expensive quote are both signals, and neither of them is about quality.

What you are really buying is a team's judgement over several weeks: how they handle the thing you forgot to mention, what they do when an integration turns out to be undocumented, and whether they say "that will not work" before or after you have paid for it.

12 criteria of a good studio

1. A real portfolio of live sites

Not screenshots — links. Open them. Do they load? Do the mobile versions work? Are the forms still functioning? A portfolio full of "the client later changed the design" and dead domains means the work does not survive contact with reality.

2. Cases with actual numbers

"We made a beautiful site" is not a case. "Conversion went from 1.4% to 4.8% over six months, here is the analytics screenshot" is. A studio that measures results has them; one that does not, talks about design.

3. A registered company and a real contract

The studio should be a registered legal entity. That means you can sign a proper contract with rights and obligations, you have recourse if something goes wrong, and you get invoices your accounting department will accept. Ask for the company registration number and check it in the public register of that country. Look at how long they have traded and whether there is litigation.

4. A contract with stages written into it

Not an email agreement. A contract that includes:

  • The specification — a detailed description of what will be built
  • Dates — a start and end for each stage
  • Price — fixed, or with a transparent formula
  • Payment stages — how and when you pay, usually 30/40/30 or 50/50
  • Warranty — what is covered and for how long; the standard is 6–12 months of free bug fixing
  • Transfer of rights — who owns the source code, the design and the site
  • Penalties and termination — what happens if either side fails to deliver

A studio willing to work on a handshake is politely telling you that if things go wrong you will have no mechanism at all.

5. A team of different specialists

Design, front end, back end, SEO and project management are five different skills. One person who claims all five is either exceptional or, far more often, weak in four of them. Ask who specifically will work on your project and ask to speak to them.

6. Transparent pricing with no hidden lines

The quote should say what is included and what is extra. Copywriting, photography, integrations, multilingual versions, the content load — each is either in the price or it is not, and finding out mid-project is how budgets double.

7. A modern technology stack

Not necessarily the newest framework — the right tool for the task. What matters is that the studio can explain why this stack and not another, in terms of your project rather than their convenience, and that any competent developer could pick the project up later.

8. SEO built in from the start

Technical SEO — URL structure, meta tags, schema.org markup, sitemap, loading speed, mobile layout — has to be designed in, not bolted on. Retrofitting costs around three times as much. Ask directly what SEO work is included in the build price.

9. Project management with visible progress

You should be able to see progress continuously, not in a monthly report. Ask what the communication will look like in practice: which tool, how often, who your single point of contact is, and how revisions are submitted and tracked.

10. Warranty obligations after delivery

Launch is the start of production, not the end of the relationship. A good studio gives you:

  • A warranty period of 6–12 months of free fixes for its own defects
  • A free package of changes in the first month — text, images, small design corrections
  • Technical support hourly or on a subscription
  • Documentation of the site, the credentials and routine maintenance
  • Training for your team in basic operations: adding a product, a news item, correcting text

11. Handover of code and all credentials

After delivery the site is your property. Not the studio's, not "shared". You should receive:

  • Source code in your own repository on GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket
  • Access to the hosting, database and domain
  • Access to every service used — CDN, analytics, CRM, payment provider
  • Documentation of the architecture and the key components
  • The ability to work with other developers in future without involving the studio

A studio that keeps the source "with us" and withholds credentials is building classic vendor lock-in. A year or two later you will pay double for small changes, because you will have no alternative.

12. References you can actually call

  • Contacts for three to five previous clients you may speak to
  • Reviews with real names and faces
  • Reviews on Google Business Profile, Clutch, LinkedIn
  • Cases with specific numbers and outcomes

Call two or three and ask plainly: what was it like to work with them, did they hold to the timeline, how did they react to revisions, did they help after launch. Ten minutes of that saves you from the mistake.

Seven red flags in a proposal

  1. An exact price before any brief. If someone names a figure before understanding the task, it is either invented or they sell one template for every niche.
  2. 100% payment up front. Normal is a 30–50% deposit with the rest staged. Full prepayment removes every lever you have.
  3. No registered company. No legal entity means no contract worth signing and no recourse.
  4. "Top of Google in a week". SEO does not work that way. First real positions take two to four months even for local queries. A faster promise is a lie or a penalty waiting to happen.
  5. Closed source code. If you cannot take the project to another team, the price of every future change is set by someone else.
  6. No contract, or a one-page "agreement". The length is not the point; the stages, warranty and rights transfer are.
  7. Pressure and "decide today" deadlines. A discount that expires this evening is a sales technique, not a commercial condition. Good studios have a queue and do not need to rush you.

