Every year, Canadian businesses waste millions of dollars on web projects that go over budget, miss deadlines, and produce sites that don't perform. We see the evidence in almost every new client conversation: a $40,000 website built 18 months ago that ranks for nothing, loads in 8 seconds, and can't be updated without calling the original developer.
Here's the framework you should use when evaluating any web development partner — including us.
1. Verify the Work, Not the Portfolio
Any agency can curate a portfolio of their best work. Ask for case studies with specific outcomes: organic traffic lift, conversion rate improvement, page load time before and after. If they can't produce these numbers, their clients either didn't measure results or the results weren't worth sharing.
Better yet, find clients yourself. Use LinkedIn to identify people at companies in the portfolio, then reach out directly. Ask two questions: "Did they deliver on time and on budget?" and "Would you hire them again?"
2. Understand Their Discovery Process
A quality agency will refuse to quote a project without understanding your business. If you receive a fixed-price proposal within 24 hours of your first conversation, walk away. Proper scoping requires understanding your target users, your competitive landscape, your technical constraints, and your internal content management capabilities.
The discovery phase should produce a functional specification document you can take to another agency for a second quote. If an agency is unwilling to produce this, they're guessing.
3. Ask Who Actually Does the Work
Many agencies sell the work of their senior staff and deliver it with junior contractors. Ask directly: "Who will be coding this project?" Get names. Google them. Look at their GitHub profiles.
Also ask whether any work is subcontracted offshore. There's nothing wrong with distributed teams — we use them — but you deserve to know the actual delivery chain and what quality controls exist.
4. Understand Their Position on Ownership
When the project is complete, who owns the code? Who controls the hosting? What happens if you want to switch agencies in two years? Some agencies deliberately build on proprietary platforms or retain control of hosting accounts to create lock-in.
You should own your codebase outright, have access to all hosting credentials, and be able to hand the project to another developer without contractual obstacles.
5. Evaluate Their Approach to Performance and SEO
A beautiful website that loads in 6 seconds and ranks for nothing is an expensive brochure. Ask about:
- Core Web Vitals: What LCP, FID, and CLS scores do they target?
- Technical SEO: Do they build semantic HTML, implement structured data, and configure canonical URLs by default?
- Hosting: Do they recommend platforms with global CDNs (Vercel, Cloudflare Pages) or shared cPanel hosting from 2008?
Any agency that can't speak fluently to these questions is not a serious technical partner.
6. Scrutinize the Maintenance Clause
The day you launch is not the day the project ends. Ask what happens when a plugin breaks six months post-launch, or when you need a new landing page for a campaign. Get pricing for ongoing maintenance in writing before you sign.
Many agencies quote low for the build and make their margin on maintenance retainers. This isn't inherently wrong, but the terms should be clear upfront.
How We Stack Up
Cleva IT builds on Next.js and Tailwind CSS — open standards you can hand to any competent developer. We deliver full code ownership, transfer all hosting credentials, and document everything. Our proposals follow a paid discovery phase for projects over $15,000.
We're not the cheapest option in Canada and we don't aim to be. If you want a quote from us and three competitors, we'll help you write the RFP brief. A better-informed client gets a better project.