You asked for three quotes. The first is three times the third. All three contain the words "responsive", "SEO optimised" and "admin panel". None of them contains anything you could check.
That is the normal situation, and nobody is at fault: quotes are written to be accepted, not to be compared.
This article is about what to ask so that they can be compared. It works whoever you pick in the end — including if you pick someone other than whoever gave you the nicest presentation.
Six questions
1. "Show me three sites you built that are still running."
Not screenshots. Not a portfolio page. Addresses, which you open yourself.
What you are checking: that they exist. A portfolio where half the links go to expired domains, to sites since rebuilt by someone else, or to error pages says something about what happens to their work after handover.
Ask for one built two or three years ago. A new site looks good from any firm. A three-year-old one shows whether it was built to last.
2. "What happens on the day something breaks?"
Sites break. A certificate expires, an API changes, an update snaps a form. The question is not whether, but who answers and how fast.
Concrete answers: who, on which channel, within what time, what is included and what is billed separately. Vague answer: "we are always available".
Worth asking the inverse too: what happens if the firm disappears? The good answer leads straight into the next two.
3. "Do you hold the accounts, or do I?"
There are two ways to work, and both are fine.
One: the domain, the hosting and the accounts sit with the firm that runs the site, paid out of their budget, and you settle it in a single invoice alongside maintenance. No chasing six renewals across three cards, and nothing falls over because a card expired in February.
The other: you own every account from day one and hold it directly. It costs a little more administrative attention, and that is the whole difference.
The question is not which is better — that depends on how you want to work. The question is whether you get to choose. A firm that works only one way is imposing its operating model instead of the one that suits you.
If you pick the first option, there is one condition, confirmed in writing at the start: on departure you receive everything.
4. "What do I get at handover?"
The domain, the server, the code, the payment accounts, the measurement accounts.
It is a whole list, covered separately. Briefly: what matters is less who holds them today — leaving the domain and the server with the firm that runs the site is practical and common. What matters is that they can move to you on request, and that the answer to "by what procedure" exists before you need it.
A good answer describes the procedure. An answer that cannot describe the procedure is the only worrying one.
5. "Who writes the copy?"
The copy is the words on the pages: what the home page says, the description of each service, the About page, the answers in the questions section. For a shop, add the product and category descriptions.
Almost every quote silently assumes you write it — you know your services and your prices. Almost every client assumes the firm writes it, since they are paying for "a complete site". The quote says neither.
The gap goes unnoticed because the mockup you are shown is full of filler text that reads plausibly. It looks finished.
Then: the contract is signed, the design approved, development finishes in three weeks, and the site sits unpublished for three months. Someone sits down one evening to write "About us", spends two hours, does not like what comes out, and puts it off. Eight times over. It is not laziness — writing about your own company is far harder than it looks, and the task was never on anyone's list.
Ask explicitly. There are two good answers: "we write it, it costs this much" or "you write it, here is the template and the deadline". The bad answer is the one that has not considered the question.
If the copy stays with you, settle it before signing: how many pages, roughly how many characters per page, in what file, by when, and who adjusts it if it does not fit the design.
6. "Why did you choose that?"
The most useful question, and the technical answer is not the point.
Take any element of their proposal — the platform, the hosting, the way it is administered — and ask why that one. You are looking for whether there is a reason connected to you, or whether the answer is "that is what we use for everyone". The second is not automatically wrong. But it means you are paying for a template, and the price should reflect that.
What is specific to Moldova
A few things a firm from outside will learn as it goes, on your money:
- Online payments. The contract is with a bank or a local processor, on the company's documents, and it takes time. Ask who they have worked with and how long it took last time.
- The fiscal receipt. If you sell and collect money online, the obligations to the tax service do not disappear because the sale happened on the internet. Ask how it was solved for a previous client.
- Romanian and Russian. Here that is not an option, it is the norm. Ask how the second language is administered and who translates it — not merely whether it is possible.
- Accounting. If you run 1C or something similar, ask directly whether they have built that link before, not whether it is possible. It is always possible.
- Hosting. A server in Europe is fine, and it being theirs is equally fine. It is worth knowing where it is and what runs on it, rather than finding out on the day you need it.
What is not a signal
Things that impress and predict nothing:
- Who holds the domain and the server. Leaving them with the firm that runs the site is practical and common. The signal is not who holds them, it is whether they can say how they get handed on.
- Headcount. A team of twenty can put one person on your project.
- A long portfolio. What counts is how many still run, not how many there are.
- "Ten years in the market." Ten years of repeating one mistake reads exactly like ten years of learning.
- The polished pitch. People who make pitches make pitches.
- The lowest price. A factor of three does not come from greed, it comes from what is inside the price. A cheap site you have to call someone else about in a year was not cheap.
- The highest price, equally. It is a signal only when it is explained.
The test that survives
If you have time for one thing, do this one: open a site from their portfolio and ask them why they made a particular choice on it.
Whoever built something remembers why. Whoever assembled a template has nothing to remember, and it is audible immediately.