Questions to ask in negotiation

About the team and experience

  • Who specifically will work on the project, and may I speak to them?
  • How many projects of this type have you delivered in the last year?
  • Which of them is closest to mine, and what went wrong on it?

About the process

  • What are the stages and what do I receive at the end of each?
  • How many design concepts, and how many rounds of revisions?
  • How do I see progress, and how do I submit changes?
  • What happens if I am slow with content?

About technology

  • Which stack, and why this one for my task?
  • Can another team pick this project up later?
  • What is included in technical SEO at the build stage?
  • How does the site behave on a phone and on a slow connection?

About payment and legals

  • What are the payment stages?
  • Which jurisdiction governs the contract, and how are invoices issued?
  • What exactly does the warranty cover, and for how long?
  • Who owns the source code and the design after delivery?

About life after launch

  • What is included in the free period after launch?
  • What does maintenance cost, and what does it include?
  • Who holds the hosting and domain accounts?
  • Will you train our team to run the site?

Extra checks when the team is abroad

Working with a studio in another country is normal and usually cheaper, but three things are worth settling before the contract rather than after:

  • Timezone overlap and language. At least four hours of overlapping working time, and a manager who writes fluent English. In practice that matters more than being in the same city.
  • Payment and paperwork. How you pay, in which currency, and whether the invoices satisfy your accounting and tax requirements.
  • IP and confidentiality. An explicit assignment of rights in the contract and an NDA if the project touches your data. Ask who on the team will have access to production systems.

Price differences between markets are a labour-cost difference, not a quality difference — but the checks above are what turn that saving into a good outcome rather than a cheap one.

How many studios should you compare?

Three to five. Fewer and you have no sense of the market; more and the comparison becomes a project in itself. Send all of them the same brief, in writing, and compare like with like: not the bottom line but what is inside it.

Comparison is far easier when you already know what each type of project includes. Ours is set out with fixed prices and timelines on the pricing page, and the full market picture is in how much a website costs. If you are choosing a contractor for an AI project specifically, how much an AI agent really costs and AI agent or Telegram bot are the two topics on which a competent supplier is easiest to tell from an incompetent one.

Frequently asked questions

Is a more expensive studio always better than a cheap one?

No. Price correlates with team size, overheads and market, not with quality. What correlates with quality is a live portfolio, a real contract, named specialists and references you can call. An expensive studio with none of those is simply an expensive risk.

Freelancer or studio?

A freelancer is 30–60% cheaper and right for simple landing pages, MVPs and test projects. A studio gives you a team, a contract, a warranty and continuity, which matter as soon as the project has integrations or has to keep growing. The trade-off is set out in how much a website costs.

How long should choosing take?

One to two weeks. Write the brief, send it to three to five studios, give them three or four days to respond, then hold a call with the two strongest. Dragging it out past a month usually means the brief is not clear enough yet.

What if I do not understand the technology?

You do not need to. You need to understand the answers: a studio that cannot explain its stack choice in plain business terms is either hiding something or does not know. Ask "why this and not something else, for my task" and judge the clarity of the answer rather than the words in it.

Is it safe to order from a smaller or regional studio?

Yes, with the same checks as anyone else: a registered company, a contract, a live portfolio, references, and handover of code and credentials. A small team's weak point is capacity, not competence — ask what happens to your project if their lead developer is ill for two weeks.

What if I can only afford a cheaper studio?

Then narrow the scope rather than lowering the quality. One well-built page beats five badly built ones, and sections can be added later. A good studio will tell you which parts to cut; one that agrees to everything at your budget is planning to cut them without telling you.

In short: the selection algorithm

  1. Write the brief: type of site, target action, audience, sections, integrations.
  2. Collect 5–10 reference sites and say what you like about each.
  3. Send the same brief to three to five studios.
  4. Compare what is inside the quotes, not the bottom lines.
  5. Check the portfolio links, the company register and two or three references.
  6. Hold a call with the two strongest and ask the questions above.
  7. Read the contract: stages, warranty, rights transfer, termination.
  8. Sign with the one who told you what would be difficult.

That last point is the one worth remembering. The studio that names the risks at the first meeting is the one that has met them before. Write to us if you would like us in that comparison — the consultation and the proposal are free.