How to Choose a Web Designer in Uganda: 8 Questions Before You Pay

Every week someone in Kampala sends us a website they paid for and cannot log into. The design is usually fine. The damage was done before the first invoice, in the few minutes they spent choosing who to hire.

Most owners pick a designer the way they pick a phone repairer: on a recommendation, a price and a WhatsApp number. That works for a cracked screen. A website is different, because the person who builds it can end up holding your domain, your hosting, your company email and the only copy of your files. All of it is checkable before money changes hands.

Three kinds of web designer in Uganda, and what each one charges

The market splits into three groups, and the price gap between them tracks what you actually get.

Template sellers charge 300,000 to 600,000 UGX. They buy a ready-made theme, drop your logo and text into it, and hand over a site in two days. It looks like the theme and it loads slowly unless someone compresses the images, but for a business that needs a page, a map and a phone number, it is not a scam.

Freelancers charge 400,000 to 1,200,000 UGX for custom work. You get a real design and one person who answers your calls, and you carry the risk of that person's calendar. When they take a full-time job abroad, your site goes quiet with them.

Agencies charge 1,500,000 to 5,000,000 UGX and above. You are buying a team that survives one person leaving, a written scope, and someone to call when the site breaks at 8am. You are also paying for the office and the account manager.

We build five-page sites for a flat 600,000 UGX one-time, with hosting, SSL and company email included for the first twelve months. Every level is listed on our pricing page with no discovery fee. That transparency matters more than the number, because a quote you cannot compare to anything else is not a quote.

Ask these eight questions before you pay a deposit

Put the answers in the WhatsApp thread. A designer who will not answer these in writing is telling you something.

1. Which live sites have you built, and can I open one on my phone right now? Screenshots prove nothing, so ask for three URLs and load them on mobile data.
2. Who registers the domain, and in whose name? It should be your company, with the renewal notice going to an email address you control.
3. Whose hosting account will the site live in? If the answer is mine, you are renting a website rather than owning one.
4. What is included in the price, and what costs extra later? Ask for the list: pages, revisions, images, text, hosting, SSL, company email, the WhatsApp button, Google Business Profile setup.
5. What happens after launch? Ask how many days of free bug fixing you get, and what the monthly cost is from month two.
6. How do you want to be paid? Staged payments are standard in Kampala. All of it up front is not.
7. Who writes the text on the pages? If the answer is you, the site will sit half-finished for months. Budget for content or pay someone to write it.
8. If we stop working together, what do I take with me? The answer should be the domain, the files, the database and the email accounts, with the passwords changed into your name.

Get the ownership terms in writing

Uganda has plenty of businesses whose website lives in someone else's account. It starts with goodwill: the designer already had hosting, so the site went there. Two years later he has moved on, the renewal invoice goes to an email nobody reads, and the owner finds out the domain is registered in the designer's name.

Three lines in the agreement prevent that. The domain is registered in your name and renewed by you. The hosting account is in your name with the designer added as a user. On final payment, every credential is handed over and changed. If a designer refuses those lines, hire someone else. We covered the same trap in the mistakes owners make after paying for a website.

How to test any designer in fifteen minutes, for free

You do not need references for this part. Run three checks on the sites the designer hands you.

1. Run PageSpeed Insights on the last three client sites, mobile tab only. A score below 50 means you will inherit slow pages and weak rankings.
2. Load one of those sites on your phone over mobile data and count the seconds. If their portfolio opens slowly on 4G in Kampala, yours will too.
3. Send an enquiry through two of their clients' contact forms. If nobody replies, you have learned how they treat a live lead.

Then search their business name on Google. A designer who cannot rank for his own name will not rank your services either.

Five red flags that should end the conversation

• Full payment before any work starts, with no staged milestones.
• A quote with no written scope, so every extra page becomes a fresh negotiation.
• No live site they are willing to open on your phone.
• A free website offer tied to a three-year hosting or maintenance contract. Divide the contract total by 36 and the real price is usually higher than a paid build.
• Hosting, SSL and email left out of the quote, then billed monthly afterwards.

Compare the twelve-month total, not the build price

This is where a cheap quote stops being cheap. Work it out on paper. A 400,000 UGX template build plus 150,000 UGX a month for hosting, SSL and email is 2,200,000 UGX in the first year. A 600,000 UGX build with hosting free for twelve months is 600,000.

Add up three quotes on that basis and the cheapest build rarely wins. The number that matters is what the site costs you by the end of year one, when it is live, indexed and taking enquiries.

What to do this week

Ask three designers the eight questions, in writing, and note who answers all of them. Open the three live sites each one gives you, on your own phone. Then request the twelve-month total from each in a single message. That is one afternoon of work, and it is the cheapest insurance a Ugandan business can buy this year.

If you want a shortlist before you start asking, we compare web design companies in Uganda. Or skip the vetting: our web design service is 600,000 UGX one-time, everything above included, and the logins are in your name from day one.