How to Choose a Web Development Partner in Switzerland: 12 Questions to Ask

Choose the web development partner that can tell you in writing who builds your site, who owns the code and the accounts, where it is hosted, how scope and changes are priced, and what happens after launch. Portfolio and price matter too, but these answers decide whether the website stays yours and still works in year three. This checklist is for SMEs hiring a provider in Switzerland to build or replace a company website, with or without a shop or customer portal. It compares the ways to staff the work, lists 12 questions to put to every shortlisted provider, and covers red flags, comparing offers and contract models.

Agency, freelancer, in-house or offshore: which model fits?

Pick the model by how much coordination you can take on yourself. A freelancer suits a small, well-defined site you can manage closely. An agency suits projects where design, development, content and SEO have to follow one plan. An in-house developer pays off when the site changes every week. Offshore and nearshore teams lower hourly rates but shift project management, and much of the risk, to you.

Model	Works well for	Watch out for
Local agency	Multilingual company sites, relaunches with SEO migration, sites connected to a CRM, shop or booking system	Senior people in the pitch, junior people on the project; subcontracting you were not told about
Freelancer	Small sites with a clear brief; extending a site the freelancer already knows	One person means holidays, illness and a full calendar stop the work; limited design or SEO depth
In-house developer	Sites and web apps that change weekly; companies with a product team	Salary plus tools, hosting and security on-call; one hire rarely covers design, SEO and development
Offshore or nearshore team	Larger builds with a detailed specification and a product owner on your side	Time zones, language, less familiarity with Swiss rules (FADP, consent for email marketing, VAT) and with four-language content

Many companies combine models: an agency builds, and an in-house marketer runs the CMS afterwards.

Which 12 questions should you ask before you sign?

Ask about ownership, people, scope, the CMS, languages, hosting and data, security, accessibility, SEO migration, maintenance, handover and references. Ask for the answers in the proposal or the contract, not only in a call. A provider who has done this before can answer most of them in a few lines. Vague answers on ownership, redirects and maintenance are the ones that cost money later.

1. Who owns the code, the design files, the domain and the accounts?

When employees write software as part of their job, the employer alone may exercise the rights of use (Art. 17 of the Swiss Copyright Act, CopA). That rule covers employment. It does not cover a contract with an agency or a freelancer, and buying a copy of a work does not transfer the right to exploit it (Art. 16 para. 3 CopA). The contract should therefore assign the rights to the custom code and design, or grant you a broad license, and list what remains licensed from third parties: themes, plugins, fonts, stock images. Register the domain, hosting, analytics, Google Search Console and Google Business Profile to your company and add the provider as a user.

2. Who will actually build it?

Ask for the names and roles on your project: project lead, designer, developer, and whoever writes or translates the content. Ask whether any part is subcontracted, to whom and in which country. Meet the person who will write the code before you sign. If the answer is “we’ll staff it after kickoff”, your timeline depends on someone who hasn’t been hired yet.

3. How is scope fixed, and how are changes priced?

A usable scope lists page templates, features and integrations (forms, CRM, newsletter, booking, shop), languages, who delivers text and images, and the number of review rounds. Changes should follow a written process: a short estimate, your approval, then the work. Ask for the hourly or daily rate that applies to changes so every request has a known price.

4. Which CMS do you propose, and why this one for us?

WordPress, a headless CMS, a Git-based setup or a hosted site builder can each be the right answer. Fit decides: who edits the site and how often, whether content needs structured fields (products, locations, team members), license costs and how upgrades are done. Ask how many third-party plugins the site will depend on and who updates them. A CMS your team can’t use ends with the agency editing every page.

5. How will you handle Italian, German, French and English?

Google recommends a separate URL for each language version, connected with hreflang annotations, and advises against redirecting visitors automatically by language or IP address. Ask how the provider sets up localized URLs, how the language switch finds the matching page and who translates. Google determines a page’s language from its visible text, so each version has to be written properly, ideally adapted by someone who writes in that language.

6. Where is the site hosted, and where does form data go?

The revised Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), in force since 1 September 2023, allows personal data to go abroad to countries the Federal Council recognizes as adequate, or with safeguards such as approved standard contractual clauses (Art. 16 FADP). Ask where hosting, backups, form submissions, analytics and email sending are located, and which of these services process personal data on your behalf (Art. 9 FADP). You need that list for your privacy notice (Art. 19 FADP).

7. How do you handle security, and who responds to an incident?

Ask how and how often updates to the CMS, plugins and server are applied, whether admin accounts use two-factor authentication, where backups are stored and when a restore was last tested, and how forms are protected against spam. Then ask who you call if the site is compromised. A data security breach likely to cause a high risk must be reported to the FDPIC as quickly as possible (Art. 24 FADP), so the response plan can’t start with looking for a phone number.

8. Which accessibility level do you build to, and how do you test it?

The practical target is WCAG 2.2 level AA, the W3C standard published in October 2023. If you sell online to consumers in the EU, check whether the European Accessibility Act, which has applied to e-commerce services since 28 June 2025, covers you. Ask how the provider tests: automated tools catch only part of the issues, so the plan should include keyboard navigation, focus order, contrast and screen-reader checks on real templates.

