Hiring a Freelance Web Designer in Another Country: What to Check Before You Pay

Hiring a web designer in another country works well for a small business website, as long as you check a few things that never come up when the designer lives nearby. How will the time difference actually play out? Can they write clear English? Who does the work? How do you pay safely? And whose name will your domain and accounts be in when it's over?

I'm on the designer side of this. I run a one-person studio in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and I build websites for service businesses remotely. So read this as a checklist from someone with an interest in the answer, and feel free to hold me to it.

Why look abroad at all

Usually it's price. My starting prices are public on my pricing page: a one-page site from US$800, a redesign from US$1,200, a multi-page service site from US$2,000. They sit there partly because I'm one person with low overheads, with no office or account managers to pay for.

Sometimes you just like someone's work, and where they live is a detail.

Either way, a lower price only helps if the site does its job. If cost is your main question, I wrote separately about what a small business website costs and what to ask before you pay. The rest of this post is about the parts that are different across a border.

The time difference, in practice

Taiwan is on UTC+8 all year. There's no daylight saving here, so the gap to you shifts when your clocks change:

• UK: Taiwan is 7 hours ahead in summer, 8 in winter.
• US: 12 or 13 hours ahead of the east coast, 15 or 16 ahead of the west coast.
• Australia: 2 hours behind Brisbane all year. 2 hours behind Sydney and Melbourne in winter, 3 during daylight saving.

With Australia, the working days mostly overlap. With the UK and the US they mostly don't, and that matters less than people expect. A website project runs on written feedback. You look at a draft, you write down what's wrong, the designer changes it. Feedback you send at the end of your day reaches the designer at the start of theirs.

What works badly is a project that depends on lots of quick calls. My suggestion: agree one call time that's reasonable for both of you, use it for the kick-off and for launch, and keep the rest in writing. I do calls on Google Meet and keep everything else on email or WhatsApp, whichever you check more often. Whoever you hire, ask two things up front: when will you usually hear back, and what happens if the site goes down after launch?

Treat their messages as a work sample

The emails a designer sends before you hire them tell you a lot. If they'll be writing or editing your website copy, those messages are the closest thing you'll get to a preview.

Look at whether they answered the questions you asked, or sent something that could go to anyone. Did they ask anything about your customers? Could you follow it on the first read?

Judge my English the same way: by how clearly I answer your first message. I write site copy in plain English and expect you to change any line that doesn't sound like you. You know how your customers talk. I don't, until you tell me.

Judging a portfolio from far away

You can't visit a designer's past clients, so check what you can.

Open their work on your phone. Screenshots of desktop layouts tell you very little. Plenty of your customers will meet your site on a small screen.

Ask which pieces are client work and which are concepts or personal projects. Both are fine. You should still know which is which. On my Work page, for example, there's one client site in development, for an engineering company in Kaohsiung, and a library of 24 website concepts I designed for eight types of local business. Every concept is labelled as one. I'd rather you know that before we talk than find out later.

Look for work close to your trade. A plumber's site has to answer "can you come today?" A dental clinic has to make nervous patients comfortable enough to book. If a designer can explain the difference, they've thought about your customers. My pages on plumber websites and dental clinic websites show how I think about two quite different trades.

Check the designer's own website. Is it clear on a phone? Does the contact form work? If they can't get their own enquiry flow right, think twice before handing them yours.

Ask who actually does the work

Some freelancers pass projects on to someone else, sometimes without saying so. That isn't always bad, but it changes who you're trusting. Ask directly: who designs it, who builds it, who writes the copy, and who do I contact after launch?

For me, the answer to all four is me. That's also the limit. There's no team behind me to absorb a rush job, so I'll tell you up front if I can't fit your timeline.

Paying someone in another country

If a project goes wrong with someone in your own town, you have options. Across a border, chasing money back is slow and often not worth it. So set it up to protect yourself from the start.

• A platform with escrow. On Upwork, fixed-price milestones are funded before work starts and released when you approve them. I take projects through Upwork as well as directly.
• Staged payments, if you pay directly. Tie each payment to something you can see, like an approved structure or a working draft, and get the scope in writing first.
• Currency and fees. Agree the currency up front. My prices are in US dollars. International transfers can carry fees on both ends, so agree who covers them.

For direct projects, I agree the payment schedule with each client before any work starts, usually over WhatsApp, and confirm it in writing so we both have the same record.

Make sure everything ends up in your name

This matters more at a distance. If you ever part ways, getting a domain login back from someone on the other side of the world is miserable.

Before launch, check that:

• The domain is registered in your account. A designer can be given access without owning it.
• The hosting or website builder account is yours, or can be transferred to you.
• Google Business Profile, Google Analytics and Search Console list you as the owner, with the designer added as a user.
• You get a written list of every account the site uses at handover.

Any designer who resists this is telling you something.

Warning signs that matter more from far away

• A promise of first-page Google rankings, or a ranking by a set date. Nobody can promise that, near or far.
• A price with no written scope.
• Refusing ever to get on a call, even once at the start.
• Not being able to tell you which portfolio pieces were for real clients.

Start small before you commit

The lowest-risk way to try a remote designer is to give them something small first. For me, that's my free website audit. Send your current site or Google Maps link, and I'll reply with 3 to 5 practical improvements. You'll see how I write, how quickly I get back to you and whether my suggestions fit your business, before you've spent anything.

If you'd like to know more about how the remote side works, my page on international web design goes through the steps. You can also read about my web design work generally, or the one-page websites most small businesses start with. When you're ready, start a project.