How to choose your web agency in Tunisia in 2026
The Tunisian web market exploded between 2020 and 2026. Great for competition — less great for telling the wheat from the chaff. For every serious agency you come across, there are 5 selling recycled Wordpress at 3x its value, 2 copying other people's portfolios, and 1 that will vanish with your deposit. Here are the 12 criteria we recommend you tick off before signing a quote. It's the honest grid — even when it doesn't flatter us.
1. Ask to see the source code of a delivered project
A serious agency will show you an anonymized GitHub repo of a delivered project. An agency that only shows you the homepage is necessarily hiding something: piled-up Wordpress code, modified free plugins, a copied design. If the agency says 'we can't show it for confidentiality reasons' — ask for an older project whose client is fine with sharing it. If they still can't, walk away.
2. Check who owns the delivered code
A crucial question: 'If I want to switch agencies in 2 years, what do I get back?'. The right answer: the complete Git repo, the hosting credentials, the accounts for third-party tools (CMS, mailing, payment), the documentation. The wrong answer: 'we keep the code on our side but give you access' — that's proprietary lock-in, and you become a prisoner.
3. Ask for the Lighthouse scores of their latest sites
PageSpeed Insights is free and public: pagespeed.web.dev. Run it on 3 sites from the agency's portfolio. A mobile Performance score under 70 = sloppy work. Under 50 = a guaranteed SEO disaster. A score of 90+ = a team that knows what it's doing. In 30 seconds, it's the most effective filter for separating the good from the bad.
4. Check the technical stack they claim
If the agency answers 'Wordpress + Elementor + WooCommerce' to all your questions, it's because that's all it knows how to do. For a simple showcase site, that's no drama. For a serious e-commerce or a custom project, run: Wordpress isn't suited to modern performance (Core Web Vitals) or to complex features. The 2026 stacks that pay off: Next.js, Astro, Remix, SvelteKit. For the backend: Node.js (Express, Fastify, NestJS) or Python (FastAPI). For the database: Postgres (Supabase, Neon).
5. Confirm the SEO is included
Many agencies sell you a site and then bill the SEO on top. What we call 'basic SEO' must be in the price: title and meta description tags, a correct H1/H2/H3 structure, sitemap.xml, robots.txt, schema.org JSON-LD, optimized and compressed images, hreflang if multilingual, Core Web Vitals in the green. Anything beyond that (content creation, link building, competitive audit) is legitimately separate — but technical SEO is non-negotiable.
6. Check the post-delivery support guarantee
How many months of support are included? It must be written in black and white in the quote. 1 month = the bare minimum. 3 months = decent. 6 months = quality. A serious bug found 2 months after delivery with no support = you pay twice: the new invoice and the wasted time. Also ask: what exactly does the support cover? Bug fixes yes; new features no.
7. Ask for verifiable client references
Not just logos on the portfolio. Ask for 2 to 3 phone numbers or emails of recent clients. A serious agency has them and is proud of its feedback. An agency that dodges ('we respect confidentiality') probably has no happy clients to show. When you call these clients: how long did the project take vs. what was announced? Were there overruns? Was support responsive?
8. Beware of abnormally low prices
A showcase site at 200 TND, an e-commerce at 800 TND: that's technically impossible with honest work. A day of dev at 50 TND net is below the hourly SMIG. Low prices always hide something: a Wordpress template bought for 30 USD and resold 10x with no modification, low-grade AI-generated content, code stolen from an open-source repo, or vanishing with the deposit. The real 2026 floor price for a properly coded showcase site in Tunisia: around 1,000 TND.
9. Beware, too, of very high prices with no justification
Symmetrically, some 'premium agencies' quote a showcase site at 10,000 TND or more. Except in very specific cases (a complex corporate site, multilingual with 3D animations, multiple integrations), that's unjustified margin. Always ask for the man-day breakdown: how many days of design, how many days of frontend dev, backend dev, integration, testing. If the agency refuses, it's suspicious.
10. Check the contract and the penalties
A serious contract contains: a precise scope (how many pages, features listed), a schedule with milestones, late penalties (typically 1% of the amount per week of delay), termination conditions, clear intellectual property. If the agency offers you a simple quote with no contract, or a contract with no late penalties, that's a red flag.
11. Ask for the post-delivery roadmap
A good provider doesn't abandon you after go-live. Ask: 'What happens after the launch?'. The right answer: monitoring included for 1–6 months, guaranteed bug fixes, the option of a maintenance contract afterwards, a review meeting at 30 days. The wrong answer: 'we deliver, then cut contact'. Your site lives day to day — it needs a reachable person in charge.
12. Trust your communication intuition
Before signing, you'll have 2 to 5 exchanges with the agency. Ask yourself: do I feel taken seriously? Do my technical questions get precise answers or vague ones? Is the response time reasonable (24–48h)? If, during the sales phase (when an agency is supposed to be at its best), you find the exchanges vague, slow, or condescending, it will be 10 times worse during the project.
FAQ
How many quotes should I request before choosing?
3 minimum. 5 ideal. Compare not only the prices but above all the proposed stack, the included scope, the support, the contract. The cheapest is rarely the best; nor is the most expensive.
Is an agency or a freelancer better?
A freelancer for very small projects (a simple showcase, a WordPress tweak). An agency as soon as there's cross-disciplinary work (design + dev + SEO + DevOps) or real business criticality. An ESN only for very large enterprise projects.
How do I know if an agency will still exist in 2 years?
Check the company's age (trade register, business ID), the team size, the age of the clients in the portfolio. An agency 6 months old with 3 people is a risk; an agency with 5 years and 15 people much less so.
Should I favor a local or an international agency?
Local Tunisia: cheaper, shared time zone, common language, on-site visits possible. International: more expensive but sometimes better cutting-edge technical expertise. For 90% of Tunisian SME projects, local is by far optimal.
In summary
Choosing a web agency isn't an expense — it's a business partnership over 2 to 5 years. Take your time. Tick off the 12 criteria. Don't hesitate to ask for 3 quotes and to check references. If you want a starting point: Zelos meets the 12 criteria above, we'll show you the source code of our latest projects on request, and our quote arrives within 24h, free of charge.
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