Web agency reviews in Morocco: how to check who builds your website before you sign

Looking for web agency reviews in Morocco before you hand your website to an agency or a freelancer? Good instinct. A website is not a one-off purchase: you will work with whoever builds it for years, because they usually hold your domain name, your hosting and the keys to every future change. A 4.9-star rating tells you almost none of that.

This guide is for business owners and managers, including foreign investors and expats setting up in Morocco, who need to choose quickly and well. It covers how to read Google reviews without being fooled, using Google’s own published rules; how to check that a provider legally exists, using official Moroccan sources; how to judge their real work; what must belong to you; and the warning signs in a quote. It ends with the questions to ask on the first call and a 15-point checklist. We are an agency, Bzaf Studio, so at the end we invite you to run the same checklist on us, point by point.

Why reviews alone are not enough to choose your web provider

A review is written on a specific day, usually launch day, when everything is new and the client is relieved the project is done. The real problems with a website show up later: at the first domain renewal, the first time your phone number changes, the day the provider stops answering. No launch-day review can tell you about any of that.

When a business is badly served, the problems are nearly always the same:

• The domain name is not in the company’s name. The provider registered it for themselves. When the relationship ends, the website address, and sometimes the email addresses, leave with them.
• The site cannot be edited without going back to the provider, and every change of opening hours becomes a new quote.
• Year two costs more than expected: hosting, domain renewal and maintenance were never priced.
• The provider disappears, and nobody else has the logins.
• The “finished” site is slow or broken on phones, which is where most of your visitors arrive.

None of these risks shows up in a star rating. Each one can be checked before you sign, with free tools and a few questions. Here are the five checks, what each tells you and how long it takes.

Check	What it tells you	Where to do it	Time
1. Google reviews	Past satisfaction, and how the provider handles problems	Their Google profile, reviews sorted by date	10 min
2. Legal existence	That they exist, under what name, and since when	Directinfo (OMPIC), official documents	15 min
3. Delivered websites	The real quality of their work, over time	Your phone, PageSpeed Insights, one phone call	20 min
4. Ownership	What will be yours: domain, site, logins	The quote, the contract	10 min
5. Contract	What you pay, for what, and how to leave	The written quote, the terms of sale	20 min

Google reviews of a web design agency in Morocco: how to read them

Start with what Google allows and bans, because its rules are the best reading guide. In its policy on user-contributed content in Maps, Google sets a simple principle: contributions should reflect a genuine experience at a place or business. What it calls “fake engagement” is not allowed and is removed. In practice, Google prohibits:

• Paid reviews or ratings, paid for directly or in kind.
• Reviews posted from multiple accounts by one person or at their request.
• Incentives in exchange for a review: payment, discounts, free goods or services, including to get a negative review changed or removed.
• Reviews based on a conflict of interest: Google lists current or former employment, a contractual or consulting relationship, industry competitors and family relationships.
• Cherry-picking customers: a business may not discourage negative reviews, selectively ask for positive ones, or dictate what a review should say.

Google does allow a business to ask customers to review their genuine experience, with no incentive and no attempt to influence the rating. So an agency that sends a review link to every client after launch is within the rules. One that sends it only to happy clients is not.

The warning banner Google can display

When Google finds that a business has broken these rules, it can go beyond removing the reviews and restrict the profile: block new reviews for a period, unpublish existing ones, and display a warning telling visitors that fake reviews were removed. In its consumer alerts page, Google describes this as a banner on the business page warning you that suspicious reviews have been taken down.

If you see this warning on a provider’s profile, it is not a hunch: Google found and removed reviews it considered suspicious. The banner does not say who posted them, and a business can also be targeted by a wave of fake negative reviews. But it deserves a direct question, and a clear answer, before you go any further.

Eight signs worth a closer look

Apart from that banner, Google flags nothing. Reading is up to you. None of the signs below proves on its own that a review is fake; it is the pattern that should make you cautious.

• A burst. Twenty five-star reviews in one week, then silence for months. Google itself lists “unusual volumes or patterns of review contributions” as a sign of rating manipulation.
• Reviewers with no history. Tap the reviewer’s name. One profile with a single review and no photo means nothing. Half the reviews coming from such profiles means something.
• Interchangeable wording. “Very professional, highly recommend.” No site name, no deadline, no detail about the project. Real clients talk about their website, what worked and what did not.
• The same staff member’s name in every review. Google forbids businesses from asking for reviews with specific content, including content that identifies a staff member. A run of reviews all thanking “Yassine” for his support may come from an internal instruction.
• A perfect 5.0 for years. Over dozens of projects, any serious provider has had a delay or an unhappy client. A complete absence of criticism is not always good news.
• Off-topic reviews. “Warm welcome, great coffee” on a web agency’s profile: the text was copied from elsewhere, or the author was never a client.
• Replies that are missing, copy-pasted or aggressive. How a provider answers criticism tells you more than ten glowing reviews.
• Reviews that only talk about launch day. They say nothing about maintenance, changes or responsiveness six months later.

The reviews that are actually worth something

Sort reviews by newest first: agencies change teams, and reviews from 2021 may describe a different business. Then read the one-, two- and three-star reviews before the others. Look at what went wrong (a delay, a price that crept up, a site nobody can edit) and above all at the reply: facts and a fix, or an attack on the client?

