You've decided to build a new website or web application. You've looked at a few agencies in Kathmandu. Their portfolios all look polished. Their prices all sound "reasonable." Everyone promises "premium quality" and "dedicated support."
Six months later, many business owners in Nepal end up in the same place: a half-finished website, a developer who stopped replying to emails, and a growing sense that they've been had.
This doesn't have to happen to you. The difference between a great web development engagement and a nightmare one usually comes down to the questions you didn't ask before signing. Below are nine questions that will separate real agencies from opportunists in about 30 minutes of conversation — before you sign anything.
Before You Start: Get Clear on What You Actually Need
Most hiring disasters start long before the first meeting with an agency. They start with a vague idea of what you want.
"I need a website" is not a brief. Is it a 5-page brochure site to replace your outdated one? An e-commerce store to start selling online? A booking system for your clinic? A custom ERP to digitize your operations? Each of these is a completely different project requiring different skills, different budgets, and different agencies.
Before you talk to anyone, write down in plain language:
- What business problem does this website solve? (e.g., "customers can't find our hours and call us instead," "we can't sell online," "our admin team spends 4 hours/day on manual data entry")
- Who is the target user? (existing customers, new leads, internal staff, suppliers)
- What does success look like 12 months after launch? (more leads, more sales, less manual work, better brand perception)
- What's your honest budget range? (not "I want it cheap" — an actual number or range you're willing to spend)
- What's your hard deadline? (real deadline tied to business event vs wishful thinking)
Agencies that ask these questions in the first meeting are already better than those that don't.
Now, the nine questions.
Question 1: "Can I see live websites you've built in the last 12 months?"
The word "live" is doing a lot of work in that sentence.
Agency portfolios are full of beautiful mockups, Figma prototypes, and case study pages of projects that either never launched or have since been replaced. You want URLs you can visit, right now, on your phone.
When you get the URLs, actually visit them:
- Does the site load quickly? (use PageSpeed Insights if you want a proper score)
- Does it work on mobile?
- Is it a real business with real customers, or a portfolio filler?
- Does the bottom of the page say "Website by [Agency Name]"? If yes, that's a good sign — agencies who stand behind their work credit themselves publicly.
Red flag: "We can't share live URLs due to NDAs." While some NDAs are real, any agency with zero shareable live projects is suspicious.
Question 2: "Who specifically will work on my project?"
Many Kathmandu agencies operate a "sales team, then junior developer" pattern. The senior person charms you during the pitch, then the project gets dumped on a 2-month intern who's learning on your dime.
Ask directly:
- Who will write the code?
- Who will design the UI?
- Who is my point of contact?
- Can I meet them before signing?
A healthy agency will happily introduce you to the actual team. If you're told "we'll assign someone after you sign," that's a warning sign.
Pro tip: Ask about the lead developer's personal portfolio or GitHub account. Real senior developers have a public track record. Fake ones don't.
Question 3: "What's your process? Walk me through a recent project from kickoff to launch."
The answer reveals whether they have a real process or are making it up as they go.
A real answer sounds like: "We start with a 1-week discovery phase where we map requirements. Then 2 weeks of UX wireframes and design reviews. Then 4–6 weeks of development in 2-week sprints with weekly demos. Then 1 week of QA and client training before launch."
A fake answer sounds like: "We understand your requirements and build the site and launch it. Our process is very flexible."
Flexibility is not a process. It's the absence of one.
Ask for: a sample project timeline, what you're expected to deliver at each phase, and what happens if one side misses a deadline.
Question 4: "How do you handle change requests during the project?"
This is where most projects fall apart — and where agencies either protect you or exploit you.
You will want changes mid-project. Business priorities shift. You'll see the design and realize you need something different. A stakeholder you forgot about will weigh in.
Good agencies have a clear process: small tweaks are included, big changes require a change order with updated scope and pricing. They document this in writing before you sign.
Bad agencies say "sure, no problem, we're flexible" — and then either (a) charge you 3x what the change should cost, or (b) accept the change silently and skip something else to compensate, producing a worse final product.
Ask specifically: "If halfway through the project I want to add a new major feature, what's your process and how does it affect timeline and cost?"
Question 5: "Who owns the code, the domain, and the hosting after launch?"
This is the single most important legal question, and the one most business owners forget to ask.
There's an old scam in the Kathmandu web development scene: the agency registers your domain under their company account, hosts your site on their server, and holds the credentials hostage. When you try to leave, suddenly "migration fees" appear. Sometimes they quietly keep ownership even after you've "paid in full."
The correct answer: you own the domain (registered in your company's name), you own the hosting account (or the agency transfers credentials at launch), and you own the code (including the complete source files and any third-party licenses).
If any of these are ambiguous in the contract, don't sign.
What to do: Get this in writing. Literally a clause in the contract that says "Upon final payment, Client receives full ownership of: domain, source code, hosting access, and all third-party account credentials."
Question 6: "What happens after launch?"
The website launch is not the end of the project. It's the start of the relationship.
Websites break. Browsers update and things stop working. Plugins have security vulnerabilities. Content needs to be updated. Forms need to be tested. Analytics need to be reviewed.
