Hiring a web development company in Lebanon: an honest guide
Every business in Lebanon that goes looking for a website hears the same pitches and faces the same traps. This is the guide we wish our clients had read before they came to us — including the parts that occasionally talk people out of hiring anyone at all.
The first question: who owns the website?
The most expensive mistake we see isn't overpaying — it's lock-in. An agency builds your site on their account, their hosting, their page builder, and two years later you can't leave without starting from zero.
Before you sign anything, ask: do I own the code? The domain? The hosting account? The analytics? If the answer to any of those is "it's complicated," walk away. (Our answer, for the record: you own 100% of everything, in writing.)
Fixed quote beats hourly — every time
Hourly billing puts the risk on you: scope grows, hours grow, the invoice grows. A serious agency scopes the project in one call and gives you a fixed price in writing before any work starts. If the estimate was wrong, that's the agency's problem — not yours.
Be equally suspicious of menu pricing ("business site: $X"). A price that doesn't depend on your project is a price that assumes a template.
Bilingual is not a checkbox
If your customers speak Arabic, your website should too — and real Arabic support means proper right-to-left layout, Arabic typography, and content written in Arabic, not machine-translated English. Ask to see a bilingual site the agency has actually shipped.
Honest timelines (what fast actually looks like)
With modern AI-accelerated pipelines, a landing page should go live in days and a full business website typically in 2–4 weeks. Quotes of 3–6 months for a standard site are a sign of either overload or overengineering.
The catch: speed only counts if a human reviews and finishes everything before launch, and if the code is standard enough that any developer can maintain it later. Ask what stack they ship — the answer should be boring (React, Next.js) and yours to keep.
Ask for proof you can click
Not mockups, not "trusted by" logos — live sites, with real businesses behind them. Ours are public: a car-rental company, a delivery kitchen, and a skincare clinic, all running today, all linked from our work page. Whoever you talk to should be able to show you the same.
The checklist
- You own code, domain, hosting, data — in writing
- Fixed quote before work begins; no hourly meter
- Real bilingual AR/EN capability if your market needs it
- Landing pages in days; business sites in weeks, not months
- Live, clickable references — not screenshots
- A support window after launch, and a clear answer to "what if I leave?"