Questions
The things people actually ask before hiring a stranger.
Including the awkward ones. If something you want to know is not here, ask and it will be added.
Trust
- I have never heard of you. How do I know you can do the work?
You do not, yet, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Volent is new and does not have a long client list to point at.
So judge the conversation instead. Tell us what you want and you will get a specific answer, a fixed price, and a plain account of what we would do, before you have paid anything. If that does not sound like someone who knows the work, do not hire us.
Ask for a reference and we will put you in touch with someone we have done work for.
- Who actually does the work?
Mark does, and you deal with him directly. Nothing is sent to a subcontractor or offshored, and there is no account manager relaying your messages to someone you never meet.
The honest flip side of a studio this size is that it is a studio this size. If you need fifty people and a procurement process, we are the wrong shop and will say so.
Money and time
- What does it cost?
You get a fixed number before any work starts. Not an hourly rate, not an estimate that moves, and no discovery phase that bills you while we work out what to do.
The quote comes after we have looked at what you actually need, because until then we would be guessing, and a guessed number is either too high for you or too low for us.
If the scope changes while we are working, you hear about it before it happens, not on the invoice.
- How long does it take?
You hear back within a day or two. Small fixes, a certificate, a redirect, a tap-to-call link, are usually same day once you say go.
A full site is measured in weeks rather than months, and you see it progressing rather than waiting in silence for a reveal at the end.
If something depends on a third party, your host, your registrar, whoever holds your domain, we will say so upfront, because that part runs on their clock and not ours.
- Am I signing up to a monthly contract?
No. One-off work is one-off.
Ongoing care is available if you want it, and it is month to month with no exit fee and no notice period. If it stops being worth it, you stop paying for it.
We would rather you stayed because it is useful than because leaving is awkward.
The work
- I already have someone who looks after my website.
Good, and you should probably keep them. We are not trying to replace someone who is doing a decent job.
Quite often the person who built a site has moved on, gone quiet, or only ever did the original build. If you are not sure who to ring when something breaks, that is worth knowing before it breaks.
- Do I have to move my hosting or change my domain?
Almost never, and not without asking you first.
Most of what we find is fixed where your site already lives. If your hosting genuinely cannot do what you need, for example it will not issue a certificate or it is stuck on software that is no longer supported, we will explain why and what the options are. The decision stays yours.
Your domain stays in your name and your account. We will never register it on your behalf and hold it. If a previous supplier has done that to you, untangling it is a job we can do.
- Will my site go down while you work on it?
Not in any planned way. Changes are prepared and tested away from the live site, and switched over when they are ready.
If a change genuinely needs a brief interruption, you choose when, and it happens outside your busy hours.
- I do not really know what I need. Is that a problem?
No, that is the normal starting point.
You do not need to arrive with a specification. Tell us roughly what is frustrating you, or what you wish the business could do, and we will come back with what we would build and what it costs, in order of what actually matters.
Afterwards
- What happens if it breaks again after you are done?
If it is the thing we fixed, we fix it again and you do not pay twice.
More usefully, we try to stop it recurring in the first place. Certificates expire on a schedule and most outages of that kind are a renewal that quietly stopped running, so the renewal gets fixed alongside the certificate rather than the certificate alone.
- Do I own what you build?
Yes, completely, once it is paid for. The code, the content, the domain and the accounts are all in your name.
You can take it to another developer at any point and they will find a normal, documented site rather than something only we can maintain. Building otherwise is a way of trapping clients, and a shop that needs to trap clients is telling you something.
- Where are you based, and does it matter?
Slovenia, working in English with businesses across Ireland, the UK and further afield.
For the work itself it makes no difference, everything is done remotely and always would be, even from the next town. It does mean you are not getting someone who will drive to your office, so if you want somebody physically in the room, hire locally and we will say so rather than talk you out of it.
Something not answered here?
Ask it. If it is a fair question somebody else will have it too, and it goes on this page.
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