A good agency offers:
- A defined post-launch support window (typically 30–90 days included in the original quote)
- An optional maintenance retainer afterward (monthly fee for ongoing updates, security patches, and minor changes)
- Clear SLAs: how fast will they respond if something breaks?
A bad agency says "we offer support" without specifics. Which means: when your site breaks at 11 PM before a big sales launch, nobody picks up the phone.
Ask for: written SLAs with response time guarantees. What's their target response time for critical issues (site down) vs non-critical (small content update)?
Question 7: "Have you worked with businesses in my industry or at my scale?"
Building a website for a 3-person legal firm is different from building one for a 300-person manufacturing company. Building an e-commerce store for a fashion brand is different from one for a pharmacy with complex inventory.
Industry experience matters less than you might think — good developers can build for any industry after proper discovery. But scale experience matters a lot.
An agency that's only built small brochure sites will struggle with your 50,000-product e-commerce store. An agency used to complex platforms might over-engineer your simple 5-page site and charge you accordingly.
Ask: "Have you built something of similar complexity to what I'm describing? How did that project go?"
Listen for honest answers vs. marketing speak.
Question 8: "What's your pricing structure and what's explicitly NOT included?"
Most disputes in Kathmandu web development come from scope mismatch. The client thought X was included; the agency thought X was a separate add-on.
A professional quote should be itemized:
- Discovery & strategy: NPR X
- UX/UI design: NPR X
- Frontend development: NPR X
- Backend development: NPR X
- Content migration: NPR X
- QA and launch: NPR X
- Post-launch support (30 days): NPR X
It should also explicitly list what's not included:
- Copywriting
- Product photography
- Translation services
- Email marketing setup
- SEO content creation
- Training sessions beyond X hours
- Third-party service fees (payment gateways, SMS, etc.)
If you get a single line-item quote — "Full website: NPR 1,50,000" — ask for a breakdown. Agencies refusing to itemize are usually hiding something.
For a detailed breakdown of what realistic pricing actually looks like in Nepal, our pricing guide for 2026 covers every tier.
Question 9: "Can you give me 3 references from past clients I can actually call?"
This is the question that separates the best 10% of agencies from everyone else.
Most agencies have testimonials on their website. Most of those testimonials are genuine, but they're cherry-picked. What you want is a phone call with a real client — not the client the agency hand-picked, but one you choose from their full list.
What to ask references:
- Was the final project cost within 10% of the original quote?
- Did delivery match the promised timeline?
- How did they handle problems that came up mid-project?
- How responsive are they now, post-launch?
- Would you hire them again?
- What's one thing you wish you'd known before signing?
That last question produces the most honest answers.
Agencies that refuse to share references — or give you only their 2–3 friendliest relationships — probably don't have many happy clients. Agencies that enthusiastically share many references have confidence in their work.
The Contract Red Flags
After you've asked the nine questions and picked a favorite, read the contract carefully before signing. Watch out for:
"Best effort" timelines. Real timelines are dates. "We'll aim to deliver in 8–10 weeks" is not a timeline — it's a hope.
Vague scope language. "Including all reasonable revisions" is meaningless. "Including up to 3 rounds of design revisions" is clear.
Payment terms weighted to the front. A 70% upfront, 30% on delivery split is reasonable. A 100% upfront payment is a red flag — the agency has zero incentive to finish.
Auto-renewal clauses. Some agencies slip in clauses that convert your project into an ongoing monthly contract you have to cancel to escape. Read every clause.
IP ownership language. Watch for phrases like "agency retains intellectual property rights to the underlying code." That usually means they can resell your code to competitors. Reject this.
Jurisdiction and dispute clauses. Make sure any dispute would be handled under Nepali law in a Nepali court — not an arbitrary international forum that makes legal action impractical.
How Much Should You Trust the First Meeting?
Here's a rough test: if the first meeting is mostly the agency telling you how amazing they are, it's a sales pitch. If the first meeting is mostly them asking you questions about your business, it's a discovery.
You want discovery.
Good agencies spend 60–70% of the first meeting asking about you: your business, your customers, your goals, your constraints. They're diagnosing before prescribing. Agencies that immediately launch into "here's what we do" and "here's our pricing" are treating you as a transaction, not a partnership.
The Shortlist Approach
Rather than picking the first agency you meet, run a simple process:
- Identify 3–5 candidate agencies (from referrals, Clutch, GoodFirms, or local networks)
- 30-minute intro call with each — use the nine questions above
- Request detailed proposals from the top 2–3
- Reference-check your final 2
- Make a decision
This takes 2–3 weeks of your time upfront but saves you 6 months of pain later.
Final Thought
The cheapest agency almost always costs the most. Not because their quote is high — but because cheap quotes come with cut corners, missed deadlines, and platforms that break right when your business is growing.
Look for agencies that answer questions directly, document processes in writing, stand behind their work with references, and treat the engagement as a partnership rather than a transaction. They exist in Kathmandu. You just have to ask the right questions to find them.
At Nexorith Nepal, we welcome every one of these questions in our discovery calls — we'd rather lose an ill-fit project than sign one that won't work out. Book a free 30-minute consultation to talk through your project requirements. Even if we're not the right fit, we'll point you toward someone who is.
