Yes, it’s normal — lead marketplaces sell the same enquiry to several vendors at once, which is why one form produces a burst of calls within minutes. That burst is annoying, and it’s also the fastest comparison opportunity you’ll get, if you handle it deliberately.
The moment it happens
I filled one Justdial form and five companies called me — is that normal? The first call arrives before you’ve closed the browser tab. By evening you’ve had six, three have sent WhatsApp messages, and two have already quoted a price without asking what you need.
The instinct is to stop answering. Understandable, and it wastes what you just paid for with your phone number.
What’s actually happening
Your enquiry is a product. Marketplaces charge vendors for access to it, and the same details go to multiple businesses, sometimes more than five. Consequences worth knowing:
Speed is the vendor’s main strategy, not quality. Whoever calls first often wins, so the calls come fast and the pitching starts before diagnosis. A vendor who opens with a price before asking what you need is optimising for speed, not fit.
The calls continue for weeks. Vendors who paid for the lead will follow up repeatedly. This isn’t personal.
They’re all working from the same three lines you typed. Nobody knows what you actually need, so the quotes will be guesses at wildly different price points — which then makes them impossible to compare.
Turning the swarm into a shortlist
You have five vendors on the phone in one day, which would otherwise take a fortnight to arrange. Use it.
Send all of them the same written brief. One paragraph: what your business does, how many pages, whether you need to take payments or bookings, whether you have your own text and photos, and your city. Identical inputs are the only way to get comparable quotes.
Ask all of them the same four questions, in writing:
- Final price including GST, and what’s excluded
- Delivery date, and can you put it in writing
- Whose name will the domain be registered in
- What will I pay in year two
Then judge the replies, not the calls. Who answered in writing? Who answered all four? Who dodged the ownership question? This tells you far more than the phone manner that got them your attention first.
| Vendor behaviour | What it suggests |
|---|---|
| Quotes a price before asking what you need | Selling a package, not solving your problem |
| Answers all four questions in writing | Organised; likely to communicate the same way mid-project |
| Avoids the domain-ownership question | Worth pressing before paying anything |
| Pushes hard for a same-day decision | Urgency is theirs, not yours |
| Asks about your content and photos | Understands where projects actually stall |
Managing the noise
- Reply once, in writing, to all of them. It converts six phone conversations into a comparable thread you can re-read.
- Say “I’ll decide by [date]” and mean it. Most follow-up pressure fades when there’s a stated timeline.
- Don’t negotiate on the first call. Prices quoted before scope is understood aren’t real prices.
- Tell the ones you’ve ruled out. A clear no ends the calls faster than silence.
If the volume is genuinely unmanageable, the alternative next time is to skip the marketplace and approach three vendors directly — through a referral, a Maps search where you check the work, or someone whose live client sites you’ve seen.
What to do this week
- Write the one-paragraph brief and send the same text to everyone who called.
- Send the four questions in writing and wait for written answers.
- Give yourself a decision date and tell them.
- Rule out anyone who won’t confirm domain ownership in your name.
- Ask your two finalists for four live client URLs before deciding.
If you want it done the certain way
We publish our prices, so you can compare us without a phone call — the price on the page is the price on the bill, the date is written with a refund behind it, and the domain stays in your name. If another vendor from that list answers all four questions clearly and suits you better, that’s a fine outcome. WhatsApp us; we reply in about five minutes between 9am and 7pm.
Related reading
- How to compare website quotes fairly
- Why one quote is ₹5,000 and another is ₹5 lakh
- How to verify a web developer before you pay
- The complete guide to your first business website in Delhi NCR
FAQ
Why do so many companies call after one website enquiry?
Lead marketplaces sell the same enquiry to several vendors, so multiple businesses receive your number simultaneously and compete on response speed. It’s how the platform works rather than anything unusual about your enquiry.
How many website quotes should I actually collect?
Three comparable quotes against the same written brief is usually enough. Five quotes against five different assumptions is harder to use than three against one specification.
How do I stop the follow-up calls?
Reply once in writing with a decision date, and tell the vendors you’ve ruled out that you’ve gone another way. Silence tends to extend the follow-ups rather than end them.
