How to choose a web design agency for your charity: questions to ask

Choosing a web design agency is a decision most charities only make once in a long while, and it’s easy to get wrong in ways that only show up a year later: a site your team can’t edit, a donation form that quietly loses gifts, or a contract that makes it hard to leave. This guide sets out the questions we’d ask if we were in your seat.

We’re a charity web agency ourselves, so we have an obvious interest. We’ve tried to write the guide we’d want a charity to read even if they never call us.

Before you contact anyone: write down what the site needs to do

A good brief doesn’t need to be long. One or two pages covering these points is enough to get quotes you can compare:

• Who the site is for: the people you support, donors, volunteers, funders, partners.
• The three things it must do well, such as taking donations, helping people find support or recruiting volunteers.
• What you have now and what isn’t working about it.
• What it needs to connect to: your CRM, donation platform, event booking, newsletter tool.
• Who will edit it day to day, and how much time they have.
• Your budget range and any deadlines, such as a funding deadline or an appeal launch.

Twelve questions to ask a charity web design agency

1. Which charities have you built websites for, and can we speak to one of them? Case studies are chosen carefully. A ten-minute call with a client tells you how the agency behaves when something goes wrong.
2. Who will actually work on our project? Some agencies sell with senior people and build with juniors or freelancers. Ask who designs it, who builds it and who answers the phone after launch.
3. What platform will you build on, and why? There’s no single right answer, but there should be a reason. Be wary of an agency that only uses one page builder, or a system nobody else can maintain. Our guide to choosing a charity website platform covers the trade-offs.
4. Who owns the website when it is finished? You should own the domain, the content and the code, and have the logins for everything. Ask how you’d move the site to another agency, and what that would cost.
5. Can you break the quote down by stage? Discovery, design, build, content migration, testing and training should each have a figure. A single total makes quotes impossible to compare.
6. What will it cost to run each year? Hosting, maintenance, plugin licences and support usually add £1,500 to £3,000 a year for a well-run charity site. A cheap build with an expensive support contract isn’t cheap.
7. How will people donate, and what will each gift cost us? On-site donation forms, a platform like JustGiving, or both. Ask what each gift loses to fees and who claims the Gift Aid. Our comparison of JustGiving alternatives sets out the costs.
8. Which accessibility standard will you build to, and how will you test it? The answer should be WCAG 2.2 AA, written into the contract, with testing that includes keyboard and screen reader checks rather than an automated scan alone.
9. Can our team edit the site without you? Ask for a demo of the editor as your staff would see it. If every change needs a support ticket, you’ll be paying for that for years.
10. How will you protect our search rankings when the new site goes live? Every old page address should redirect to its new equivalent. Without a redirect plan, charities can lose search traffic they spent years building.
11. How will the site connect to our CRM and other systems? If you use Beacon, Donorfy, Salesforce or another CRM, ask exactly how donations and sign-ups will get there, and what happens when either side changes.
12. What happens after launch? Who applies updates, how quickly they respond, what a support plan costs and what it doesn’t include. WordPress and plugin security updates need doing every month, not once a year.

Red flags

• A quote with no breakdown, or a price far below everyone else’s with no explanation.
• You won’t own the code or the domain, or leaving involves a release fee.
• Accessibility is described as a plugin or an overlay that gets added at the end.
• No charity references, or only references from several years ago.
• A contract that ties hosting, support and the website together so you can’t move one without the others.
• Pressure to sign quickly, such as a discount that expires this week.

Comparing quotes fairly

Put the quotes side by side: the cost of each stage, the yearly running costs, what’s included, who owns what and the accessibility standard. Then score each agency on how well they understood your charity, not just on price. The cheapest quote is often missing something, usually content migration, accessibility testing or training, that turns up later as an extra.

Custom charity websites from specialist agencies usually cost between about £4,500 and £11,000, and take eight to twelve weeks. Completely bespoke builds, such as membership or network sites with several integrations, cost more, around £18,000 to £24,000, and can take up to sixteen weeks. If a quote is far outside that, ask why. There may be a good reason, and a good agency will be happy to explain it.

Where we fit

We build custom WordPress websites for UK charities, with on-site donations, WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility and support from the people who built the site. If that sounds like what you need, see how we approach charity web design, look at our work, or book a discovery call and ask us every question on this list.

Questions charities ask