Table of Contents
Finding someone to build a website in Tbilisi is easy. Post a status in a local Facebook group saying you need an online store or a company website, and within two hours your inbox will have 30 messages.
The hard part is figuring out who actually knows what they are doing. A solo freelancer charging 500 GEL, a large advertising agency quoting 25,000 GEL, and a specialized web studio quoting 3,500 GEL will all send you a PDF with the exact same promises: "fast, modern design, mobile-responsive, and SEO-friendly."
Six months later, the difference shows up in your bank account. One business has a fast online store accepting Bank of Georgia and TBC installment payments automatically, synced with their warehouse stock. Another is stuck with a half-broken WordPress template, a developer who stopped answering WhatsApp, and a page that takes 8 seconds to open on an iPhone.
If you are trying to decide who to hire for a website or e-commerce project in Georgia, here is how the local market actually works, what separates different providers, and what to check before you pay a deposit.
1. Freelancer vs. Big Creative Agency vs. Focused Web Studio
Before comparing quotes, look at how each type of provider works day to day.
| What to Compare | Solo Freelancer | Big Advertising Agency | Focused Web Studio (Scale) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Usual Budget | 300 – 1,200 GEL | 12,000 – 35,000+ GEL | $400 – $2,000 (~1,100 – 5,500 GEL) |
| How It Is Built | Ready-made WordPress, Elementor, or Tilda theme | Custom PHP, older CMS, or outsourced to third parties | React, TypeScript, Next.js, Vite, Supabase, Cloudflare |
| Mobile Speed (PageSpeed) | 35–60 / 100 (4–8 sec load on mobile 4G) | 50–75 / 100 (often slowed down by heavy graphics) | 95–100 / 100 (opens in under 1 second) |
| Local Banks & Warehouse Sync | Basic plugins that often break after updates | Available, but billed at high corporate rates | Direct API integration (BOG iPay, TBC, installments, retail CRM) |
| Timeline | 1 week to 4 months (depends on their other jobs) | 3 to 6 months of meetings and approvals | 2 to 5 weeks, talking directly with the developers |
| What Happens After Launch | High risk if that one person gets busy or disappears | Expensive monthly support fee required | Full code and database handed over to your company |
When a Freelancer Is Enough
If you are testing a short-term idea, building a simple page for a one-off event, or have a strict budget under 600 GEL with no online payments, hiring a freelancer to set up a pre-made template is fine. Just make sure you register the .ge domain under your own company tax ID on NIC.ge so you don't lose the address later.
When a Big Agency Makes Sense
If you are a commercial bank, a telecom operator, or a large state organization that needs 40-page tender documents, months of branding presentations, and a dedicated chain of account managers, big traditional agencies are built for that process.
Why Most Businesses Choose a Focused Web Studio
Most active companies in Georgia (auto dealerships, construction and real estate developers, retail chains, local brands, law and consulting firms, clinics) sit right in the middle. Paying 20,000 GEL for agency overhead makes no financial sense, but betting your main sales channel on a single freelancer is too risky. Working with a dedicated development studio gives you a complete team for UI/UX design, clean frontend and backend code, and local payment integrations at a realistic budget. You can see how we structure our website development and online store development services.
2. WordPress Templates vs. Custom Code (React & Next.js)
A lot of founders say: "I don't care what programming language you use, as long as the site looks clean and brings in orders."
That is fair, until you start paying for Google or Meta ads and notice where the money goes:
- Mobile Speed on Georgian 4G: Over 80% of people clicking your Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok ads in Georgia are on their phones. A typical WordPress + WooCommerce site running 30 plugins takes 5 to 7 seconds to load. As we showed in our guide on website speed and Google rankings, more than half of mobile visitors leave if a page takes longer than 3 seconds.
- Showing Up in Google and AI Search (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini): People don't just search two-word phrases like "saitis damzadeba" anymore. They ask detailed questions in Google and AI assistants. For search crawlers and AI models to read your services, prices, and product catalog accurately, the site needs clean static HTML prerendering (SSG), separate Georgian (
/ka) and English (/en) URLs withhreflangtags, Schema.org structured data, and anllms.txtfile. - An Admin Panel Your Team Can Actually Use: Instead of giving you a cluttered WordPress dashboard where one careless plugin update breaks the checkout page, we build a clean admin panel on Supabase (PostgreSQL) with only the fields your team needs. Your staff can change prices, upload photos, or publish articles in Georgian and English without calling a programmer.
