Last month, a plumbing company in Birmingham called me in a panic. They’d paid £8,000 for a website that took seven months to deliver, didn’t work on phones, and they couldn’t update without paying their developer £300 every time. Worse, they didn’t have access to their own domain or hosting accounts.
This isn’t rare. I see it constantly - service businesses trapped in expensive relationships with developers who deliver poor work, miss deadlines, and hold their clients’ websites hostage.
Here’s how to spot the warning signs, protect yourself, and escape if you’re already stuck.
Sign 1: Your Site Is Painfully Slow
Load your website on your phone right now. If it takes more than 3-4 seconds to become usable, you have a problem.
Why this matters: Google’s research shows 53% of mobile visitors abandon sites that take longer than three seconds to load. You’re literally losing half your potential customers before they see your content.
What bad developers do:
- Use massive, unoptimised images (5MB photos when 200KB would work)
- Load unnecessary JavaScript libraries (jQuery for simple tasks, entire frameworks for basic functionality)
- Don’t use browser caching or compression
- Host images on slow servers or use cheap hosting that can’t handle traffic
- Ignore mobile performance entirely
How to check:
- Open Google PageSpeed Insights
- Enter your website URL
- Check both mobile and desktop scores
If your mobile score is below 50, your developer has done substandard work. Scores below 30 indicate serious technical problems.
What to ask your developer:
“Can you explain why our PageSpeed score is [X] and what you’ll do to improve it?”
A good developer will give specific technical answers: “We need to implement lazy loading for images, defer non-critical JavaScript, and optimise your hero image.” A bad developer will make excuses: “PageSpeed doesn’t matter,” “That’s just how websites are,” or “It would cost extra to fix that.”
Sign 2: It Doesn’t Work on Mobile (Or Looks Terrible)
60% of UK web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site isn’t designed for phones first, you’re ignoring your largest audience.
What bad developers do:
- Design for desktop and hope it “sort of works” on mobile
- Use fixed pixel widths that break on small screens
- Make buttons too small to tap accurately
- Hide important content off-screen
- Create navigation that’s impossible to use with thumbs
How to check:
Pull out your phone right now and try to:
- Find your phone number or contact form (should take under 10 seconds)
- Tap all your navigation menu items (can you hit them accurately?)
- Fill out your contact form if you have one (is the keyboard covering the fields?)
- Check if images and text are readable without zooming
- Test on both portrait and landscape orientation
If any of these are frustrating, your site has problems.
What to ask your developer:
“Can you show me the mobile testing you did before launch?”
A good developer will show you screenshots from multiple devices, explain their responsive design approach, and demonstrate that they tested on real phones. A bad developer will say “It looks fine on my screen” (on their desktop) or “Just turn your phone sideways.”
Sign 3: You Can’t Update Your Own Content
You should be able to change your opening hours, update service descriptions, and add team photos without paying a developer hundreds of pounds.
What bad developers do:
- Hard-code all content directly into the website files
- Create sites that require technical knowledge to update
- Don’t provide a content management system (CMS)
- Or provide a CMS but make it so complex you can’t use it
- Charge £200-500 for minor text changes that should take five minutes
Why they do this: It creates recurring revenue. If you can’t update your site yourself, you have to keep paying them. Some developers make more from small updates than from building sites.
How to check:
Ask yourself:
- Can I log into a dashboard and change text, images, or prices?
- If I have a CMS, can I actually figure out how to use it?
- Do I have to contact my developer for simple changes?
- Has my developer actually shown me how to update content?
What to ask your developer:
“Can you show me how to update [specific content] myself?”
A good developer will either demonstrate a simple CMS or explain why certain content should stay static (for technical or brand consistency reasons). A bad developer will discourage you from learning or make it seem more complicated than it is.
Sign 4: You Don’t Have Access to Your Own Assets
This is the biggest red flag of all. If your developer won’t give you access to your domain registrar, hosting account, and website files, they’re holding your business hostage.
