A freelance wordpress website designer is one person who will draw the pages and, usually, build them. An agency is a group that can lose your brief inside its own handoff. A Divi specialist is a tool choice wearing a job title.
Hiring well is picking which of those failures you can live with, then writing the price as separate jobs. It is not picking the portfolio with the darkest hero.
How to judge a company, what a statement of work must name, and what a portfolio figure is allowed to mean, is already on the company-selection page. This page is the shape of the hire. Read that one before you use this one to choose a logo.
One person, one calendar
The freelance case is capacity. You get a direct conversation, and you get a single point of failure. Illness, a second client with a louder deadline, and a holiday are the same risk.
Ask, before the deposit, who builds the site if this person is out for two weeks. “I will get to it” is not a name.
Ask what they will hand you if the engagement ends on a bad day. Admin logins, the theme or builder files, and a note of where the form sends mail. A freelancer who is the only one who knows the hosting password has built a dependency, not a site. The handover standard, access rather than a PDF, is described in the development scope and handover note.
A freelancer is the right hire when the site is small enough that one person can hold it, and when you can wait. It is the wrong hire when the launch date is a trade show and there is no second pair of hands. The trade show will not move.
A company, and the reskin
An agency can staff a deadline. The failure mode is a reskin. The homepage changes, the product pages stay a thin template, and the invoice describes a new website.
The company-selection page already says a reskin is not a new catalogue. Hold them to it. Count product URLs in the proposal, not slides in the pitch.
Ask who attends the calls and who does the work. If those are different people, ask how a correction you make on Tuesday reaches the person in the file on Wednesday. A relay that loses the lead time you stated will ship a pretty page with the wrong number. You will discover it from a buyer’s email.
An agency is worth it when you need more than one skill in the same month: design, a catalogue, and a migration. It is a poor fit when the job is a handful of pages and the account manager’s process is larger than the site.
A Divi specialist is a maintenance decision
A divi website designer builds inside Divi. That can be exactly right. Your staff will edit in the same builder next Tuesday, and the layout is something they can change without a deploy.
It can also be a lock-in you did not price. Custom PHP or a block theme your staff cannot open is the other end of the same decision.
Call the job by the editor, not by the adjective. Designing in wordpress means the people who will change a price or a photo can do it in wp-admin. A custom wordpress design service means someone wrote a theme or a set of blocks.
Both can be good. They are good for different teams. If nobody on your side will log in, you do not need a builder.
You need a retainer, and you should say so in the contract.
What survives from a template or a one-page kit, and what a 15 MB hero does to a real catalogue, is on the templates and builders page. A specialist who starts from a demo and never leaves it will hand you the demo’s problems. Ask them to open the demo, name one section they will delete, and say why.
The price is a stack, not a sticker
A wordpress site design price that arrives as one number cannot be compared with another one number. Split it, even if the seller would rather not. Design of the templates.
Build. Putting your real products in, which is often the large line. Migration from the old site, if there is one.
The month after launch, when the form and the mail reveal what the demo hid.
This English page does not add a dollar figure. Inventing one would be a new price, and the jobs above are not the same size from one catalogue to the next. The company-selection page already says to split the fee into jobs.
Do that split before you compare a freelancer’s quote with an agency’s quote. Otherwise you are comparing a homepage sketch with a catalogue build because both used the word “website”.
Watch the line that is missing. Hosting, mail, and the person who updates plugins are often absent from a design quote because they are not design. They are still your bill.
The care-plan page is what that later bill should contain. A design quote that ends on launch day has postponed it, not removed it.
What a ranking promise is worth
Google’s hiring note says no one can guarantee a number-one ranking, and it says to beware of a special relationship with Google or a “priority submit”. The page is Do you need an SEO? A designer who puts a position in the proposal is offering something Google told you not to buy. Pay them for pages, not for a rank.
Our own site, tianwenwangluo.com, is the figure we will show instead of a client miracle. Over the 16 months to September 2026, Google Search recorded 543,305 impressions, 7,460 clicks, a click-through rate of 1.37 percent, and an average position of 15.8. That is a content site we operate.
It is not a client result, and it is not a forecast for yours. It is what “we do this work” is allowed to look like when the numbers are published.
