How to Hire a Web Design Company in Kenya: A Buyer's Guide

To hire a web design company in Kenya without regrets, run it like any other purchase: write down what you need, shortlist three firms you can verify, compare their proposals on the same scorecard, and sign a contract that ties payments to work you can see. The firms themselves matter less than the process. A good process protects you from a bad supplier, and it gets you a better price from a good one.

Most articles on this topic are lists of "top agencies". This guide is different. It walks you through the buying process step by step, from the first brief to the day after launch, with the questions, documents and checks that a careful business owner uses.

Step 1: Decide what you are actually buying

"A website" can mean a single page that collects WhatsApp enquiries or a full ordering system with stock, delivery zones and M-Pesa. Those are different projects with different prices, timelines and suppliers. Before you speak to anyone, put your project in one of these four boxes.

All of those figures exclude 16% VAT, which is added on top. They are starting points, not final prices. A booking or reservation system sits between a store and a full custom build, from KES 60,000 plus VAT. The point of this table is not the numbers. It is that you should know which row you are in before you ask for quotes, because a firm that builds great brochure sites may be the wrong choice for a loan portal.

If you are torn between a one-page site and something bigger, our comparison of landing pages and full business websites will help you decide. For a fuller picture of what drives price, see the website cost guide for Kenya.

Step 2: Write a one-page brief before you call anyone

A brief is the single most useful document in the whole process. Without one, every company you call will ask you the same twenty questions, guess at the answers, and send you quotes that cannot be compared. With one, you control the conversation.

Keep it to one page. It should answer:

1. Who you are. Two sentences on the business, where you operate and who your customers are.
2. What the site must achieve. Pick one main goal: phone calls, WhatsApp chats, bookings, online sales or applications. Secondary goals are fine, but name the main one.
3. Pages and features. A simple list. "Home, About, Services (6), Gallery, Contact, Blog" is enough. Mark features as must-have or nice-to-have.
4. Payments and integrations. M-Pesa Paybill or Till, card payments, WhatsApp button, Google Maps, booking calendar, email newsletter.
5. Content. Who will write the text and who will provide photos. Be honest here.
6. Budget range. A range such as "KES 30,000 to 50,000 plus VAT" saves everyone time.
7. Deadline. And why it matters, for example a trade fair, a new school term or a branch opening.
8. Examples. Two or three websites you like, with one line on what you like about each.

That is all. Agencies take a brief like this seriously because it shows you have thought about the project, and it lets them price it properly rather than padding the quote for unknowns. We have a fill-in version in our website brief template for Kenyan businesses.

Step 3: Build a shortlist you can actually verify

Google, Instagram and referrals from other business owners will give you plenty of names. The hard part is cutting them down to three. Use evidence, not adverts.

Check live sites, not screenshots

A portfolio of pretty images proves very little. Ask for links to five live websites the company built and open each one on your phone, using mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi. Does it load in a few seconds? Do the buttons work? Does the WhatsApp link open a chat? Does the contact form send? Is the copyright year current? A site that was built well two years ago and still works today tells you far more than a mock-up.

Phone a reference

Ask for two past clients you can call. Not testimonials on their website: actual phone numbers. When you call, ask three things. Did they deliver on the agreed date? What happened when something went wrong? Do you still have full control of your domain and website? The last question matters most, and the answer is usually immediate and honest.

Check the business is real

Confirm there is a registered business behind the name, a physical base (even if they work remotely), a KRA PIN on their invoices and a working phone line answered by more than one person. None of this guarantees quality, but it reduces the risk of a supplier vanishing halfway through.

Match the firm to the job

A solo designer can be a great fit for a landing page. A store with M-Pesa, stock and delivery, or a system with user logins, usually needs a team with a developer, a designer and someone who answers support calls. Our honest take on that choice is in freelancer vs web design agency in Kenya.

Watch for warning signs during these first conversations: refusal to put anything in writing, pressure to pay everything upfront, or vagueness about who will own the domain. We list the common ones in red flags when hiring a web designer.

Step 4: Score the proposals side by side

Send your brief to your three shortlisted firms and give them the same deadline, say five working days. When the proposals come back, resist the urge to jump to the price. Put them on one scorecard first.

Score each firm out of the weight for each row, add up, and only then compare prices. You will often find the cheapest proposal scores worst on scope and ownership, which is exactly where the hidden costs come from. Before you finalise, run each proposal through our website quote checklist and send the gaps back as questions.