What bad developers do:
- Register your domain in their own name or company account
- Set up hosting under their credentials with no way for you to access it
- Refuse to provide login details “for security reasons”
- Make you go through them for any changes to DNS, email, or hosting
- Threaten to take your site down if you try to leave
Why this is dangerous:
If the relationship sours, you’re stuck. I’ve seen developers:
- Demand thousands of pounds to “release” a website the client already paid for
- Take sites offline during disputes
- Hold domains hostage when clients try to move to someone else
- Delete websites when clients stop paying monthly fees
You cannot run a business this way. Imagine if your accountant “owned” your financial records and you had to pay them to access your own bank statements.
What you should have access to:
- Domain registrar - Where your domain name is registered (Namecheap, GoDaddy, etc.)
- Hosting account - Where your website files live (Vercel, Netlify, traditional hosting)
- Website source code - The actual files that make up your site
- Email hosting - If your email is connected to your domain
- Analytics - Google Analytics, Google Search Console, etc.
How to check:
Ask your developer: “Can you provide me with login credentials for our domain, hosting, and website files?”
A good developer will say yes immediately and explain what each account is for. They might offer to walk you through what you’re getting. A bad developer will make excuses: “You don’t need that,” “It’s too technical,” “That could break the site,” or “That’s not how we work.”
What to ask your developer:
“I need login details for our domain registrar, hosting account, and FTP/Git access to our website files. Can you email those to me this week?”
If they refuse or make excuses, start planning your exit immediately.
Sign 5: Deadlines Are Suggestions, Not Commitments
Your website was supposed to launch in 6 weeks. It’s been 6 months and you’re still waiting.
What bad developers do:
- Underestimate timelines to win the project
- Take on too many clients and can’t keep up
- Miss deadlines without communication or apology
- Reschedule calls repeatedly
- Go silent for weeks at a time
- Deliver half-finished work and call it “Phase 1”
Why this matters: Every week your site isn’t live, you’re losing business. If you’re a service company spending £2,000/month on Google Ads with nowhere to send traffic, your developer’s delays are costing you thousands in wasted marketing spend.
How to check:
Look at your email history:
- How many deadlines have been missed?
- How often does your developer initiate communication?
- When you ask for updates, how quickly do they respond?
- Are you always chasing them, or do they keep you informed?
What to ask your developer:
“What’s causing the delays, and what’s your realistic timeline for completion with specific milestones?”
A good developer will acknowledge the delay, explain what went wrong, and provide a realistic new timeline with weekly checkpoints. A bad developer will be vague: “Soon,” “A few more weeks,” “Just a couple of things left,” without specifics.
How to Escape (Step by Step)
If you’re stuck with a bad developer, here’s your exit strategy:
Step 1: Secure Your Assets (Do This First)
Before you say anything about leaving, get these credentials:
- Domain registrar login
- Hosting account access
- FTP or Git access to website files
- Google Analytics access
- Google Search Console access
- Any email hosting credentials
How to ask: “I need to add these to our company’s password manager for security compliance. Can you send login details for all our web assets?”
If they refuse, you may need legal help. In the UK, you have a legal right to assets you paid for.
Step 2: Document Everything
Before you move forward:
- Take screenshots of every page of your current site
- Export any content you can access (blog posts, images, etc.)
- Save all contracts and email communication
- Document what you’ve paid and what was promised
- Note specific problems (mobile issues, speed scores, missed deadlines)
This protects you if there’s a dispute about what was delivered versus what was promised.
Step 3: Get a Second Opinion
Before you fire your developer, have someone else review the situation. You want to know:
- Is the work as bad as you think, or are you missing something?
- Can the existing site be fixed, or does it need to be rebuilt?
- What will it cost to fix or rebuild?
- What assets can be salvaged from the current site?
