Five checks before money moves, and the most important one costs ₹1,000 and takes ten minutes: register the domain yourself, in your own account, before you hire anyone. That single step converts the worst realistic outcome from losing your business name to losing a modest advance.
Check 1: Register the domain yourself first
Do this before you shortlist anyone. Create an account at any established registrar with your own email, buy the name, turn on auto-renew, confirm the saved card is current, and put the expiry date in your calendar with a 30-day reminder.
Cost: ₹700–1,200 a year. Time: ten minutes.
Then give the developer DNS access, not the account — registrars support adding a user or sharing DNS without handing over ownership. Most buyers don’t know this is possible, which is how domains end up in vendor accounts by default.
Why this ranks first: a developer who goes quiet holding your domain costs you your business name, your email, and every card, listing and link pointing at you. One who goes quiet without it costs you an advance. The full reasoning.
Check 2: Cap the advance at 20–30%
| Advance | If they vanish on a ₹25,000 project |
|---|---|
| 50% | ₹12,500 gone |
| 30% | ₹7,500 gone |
| 20% | ₹5,000 gone |
Same person, same risk, very different exposure — and the only variable you controlled was one sentence.
A developer confident of being paid on delivery doesn’t need half. Asking for 30% is standard enough that it isn’t awkward, and their reaction tells you something. Note also that refund policies are near-universally absent from small website offers here, so plan on bounding the loss rather than recovering it. How much advance is safe.
Check 3: Tie the balance to stages you can open
Not to dates, and not to descriptions:
| Stage | Payment | What you must be able to see |
|---|---|---|
| Confirmation | 30% | Written scope, invoice, domain in your name |
| Design approved | 30% | A home page you’ve said yes to |
| Build complete | 30% | Every page viewable on a staging link, on your own phone |
| Live and checked | 10% | Live on your domain, forms tested, logins received |
Two effects. Your exposure at any moment is one stage rather than the whole project. And the small final instalment means nobody deadlocks at the end — ten percent isn’t worth a three-week standoff to either side.
Check 4: Get the deadline in writing, with a definition of done
“Bas ho jayega” isn’t a deadline. Neither is “two to three weeks.” A real one has four parts:
- A date per phase, not just a final date — design, build, revisions, go-live
- A definition of “live”: on my domain, contact form tested and reaching my inbox, WhatsApp button working with the country code, and all three logins handed to me
- Acknowledgement that late content from your side extends the timeline — fair to both, and it removes their best excuse when your content was on time
- A staging link from the first build day, so a slip is visible in week two rather than week eight
One buyer’s public account describes a site roughly half finished at day forty against a much shorter promise. A phase-by-phase schedule is what makes that visible early instead of at the end. What a real deadline looks like.
Check 5: Verify before you pay, not after
Thirty minutes total:
- Search their exact name plus “complaint”, and read their one- and two-star reviews. Don’t rely on the average — NCR ratings cluster between 4.7 and 4.9 across large review counts, including firms with complaint histories elsewhere.
- Open three sites they’ve built and test the contact forms. Real businesses, live addresses, working forms.
- Ask for one client in a similar business you can phone, and ask that client: “What happened after you paid in full?”
- Send a message at an odd hour before paying. Reply speed while they’re courting you is your best available forecast of reply speed afterwards.
- Ask for a GST invoice, and check the account holder name your UPI app displays matches the invoiced firm before confirming payment.
That last detail is small and it’s the one every later claim turns on.
The warning signs that matter
| Signal | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Advance of half or more | Your loss if they vanish |
| Payment to a personal account, no invoice | Your ability to recover anything |
| Resistance on domain ownership | Your ability to leave at all |
| Instant price with no questions | What you’ll actually receive |
| No written scope | Who’s right in any dispute |
| Guaranteed first-page rankings | Whether anything said is reliable |
| Slow or vague replies before you’ve paid | Your next four weeks |
Not warning signs: working from home, being young, or being inexpensive. None correlates with delivery — the nine signals in full.
The one message that does all five checks
Before I transfer the advance, please confirm in writing: the domain will be registered in my name and account; these pages [named list]; [number] revision rounds; live by [date], where live means on my domain with the contact form tested and all logins handed to me; year-two cost for domain and hosting is ₹[amount]. Payment 30% now, then on design approval, on all pages being viewable on a staging link, and 10% on go-live. Please also send the GST invoice, and one client in a similar business I could speak to.
Any competent developer accepts this readily — it’s fair, and it defines their obligation as clearly as yours. Resistance tells you which term they need you to give up, and that’s usually the one that matters.
After you pay: the early-warning check
Watch for these in the first fortnight, in this order: reply times lengthening, updates that describe work instead of linking to it, and a staging link promised but not delivered. All three appear before any deadline is missed, and the right action at that point is to stop the next payment rather than to chase harder. The seven signs.
What to do this week
- Register your domain in your own account today — before shortlisting anyone.
- Write your page list and one page of content.
- Search each candidate’s name plus “complaint” and test three of their live sites.
- Send the confirmation message and get a written yes before paying.
- Pay 30% against a GST invoice, checking the account holder name first.
If you want it done the certain way
You’ll get all five checks answered in writing before you pay: domain in your name, 30% advance, stage-linked balance, a phase-by-phase date with “live” defined, and a client in your trade you can phone. We’d also tell you to register the domain yourself first — with us or anyone. WhatsApp us; we reply in about five minutes between 9am and 7pm.
Related reading
- The complete guide to your first business website in Delhi NCR
- Scared of losing your advance? How to pay safely
- How much advance is safe to pay?
- Did they put your deadline in writing?
- 7 early warning signs a developer is about to vanish
- Cheated once? The safe-rebuild guide
FAQ
How much advance should I pay a website developer?
Twenty to thirty percent. A developer confident of being paid on delivery doesn’t need half, and a large advance transfers most of the risk to you before anything exists. Refund policies are rare, so bounding the loss matters more than planning to recover it.
What should I check before hiring a website developer in Noida?
Register the domain in your own account first, cap the advance at 20–30%, tie the balance to stages you can open on your phone, get a phase-by-phase deadline with “live” defined, and verify them — complaint search, three tested live sites, and one callable client.
How do I stop a developer from disappearing with my money?
You can’t guarantee it, but you can cap the cost. With the domain in your name, a 30% advance and stage-linked payments, a vanishing costs a modest amount and a few weeks rather than your business name and a second purchase.
What does “live” mean in a website agreement?
On your own domain, with the contact form tested and reaching your inbox, the WhatsApp button working including the country code, and the registrar, hosting and admin logins handed over to you. Define it in writing or the project can stay at 90% indefinitely.
Should I pay a developer by UPI to a personal account?
It’s weaker than paying a named firm against an invoice. Acceptable for a genuine sole freelancer below the GST threshold — but get a written bill, check the account holder name your app displays, and screenshot the confirmation.