3. Real Examples: What We Built for Companies in Georgia
When you evaluate a web development company in Tbilisi, don't just look at screenshots in a PDF presentation. Open the websites they built on your phone, click through the menus, and see what happens under the hood.
Here are a few examples from our top portfolio projects across different industries:
Automotive Showrooms: AITO Georgia and Li Auto Georgia
Bringing premium electric vehicles to Georgia and the Caucasus required much more than a basic 5-page company site. For both AITO Georgia (covering the AITO 5–9 lineup) and Li Auto Georgia (covering L6, L7, L8, L9, i6, i8, and MEGA), we built bilingual digital showrooms with video headers, interactive exterior and interior color pickers, clear technical comparison tables, and online test-drive booking forms. Buyers compare models and specs on their phones before ever walking into the showroom.
Online Store Synced with Physical Shop Inventory: Petite Ellie
Petite Ellie, a children's clothing brand, already used a PHP/MySQL retail CRM in their physical stores to track 832 products across 41 categories and 18 brands. Building a separate online store where someone had to update stock by hand was out of the question. We built a fast React and Supabase online store connected directly to their existing retail CRM. Stock and prices sync automatically, the checkout re-checks live store inventory right before payment so an item sold in the shop 5 minutes ago can't be bought online by mistake, and Bank of Georgia card and PLUS loyalty-point payments are processed through verified bank webhooks.
Georgian Brand E-Commerce with Dual Bank Checkout: LUKHAVA
For LUKHAVA, a Georgian watch brand, the website needed to present the story and craftsmanship of each timepiece while making buying as simple as possible. We built a prerendered online store with guest checkout (no forced registration) connected to both Bank of Georgia card payments and TBC Bank installments (განვადება), paired with a custom admin panel for managing collections.
Corporate Holdings, Real Estate & B2B Consulting: Tbilisi Holding Company, Arte Development and ebit group
- Tbilisi Holding Company: Operating since 1994 with a distribution network supplying 5,000+ retail outlets and the Schirnhofer supermarket chain, THC needed a clear corporate website presenting its import, logistics, and food production businesses in one place.
- Arte Development: For a residential real estate developer in Tbilisi with projects in Koperativi, Kerchi, and Gldani, we built a bilingual website with dedicated project pages, floor and photo galleries, press coverage, and full per-page SEO.
- ebit group: For a strategic consulting and IFRS training firm working across the South Caucasus since 2012, we built a trilingual React 19 platform with static HTML prerendering on every route, a custom block editor for services and training courses, a built-in inbox for leads and course sign-ups, Schema.org markup, and an
llms.txtmap.
4. Five Questions to Ask Any Web Studio Before Signing a Contract
Before you transfer an advance payment to any developer or agency in Georgia, ask these five questions:
- "Will every page in Georgian and English have prerendered HTML for Google?"
If someone builds a standard React single-page app without prerendering (SSG or SSR), Google and AI crawlers only see an empty <div id="root">. Make sure every language has its own URL (/ka/..., /en/...) and real HTML content in the page source.
- "How do you confirm Bank of Georgia (iPay) and TBC payments?"
Never accept an online store that only records an order if the customer waits for the bank's redirect page to return to the website. If the buyer closes their browser right after paying, the order disappears. Payment confirmation and stock deduction must run server-to-server via bank webhooks.
- "Can we check two of your live client websites on Google PageSpeed Insights right now?"
Open pagespeed.web.dev, paste two of their recent projects, and look at the Mobile score. If their live sites score 40 out of 100, yours will too.
- "How will my team change prices, photos, and text after launch?"
Make sure you get a straightforward admin panel where your own staff can edit Georgian and English content without paying a programmer every time a price changes.
- "Who owns the GitHub code repository, database, and .ge domain?"
As we covered in our 2026 guide to website prices in Georgia, your contract must state that all source code, database access, and domain ownership belong 100% to your company once the project is paid for.
Calculate Your Website or Online Store Budget
You don't need to schedule a long sales meeting just to get a rough price.
Use our online price calculator to pick the number of pages, languages, bank integrations, and admin features you need, and see the estimate right away. If you already know what you want to build (whether it is a company website, an online store with Georgian bank and warehouse integrations, or a custom CRM system), send us a message and we will review your project directly.