The twenty-minute checklist that separates serious Umbraco suppliers from the rest.
Hiring an Umbraco developer is a strange purchase. The market mixes global agencies, small specialist teams like ours, independent freelancers, and anonymous outsourcing shops, and they all use similar words on similar websites. The good news is that a handful of checks separates the serious suppliers from the rest in about twenty minutes. Here is the checklist we would use if we were the ones buying.
Start boring: who would you actually be paying? A legitimate supplier will show a registered company you can look up. Ours is Simplepage Ltd, registered in the Isle of Man, company number 139122C, with the Simon Antony brand trading since 2008; you can verify that in the Isle of Man Companies Registry in under a minute, and any serious supplier should survive the same check.
Then ask who will do the work. You want a named person with a surname, a track record you can follow, and ideally a public footprint: blog posts, community contributions, a profile that has existed for longer than the sales conversation. If a website will not tell you a full name or a company number, treat every other claim on it accordingly.
Umbraco has changed enormously across its major versions, and the platform knowledge that matters is earned by shipping on them. Ask which versions the supplier has actually delivered, not which ones they have read about. We have built or migrated sites on every major version from v4 through to v17, and that span matters most when your project is an upgrade: Umbraco 13's security support ends on 14 December 2026, and the people who have done many migrations are the ones who will not be learning on yours.
A serious supplier will name a number. Ours are public: £80 an hour for agency work through Simon Antony, and £500 a day for freelance work through our founder's Umbraco Freelancer practice. The number itself matters less than the willingness to state it. If a supplier needs three discovery calls before mentioning money, the price is being calculated from your budget rather than from the work.
Umbraco's partner tiers (Silver, Gold and Platinum) are commercial partnerships held at company level, not by individuals. A developer who once worked somewhere with a badge does not carry it with them. So when a supplier shows a partner logo, ask the precise question: which registered company holds this partnership? Our answer is that the Silver Partnership is held directly by the company, one of fewer than 150 Silver Partners worldwide, and you are welcome to verify that with Umbraco HQ.
"Trusted by leading brands" costs nothing to write. Named clients cost reputation if they are false, which is why serious suppliers name them. We name ours: British Red Cross Training, the Scottish NHS iHub, MASTS, Principle Networks, Code Resources and Agrii, among more than 200 Umbraco sites delivered since 2008. Ask any supplier for names you can check, and notice how they react.
Walk away when you see any of these: no surname anywhere on the site, no prices and a refusal to give one when asked directly, a badge or credential you cannot verify with the body that issues it, or a portfolio full of screenshots with no named, checkable clients behind them.
On price, fair UK rates in 2026 look roughly like this: a senior specialist agency around £80 an hour, and an experienced independent freelancer around £500 a day. Dramatically cheaper usually means junior or outsourced delivery under a senior label. Dramatically more expensive should come with something specific you can point to that justifies it.
We offer both shapes, so we have no reason to steer you wrongly. If your project needs a team, Simon Antony is a senior-led, three-person Umbraco Silver Partner agency at £80 an hour, delivering Umbraco since 2008 with Simon Steed (Umbraco MVP 2026) leading the technical work and William Steed holding the Umbraco Certified Master certification. If the job fits one senior developer, Simon works freelance at £500 a day through umbracofreelancer.net. Ask us which fits and we will tell you straight, even when the honest answer is the cheaper one.
Tell us what you're working on and we'll come back within one working day.
An Umbraco Silver Partner agency in Llandudno, North Wales and the Isle of Man, building and looking after Umbraco and .NET websites for businesses and agencies across the UK and beyond. Simon Antony is a brand of Simplepage Ltd.
Maesgwyn, 3 Claremont rd,
Llandudno, North Wales, LL30 2UF