9. How will you protect our search rankings during the relaunch?

A relaunch that changes URLs needs a redirect map: every old URL with traffic or links points to its closest new equivalent with a permanent (301 or 308) redirect. Google’s guidance is to keep those redirects for at least a year and not to send everything to the homepage. Ask who builds the URL inventory, who tests the redirects before launch and who watches Search Console afterwards. If a relaunch proposal doesn’t mention redirects, add them to the scope.

10. What does maintenance include after launch?

Get the terms in writing: which updates are included and how often, monitoring and backups, response times for outages and for small requests, hours of changes included, the rate for extra work and the notice period. “Support included” without these details means nobody has agreed what support is.

11. What will we receive at handover?

At minimum: admin access to every system, the source code in a repository you control, a list of third-party services with renewal dates and costs, deployment and backup instructions, and a short guide for your editors. For custom functionality, add a description of the architecture and the data model. This documentation is what lets you change provider without starting over.

12. Which references can we call?

Ask for two or three clients with a comparable project, ideally one launched more than a year ago, and call them. Ask what went wrong and how it was handled, and whether they would hire the provider again. Look at the live sites, not only at screenshots.

What are the red flags in a web agency’s offer?

The serious red flags concern control and vagueness: accounts in the provider’s name, no written scope, promises nobody can keep and no plan for the old site’s URLs. Each one can be fixed in negotiation. Several together usually mean the provider is selling the build and leaving the risk with you.

• The domain, hosting or analytics account is registered to the provider “to keep things simple”.
• A price with no list of templates, features or languages, or “unlimited revisions”.
• A proprietary CMS with no content export and no way to move the site.
• A relaunch offer without a redirect plan.
• Guaranteed first-page rankings or guaranteed mentions in ChatGPT answers. Nobody controls either; our explainer on GEO covers what can be influenced.
• No named team, or a team that changes after signing.
• Full payment upfront, or a final payment that isn’t tied to acceptance.
• A maintenance line without hours, response times or a notice period.

How do you compare offers that look nothing alike?

Put every offer into the same grid before you look at the totals. Separate one-off from recurring costs, add three years of hosting, licenses and maintenance, and check that each offer covers the same templates, languages, integrations and migration work. The cheapest offer often excludes content, redirects or maintenance, which you then buy separately.

Line up	Why it matters
Scope: templates, features, integrations, languages	Offers priced on different scopes can’t be compared
Content: who writes, translates and uploads it	Often the largest hidden cost on a four-language site
SEO migration and redirects	Missing from many relaunch offers
One-off and recurring costs over three years	Hosting, licenses, plugins and maintenance add up
VAT	Check whether prices include the 8.1% standard rate
Rate for changes	Sets the cost of every request after launch
Payment schedule and acceptance	Ties payments to delivered, tested work
Ownership and handover clauses	Decide whether you can switch provider later

For the ranges Swiss agencies publish and the main cost drivers, see how much a business website costs in Switzerland.

Fixed price, time and materials or phased: which contract model fits?

Fixed price fits a scope you can describe completely today. Time and materials fits work that will change as you learn, such as a web application or ongoing optimization. A phased contract fits most company websites with integrations: a fixed-price discovery, then fixed-price or capped phases, so you commit to each step only after the previous one has produced a clear plan.

Model	How it works	Good for	Risk to manage
Fixed price	Agreed scope for an agreed amount	Company sites and relaunches with a clear sitemap	Scope disputes, risk padding in the price, change requests
Time and materials	You pay the hours worked, often with a monthly cap	Web apps, continuous improvement, unclear requirements	Budget control; needs an engaged product owner on your side
Phased (milestones)	Discovery first, then each phase priced and approved separately	Multilingual relaunches, sites with integrations, portals	Each phase needs acceptance criteria

The Swiss Code of Obligations adds a legal angle. A fixed-price build tends to be a contract for work (Art. 363 CO), where an exact price agreed in advance generally binds the contractor even if the work takes longer (Art. 373 CO). Ongoing time-and-materials services are closer to a mandate (Art. 394 CO), which either party can end at any time (Art. 404 CO). How a specific IT contract is classified depends on its content, so have important contracts reviewed.

Do directories and reviews tell you anything?

They help you build a shortlist, not make the decision. Directories such as Clutch and Sortlist, Google reviews and local business listings show who is active and what clients say. Read the text of the reviews, check dates and project types, and confirm the company in the commercial register through Zefix. Then decide with the 12 questions and a reference call.

A rating says little about fit: five stars for a one-page site tell you nothing about a four-language relaunch with a CRM integration. Look for reviews that describe projects like yours and mention how problems were handled.

How Sensaria answers these questions

Put the same 12 questions to us. After a short discovery we send a fixed-price or phased proposal that states scope, team, hosting and handover. Sites we have built show how we treat the unglamorous parts: on InboxRatio, automated tests enforce the length and uniqueness of every page title and meta description, and an internal-link audit runs before each production build.

Planning a new company website or a relaunch? See how we approach website development, or ask for a proposal.