How to choose a web developer in Uganda

Why it goes wrong

You are buying something you cannot inspect, from someone whose work you cannot judge, at a price you have nothing to compare with. So most people pick whoever is cheapest, or whoever a friend mentioned.

You do not need to understand the technology to choose well. Nearly every failed project shows its problems in the first conversation, in plain language, if you ask a few direct questions and listen to how they are answered.

The four questions

Whose name will the domain and hosting be in? The right answer is yours, immediately and without discussion. "We manage all that for our clients" is how the worst stories in this market start.

What exactly is included, in writing? Not a summary on a call. A list. How many pages. Whether the words are written for you or expected from you. How many photos. Whether a contact form and a Google Business Profile are included. How many rounds of changes. And what is not included.

What happens after it goes live? Ask how long faults are fixed for free, what a small change costs later, and whether you will be shown how to edit your own text. A project that ends when the money clears is not a website. It is an invoice.

Who do I call when it breaks on a Friday night? You are really asking whether there is a person, a number, and a habit of answering. Better still, ask for a past client and ask them that question.

Answers that should worry you

A promise of first place on Google. Nobody controls Google. Anyone promising rankings is either guessing or hoping you do not know. An honest developer promises the work: the right pages, a fast site, a proper Google Business Profile. Then they tell you it takes months, not days.

A price with nothing behind it. "Website - 1,200,000" tells you nothing about what you get or what will cost extra later. Vague quotes are the ones that end in arguments.

A portfolio you cannot open. Screenshots can come from anywhere. Ask for live addresses and ask which parts they did themselves. A real developer does not mind the question.

Refusing to write anything down, or asking for the full amount before starting. Around half as a deposit is normal. Everything up front is not.

And the quiet one: someone who agrees with everything you say. If you ask for something that will not work and the answer is always yes, you have hired a typist. You want the person who tells you the big rotating slider will slow the site down, and explains why.

What cheap really costs

You can get a website in Kampala for very little, and sometimes that is the right choice. A student building a portfolio may do careful work cheaply, and for a business testing whether being online matters, that is a fair first step.

What you usually get at the bottom of the market is a template filled in fast, hosted on the builder's account, the domain in their name, no writing of your own, and nobody answering by month three. The site exists. It brings nothing, because nothing was done to make it findable. Then it quietly goes offline.

Judge the price by what it must earn. Say a site costs UGX 800,000 and your average job brings in UGX 160,000. It needs five extra jobs in a year to pay for itself. Ask each developer what in their build is meant to produce those five jobs. Listen for whether the answer is about how it looks or about being found.

Freelancer, agency, or the cousin who knows computers

A good freelancer is usually the best value for a small business site. You deal directly with the person doing the work, decisions are quick, and the price shows it. The risk is that one person can fall sick, travel or take a job, and then your site has nobody.

An agency costs more and moves slower, but there is more than one person and it survives somebody leaving. That matters when the site is doing real work: an online shop, school admissions, anything where a day offline costs money.

The cousin who knows computers needs the most thought. It is cheap and it comes with goodwill. It also ends, very often, with a half-finished site you cannot chase, because you cannot charge a relative for being late or replace them without a family meeting. If you go this way, agree the same things in writing that you would with a stranger. It protects the relationship as much as the work.

Before you pay the deposit

Get the scope in a message you can read again later: what is included, the price, the date, and what happens after. WhatsApp is fine. What matters is that it exists and you both saw it.

Check they are real in the ordinary ways. A phone that answers. A Google listing. Reviews that sound like customers wrote them. Their own website loading quickly on your phone. A web developer with a slow website has told you something.

If you are unsure, start small. Five pages now, more later once it proves itself, is a better first purchase than a big project with someone you have never worked with. You risk less money and you learn how they work.