A worked example

Say a hardware shop in Thika wants a business website with a product catalogue and a WhatsApp order button. Three quotes come back:

• Quote A: KES 15,000, "complete website", no page list, payment 100% upfront.
• Quote B: KES 35,000 plus VAT, eight pages listed, two revision rounds, content written by the client, three months of free fixes, domain registered in the shop's name.
• Quote C: KES 48,000 plus VAT, same as B but includes copywriting and product photography for 40 items.

Quote A looks cheapest but says nothing you can hold anyone to. B and C are both reasonable; the difference is whether the owner has time to write the content and photograph stock. If not, C is the better buy even though it costs more, because a website without content does not launch.

Remember to compare like with like on tax. KES 35,000 plus VAT is KES 40,600 in total. If another firm quotes a single figure, ask whether VAT is inside it or not. Our guide to VAT on web design services explains how to read these quotes.

Step 5: Contracts, ownership and handover terms that protect you

A short written agreement prevents most of the disputes we hear about. It does not need to be long or written by a lawyer, but it should exist, it should be signed by both sides, and it should cover at least these points:

• Scope: the pages, features and integrations from the proposal, attached or quoted in full.
• Timeline: phases with dates, and what happens if your content arrives late.
• Payment: amounts, due dates and what triggers each payment.
• Ownership: the domain registered in your business name, your content remaining yours, and the finished website transferring to you on final payment.
• Logins: a list of every account to be handed over at launch.
• Warranty: a period after launch during which bugs are fixed at no cost.
• Termination: what you get if the project stops early, including work done so far.

Ownership deserves special attention. The most common Kenyan horror story is not a badly designed site. It is a business that cannot change its own website, or lost its domain, because the designer registered everything in their own name and then stopped answering calls. Insist that the domain is registered to your business from day one, with your email address on the account. For .ke domains, the registry is managed by KeNIC (kenic.or.ke) and you can register through any accredited registrar, such as our sister company HostingKE.

We cover each clause in plain English in what a website development contract should include, and ownership in depth in who owns your website.

Step 6: Payment milestones and acceptance testing

Pay in stages, and tie each stage to something you can see. A fair pattern for a business website looks like this:

1. Deposit on signing to book the team's time. Often 40–50%.
2. Design approval, once you have seen and approved the homepage and one inner page design.
3. Final payment on acceptance, once the finished site has passed your checks on a staging link and before it goes live on your domain.

Larger builds such as stores and systems usually have more milestones, each linked to a working feature you can test. Avoid paying 100% upfront for anything bigger than a landing page, and avoid suppliers who insist on it. Our post on deposits and milestone payments goes through fair structures in detail.

How to test before you accept

Acceptance testing sounds technical. It is not. Give yourself two or three days with the staging site and work through this list:

• Open every page on an Android phone, an iPhone if you can borrow one, and a laptop.
• Submit every form and confirm the message arrives where it should.
• Tap every phone number, WhatsApp button and email link.
• If there is an M-Pesa checkout, make a real small payment and confirm it is recorded against the order.
• Read every word for spelling, wrong prices and outdated phone numbers.
• Search for your business name after launch and check the page title and description look right.

Write your findings in one list and send it in one message. Scattered WhatsApp voice notes over a week slow everything down and things get missed.

Step 7: After launch, support, updates and who to call

A website is not finished on launch day. Plugins need updating, hosting renews every year, a staff member leaves and their email needs removing, a price changes, Google flags a page as slow. Before you sign, know the answers to these questions:

• How long is the free fix period after launch, and what does it cover?
• After that, is support billed per hour, per request, or as a monthly plan?
• Who updates the software, and how often?
• Where are backups stored and how quickly can the site be restored?
• Who do you call if the site goes down on a Saturday?
• Can your own staff update text and photos, and will they be trained?

Make sure you also receive a handover pack at launch: every login, the domain and hosting account details, a short guide to updating content, and a note of any paid licences with renewal dates. Store it somewhere safe in the business, not only on one person's phone.

If your developer will not provide ongoing support, it is fine to use a different company for maintenance, as long as you hold all the access. That is the whole point of insisting on ownership.

A quick timeline for the whole hiring process

Done properly, hiring takes about two to three weeks before any design work begins. That can feel slow when you want the site live, but rushing this stage is how projects go wrong.

From there, a typical business website takes two to four weeks to build, depending mostly on how quickly content and approvals come back. See how long it takes to build a website for realistic timelines by project type.

Where Edgecom fits

We are a Nairobi web design and development company working remotely with businesses across Kenya since 2018. We are happy to be one of your three quotes: send us your brief and we will reply with an itemised proposal, VAT shown separately, a dated timeline and clear ownership terms. You can read about our approach on the web development service page or get in touch when your brief is ready.