Anyone who answers that paragraph with a guaranteed page-one package has not read it. The average on our own property sits at 15.8. A contract that beats that number on a site that does not exist yet is fiction.
Three things to make them do on a call
Don’t add another interview about passion. Ask for three screens. The wp-admin they expect you to receive.
A product or page edit, done live, by the person who will actually edit. The mail tab of the form, with the To address visible. A candidate who can only show a Figma file has not built the thing you are buying.
Ask whose account the builder licence sits on. A Divi licence, or any builder licence, on their agency email is a lock. You should be able to renew it, or leave it, without asking them.
The price of that licence is theirs to quote. This page will not invent one. The question is only whose login it is.
Ask for a mid-project copy of the files and the database, stored in an account you control. A contract that withholds every file until the final invoice also withholds your exit. You can still owe the money.
You should not be unable to see the work. The handover note linked above is the standard for the end. The mid-project copy is how you know the end is possible.
Put both quotes on the same list of URLs
A freelancer at one figure and an agency at another figure are not comparable until the URL list matches. Write the list yourself. Home, the products you will actually publish, the contact page, and the legal pages you need.
Send that list to both. Whoever adds a “phase two” for the products has told you the cheap number was the homepage.
Mark which lines include text entry. Designing the template is not pasting the catalogue. If one quote includes the paste and the other charges it later, the totals cross.
Do the addition on paper before you reply. The lower headline is often the one that left the paste out.
Migration is its own line, including redirects. If you are leaving Squarespace, Wix, or an old WordPress host, say so in the list. A design quote that assumes a blank install will discover the old site in week three and reprice the job. You can avoid that with one sentence at the start.
The hosting password is part of the hire
Some designers host the site on an account you never see. The monthly fee then includes a margin you cannot audit, and a move you cannot start. Ask for the registrar login and the server login in your company’s name, or a clear statement that they are the host and you are renting.
Both can be legitimate. A blur between them is how a dispute becomes an outage.
We keep 30 to 40 export sites running, so the failure is familiar. The person who can reset DNS and the person who can edit a product are often not the same person, and each thinks the other has the login. Write both names down. A freelance wordpress website designer who is also your only registrar contact is a single point of failure twice.
A specialist and a generalist who mentions the tool
A divi website designer who works in Divi every week is a different offer from a generalist who will “also do Divi” because you asked. The first person can tell you which modules they refuse to use. The second will install the demo and learn on your site.
Ask for a site they still maintain, not a site they launched and left. Maintenance is where the builder choice hurts or pays.
If they maintain it, ask what broke on the last major update and how long the site was wrong. You want a specific page and a specific afternoon. A shrug means they don’t look. That answer is more useful than a reel of homepages, and it costs them nothing if the work was real.
After they leave
The month after launch is part of the hire. Updates, a form a stranger can finish, and a backup you have restored once are the work. If the freelancer vanishes and the agency’s retainer was never signed, the site still needs a person.
Tianwen Network was founded in 2017. Liu Yu’s team keeps 30 to 40 export sites, including three we operate ourselves. The point of saying so is the shape of the work, not a badge.
Someone has to be named for the Tuesday when a plugin update whites out the homepage.
Write the hire on one page. Who designs. Who builds.
Who pastes the products. Who receives the test enquiry. What the wordpress site design price includes, line by line.
Who is on the hook for the next 30 days. If a line has no name, you have not hired yet. You have a pitch.
For a scope conversation, WhatsApp is wa.me/8613526816415. Send the URL you have now, and say whether the person editing next month is on your staff or still to be hired. That second fact changes the builder decision more than any portfolio does.
Questions before you hire
Is a Divi specialist the same as a custom design service?
No. A Divi specialist builds in a builder your staff may be able to edit. A custom service writes a theme or blocks. Pick the one that matches who will change a photo next month.
Why is there no single price on this page?
A single number hides whether products, migration, and the month after launch are included. This English page does not add a dollar figure. Compare quotes only after both use your URL list.
What should they show on a call?
The wp-admin you will receive, a live edit by the person who will edit, and the form’s mail tab with the To address visible. A Figma file alone is not the site.
Who should own the hosting login?
Your company, unless the contract clearly says you are renting their hosting. A designer who is also the only registrar contact is one point of failure twice.