Step 4: Communicate Clearly
Once you’ve decided to leave, be direct:
“This isn’t working out. I need full access to all assets (domain, hosting, files) by [specific date]. I’ll pay any outstanding invoices for work completed, but I won’t be continuing the relationship after that.”
Don’t negotiate. Don’t explain in detail. Don’t let them talk you into “one more chance.”
If they refuse to provide access:
In the UK, you can:
- Contact your domain registrar directly with proof of ownership (invoices, contracts)
- Report to Citizens Advice if you’re being held hostage
- Consult a solicitor (many offer free initial consultations)
- In extreme cases, report to Action Fraud if it constitutes theft
Step 5: Transition to a New Developer
When hiring someone new:
Ask these questions:
- “What access will I have to domain, hosting, and files?”
- “Can I see examples of PageSpeed scores for sites you’ve built?”
- “How do you handle mobile testing?”
- “Will I be able to update content myself?”
- “What happens if we need to part ways - what will you provide?”
Red flags to avoid:
- Vague timelines without milestones
- Prices significantly lower than market rate (usually means inexperienced)
- Reluctance to show previous work or client references
- Insistence on custom CMS instead of established platforms
- Can’t explain technical decisions in plain English
How to Avoid This Next Time
Use contracts that specify:
- Exact deliverables (number of pages, features, functionality)
- Firm deadlines with penalties for delays
- Performance requirements (minimum PageSpeed scores, mobile compatibility)
- Content management capabilities
- Who owns what (you own the domain, files, and content)
- Provision of credentials upon project completion
Get these upfront:
- Portfolio of recent work with live URLs
- Client references you can actually contact
- PageSpeed scores of sites they’ve built
- Clear pricing for ongoing support versus new work
Pay in milestones:
Never pay everything upfront. A reasonable structure:
- 25% to start
- 25% when design is approved
- 25% when development is complete
- 25% when site is launched and you’ve confirmed everything works
This protects both parties and ensures work progresses.
The Real Cost of Bad Developers
Let’s be specific about what bad development costs:
Lost customers: If your site is slow or broken on mobile, you’re losing 40-60% of potential customers. For a service business averaging £2,000 per customer with 50 website visitors per week, that’s roughly £40,000-60,000 in lost annual revenue.
Update fees: Paying £200-500 per minor update when you should be able to do it yourself costs £2,000-6,000 per year for a business making regular updates.
Rebuilding costs: Eventually, bad work has to be redone. Rebuilding a site costs £3,000-8,000 depending on complexity - money you’ve already spent once.
Opportunity cost: The time you spend chasing your developer, fixing problems, and dealing with the stress of a broken website is time you’re not spending on your actual business.
A bad developer doesn’t just cost you the money you paid them. They cost you multiples of that in lost business, wasted time, and eventual rebuilding costs.
What Good Looks Like
For context, here’s what you should expect from a competent developer:
Timeline: 2-4 weeks for a standard business website, 4-8 weeks for something more complex. If it’s taking months, something is wrong.
Communication: Weekly updates minimum, same-day responses to urgent issues, and they reach out to you instead of you always chasing them.
Performance: PageSpeed scores above 80 on mobile, works perfectly on all phone sizes, loads in under 3 seconds.
Access: You have login credentials for everything before final payment, and they explain what each account is for.
Documentation: They show you how to update content, provide written instructions, and offer support if you get stuck.
Pricing: Clear breakdown of costs, no surprise fees, and transparent pricing for ongoing support versus new features.
If your current developer isn’t meeting these standards, it’s not you being demanding - they’re not doing their job properly.
The hardest part is admitting you made a hiring mistake. But the sooner you face it, the sooner you can fix it. Your website is often the first impression potential customers have of your business. Don’t let a bad developer cost you customers, revenue, and peace of mind.
Get your credentials, document everything, and if things aren’t improving, start looking for someone who’ll treat your business with the professionalism it deserves.
