Serving Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX
Best Website Design in Austin
Judge the work that has had time to fail, not the work that launched last month.
Covering Downtown, South Congress, East Austin and the rest of Travis County.
Ask to see something they built three years ago
Austin has roughly 980,000 residents as of 2023 and a design market that has grown fast and skews new. Portfolios here are full of recent work, which is natural and also the least informative thing you could be shown, because a site three weeks after launch has not yet had the opportunity to disappoint anyone.
Websites do not fail on launch day. They fail slowly: the business adds a service and there is nowhere to put it, the platform needs a migration nobody budgeted for, a plugin stops being maintained, the client cannot update a price without calling someone, and eventually the whole thing is replaced two years early. None of that is visible in a screenshot taken the week it went live.
No firm can honestly call itself the best. But a firm’s three-year-old work is a genuine test, it is public, and almost nobody asks to see it. What survived, what the clients did with it, and how honest the firm is about the ones that did not last tells you more about your own project’s third year than any amount of recent work.
Market snapshot
| City | Austin, TX |
|---|---|
| County | Travis County |
| Metro | Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX |
| Population | 979,882 (2023 est.) |
| Area codes | 512, 737 |
| Time zone | Chicago |
Best · selection criteria and proof
What to ask for, and what the answers mean
Ask: "What did you build about three years ago, and can I see it live?" Not a screenshot — the URL. Then check three things yourself.
Does it still exist? A portfolio of work that has since been replaced is a portfolio of relationships that ended early. Some replacement is normal and healthy; a pattern of it, especially at the two-year mark, is a signal about how well those sites absorbed change.
Is it still the same site? If the client has since rebuilt it elsewhere, ask why. Firms usually know, and the honest answers are informative in both directions — "they were acquired and moved to the parent brand" is very different from "they outgrew what we built."
Has it been maintained, and by whom? Look for signs of ongoing life: current staff, recent content, updated services. A site frozen at its launch state usually means the client could not edit it themselves, which is a build decision rather than a client failing.
Then ask the harder question: "Which of your old sites did not last, and what happened?" Every firm with real history has some. What you are listening for is whether they can name a structural cause — a platform choice that aged badly, a scope that assumed a business would not change — or whether every failure is attributed to the client. A firm that has learned something will tell you what it does differently now.
What this predicts for you. The specific decisions that determine whether a site reaches year three are made in week one: whether the structure accepts new services without a redesign, whether there is a proprietary builder in the way, whether you own the code and the accounts, and whether you can change content without a developer. Those are all askable up front, and old work is the evidence of whether the firm gets them right.
On price: basic plans start at $1,000, published nationally, rising with page count, integrations, and whether we write the content at roughly $150 to $300 a page.
Built for Austin’s main industries
technology and software
state government
music and live entertainment
Travis County’s economy concentrates in technology and software, state government, and music and live entertainment, and the three-year test reveals different things in each.
Technology and software. These businesses change what they sell faster than almost anyone, so the structural question dominates: did the site absorb a new product line, or did it get replaced? Ask specifically whether any of the firm’s older clients extended the site themselves. A marketing site that an in-house team could not maintain gets abandoned quietly, and that outcome is a build decision.
State government. Selling to agencies is a compliance exercise, and the useful longevity question is whether registrations, contract vehicles, and credentials stayed current on the old site. Content that went stale is usually content that required a developer to change, which is exactly the failure mode to design out.
Music and live entertainment. Everything is dated, so a three-year-old site in this sector is a brutal test: look at whether the events, lineups, and dates were kept current. A site advertising a show from two years ago is not an aesthetic problem, it is evidence that editing was too hard and the client gave up.
Downtown, South Congress, East Austin and The Domain also support genuinely different businesses, and a firm proposing one page for all of them has not asked enough questions yet.
What is included
- Older client URLs on request, including ones where the client has since made changes we would not have made
- A structure that accepts new pages and services without a redesign
- No proprietary page builder standing between you and a change
- Frequently-changing content editable without a developer
- Full ownership from handover — code, domain, hosting account, and analytics in your name
- A written scope naming every page before a line of code exists
- Conversion tracking configured and verified firing before launch
- Every existing URL redirected, so this rebuild is the last one that costs you visibility
See how we approach website design in full — process, pricing, and what changes the number.
How the project runs
Audit
We review what you have now and where enquiries are being lost. You keep the findings either way.
Scope
Fixed price, fixed deliverables, and a launch date, all in writing before work starts.
Build
Design, build, tracking, and follow-up wired together and tested end to end.
Launch
Redirects mapped so you keep your rankings, every form and phone link checked by hand.
Held to the same test: we publish no case studies with round-number percentage gains and an anonymous client, because an unnamed client cannot be looked up and the claim therefore proves nothing. Ask on a call and we will send older live URLs, name the ones that were replaced, and say why — including where the reason was a decision of ours.
What we will put in writing: a fixed price against an agreed scope, a launch date, tracking that demonstrably fires, and a monthly report you can read in five minutes. What we will never put in writing is a ranking promise. The full process is here.
Questions from Austin business owners
How do I evaluate a website design company in Austin?
Ask for work they built about three years ago, live, not as screenshots. Check whether it still exists, whether it is still their design, and whether it has been kept current. Then ask which older sites did not last and why. Recent work shows what a firm can produce; old work shows what its decisions cost the client two years later, which is the thing you are actually buying.
How much does website design cost in Austin?
Basic plans start at $1,000, rising with page count, integrations, and whether we write the content. The price is published and national rather than assembled after a discovery call. Full breakdown here.
Do you have an office in Austin?
No. Our office is in Salt Lake City and we work with Austin businesses remotely, over video calls and shared documents. We do not list addresses we do not occupy, so it is better stated here than discovered later.
What if a firm is too new to have three-year-old work?
Then say so and ask the structural questions directly instead, because those are what the old work was evidence for: does the structure accept new services without a redesign, is there a proprietary builder involved, who owns the code and accounts, and can the client change content without a developer. A newer firm with good answers is a reasonable bet. A newer firm that has not considered the questions is the risk.
Other services in Austin
Nearby areas we serve
A different angle on the same thing
Need website design in Austin?
Tell us what you need and you will get scope, price, and a timeline back — usually within one business day.