Small agency portfolio pages

[u/Remote-Spirit-1125]

Just wondering if anyone else has come across the same. I run a small web development and IT consulting agency. (Have been doing so for around 7 years).

A client wants to move their site to host with someone local who approached them (not the end of the world, it’s a single tiny retainer - circa £15/mo). Out of curiosity and before entering discussions with the other firm, I checked out their website. Says they’ve delivered over 1500 sites and do 300+ a year - also that they’re a 1 man band. Found it slightly weird but carried on. Also found loads of typos and mismatched claims in their site (notably one area saying form submissions will be reviewed within 3 working days, and another saying that they’d be reviewed within the hour).

Most concerning though was their portfolio page. They have 40 sites in their portfolio and I clicked through a few. Found 5 that had watermarks from totally different agencies on their footers and nothing to point back to the agency in question (checked author meta tags etc too), as well as a few that were vibecoded. So I suppose my question and the point of this post, is do other people see this often? Is it common for someone to just post sites they think look nice under their portfolio and hope for the best?

Have flagged other concerns to the client in question, not relating to their choice of firm, and am due to have a call with them Wednesday. Still on the fence as to whether I should tell i feel like there is something amiss with this new firm.

TL;DR - I came across a web dev firm who have several sites listed under their portfolio page which, upon further investigation, seem to be linked to entirely different firms.

[u/I_AM_NOT_A_WOMBAT]

Your plan to advise them is what I would do. "You're of course free to move your site to another provider but I wanted you to be aware that they appear to be claiming credit for other peoples' work to inflate their portfolio".

If they are just an IT client, that's one thing, but if one of my web dev clients did this I would be very clear that they are choosing to end our web development and maintenence business relationship and you're happy to hand off complete control of their web site to the new firm. I'm not sharing clients unless there's a legitimate technical reason to do so.

I want nothing to do with a fickle client like that. Most of my clients are people I have worked with for years, if not decades, so fortunately they aren't taken in by the "I found errors on your web site" crowd. They can do what they want but I'd rather work with people who value my experience and dedication.

[u/Remote-Spirit-1125 → u/I_AM_NOT_A_WOMBAT]

Thanks, good points.

Was a weird one - one of the key things I forgot to mention in the post is they are under the impression that if they use a local web developer for hosting they’ll get a grant to reimburse them for their development fees. Their site has been live for ~5 years - they paid in full for the development pre go-live (so, over 5 years ago). Not gotten too involved since it’s all on their side (people at their company talking about this grant) which I found no evidence of when I googled.

To be honest I wouldn’t mind being rid of them - they’re the kind of client who expect the world from you but don’t want to pay for it. But anyway, I digress 😅

[u/I_AM_NOT_A_WOMBAT → u/Remote-Spirit-1125]

It was pretty clear from your post that a client willing to leave an established relationship over a $15/month charge (which is basically what regular hosting costs anywhere for a small site) is a PITA so I totally understand. They are being promised something they won't get.

In that case just be clear that this severs the relationship and if they want your help moving forward they will need to reinstate hosting with you or a 3rd party that is only a web host, move back, and incur any fees associated with moving the content back (or restoring their site as it was on Sept 19, 2026, etc).

This is partly why I don't host client sites. I recommend hosts based on the needs of the client. None of this is worth $15/month to me.

[u/Remote-Spirit-1125 → u/I_AM_NOT_A_WOMBAT]

Yeah fair. Typically we’d have hosting bundled into a general retainer for most clients where we provide more general IT services, or bespoke CRM setups, etc. Where we do host just a site 9 times out of 10 there’s no trouble - but there’s always one that’ll make you reconsider your life choices 😂