The most useful reviews mention a website you can open, were written several months after launch, or come from businesses similar to yours in trade or size. Finally, compare the number of reviews with how long the provider has existed: a company’s registration date can be found in the commercial register, as shown below. Three hundred reviews for a business set up last year deserve a question.

Handle two sources with care. Testimonials on the provider’s own website are chosen by the provider, and you cannot know who wrote them. Comments on a Facebook or Instagram page can be deleted by whoever runs the page. Neither replaces a public review, let alone a phone call to a real client.

Check legal existence: RC, ICE and the auto-entrepreneur status

Before you pay a single dirham, you need to know who you are paying. This is not distrust. It is the name on your invoice, the party you will write to if something goes wrong, and possibly the registered holder of your domain name if you are not careful. Ask in writing, ideally on the quote itself, for:

• the exact company or trading name, and the legal form (SARL, single-shareholder SARL, sole trader, auto-entrepreneur…);
• the commercial register (registre du commerce, RC) number and the city of the court where it is registered;
• the ICE (identifiant commun de l’entreprise, Morocco’s common business identifier) and the tax ID (IF);
• the address of the head office or business premises.

The ICE, and what it proves

The ICE is a 15-digit number that identifies a business and its establishments across all government bodies: 9 digits for the company, 4 for the establishment and 2 check digits. It comes on top of the other legal identifiers, including the tax ID, the RC number and the CNSS (social security) number; it does not replace them. Since the 2016 Finance Act, article 145-VIII of the General Tax Code requires taxpayers to show the ICE on the invoices they issue to clients, according to a circular from the Directorate General of Taxes (DGI) dated 14 January 2016. A company that invoices you should be able to give you its ICE without hesitation.

Be clear about what can and cannot be checked. The official ICE portal is where businesses retrieve their own number and declare their establishments; it is not a public directory. For a third party like you, checking goes through the commercial register and official documents.

Find the company in the commercial register

Morocco’s central commercial register is kept by OMPIC, the Moroccan Office of Industrial and Commercial Property. It pulls together the data from local registers and exists, in OMPIC’s words, to inform third parties: anyone may request information from it. OMPIC runs Directinfo, its online services platform, for this. According to the user guide published by OMPIC, searching is free and covers every registered business, individuals and companies, by company name or trading name. Detailed legal records can then be ordered online.

Three checks are enough in most cases:

• The name exists. The company name on the quote appears in the search, with an RC number matching the one you were given.
• The company is active. For a large contract, OMPIC issues a certificate of registration, a copy of the register entries showing later changes, and a certificate of deregistration when a business has been struck off.
• The names match. The name on the quote, on the invoice and on the bank account you will transfer money to must be the same. A quote from a company and bank details in an individual’s name is a question to ask before paying.

If the provider sends you a tax certificate, for example a certificate of registration for the business tax (taxe professionnelle), the DGI website has a certificate verification page: you choose the type of document and enter the numbers printed on it to check that it is genuine.

Freelancers and auto-entrepreneurs

Many freelancers in Morocco work under the auto-entrepreneur status. Law 114-13 expressly exempts them from registering in the commercial register; instead they are listed in a dedicated register, the national auto-entrepreneur register. Not finding a freelancer on Directinfo is therefore not a red flag. Simply ask for their certificate of registration in that register, and check that the name matches the quote and the bank account.

The real risk is a freelancer with no status at all. You get no invoice with identifiers, and no identifiable party to turn to if the site goes down in two years. Some still do good work; it is up to you to weigh what you could lose if that person moves on. Our comparison of freelancers, agencies and online site builders sets out the strengths and limits of each option.

Provider’s status	Where they are registered	What to ask for	How to check
Company (SARL, SA…)	Commercial register, centralised by OMPIC	Company name, RC number and court, ICE, tax ID	Free search on Directinfo; certificate of registration or copy of entries
Sole trader	Commercial register	Name, trading name, RC, ICE	Directinfo search by name or trading name
Auto-entrepreneur	National auto-entrepreneur register (Law 114-13)	Certificate of registration	The document itself; same name on the quote and the bank account
No status	Nowhere	—	Nothing to check: the risk is entirely yours

One more legal point that is often missed. Law 31-08 on consumer protection, with its seven-day withdrawal period, covers consumers, meaning people buying for non-professional needs. When your company orders its website, that legal cooling-off period does not apply: your only protection is what is written in the quote and the contract. All the more reason to read them closely.

Judge the work itself: open and test the websites they have delivered

The best review of a web provider is the websites they have already put online. Ask for three to five addresses of live sites delivered in the last two years, ideally in your sector or for businesses your size. Not screenshots, not PDF mock-ups: addresses you can type in yourself.

The phone test

Open each site on your own phone, on 4G, away from the office Wi-Fi. Can you read the text without zooming? Does the menu open? Is the call or WhatsApp button visible, and does it actually open the app? Is the information current: the year in the footer, the news, the opening hours? Do not send test messages through their contact forms: real businesses read them.

Speed, measured by Google

Then paste each address into PageSpeed Insights, Google’s free tool, and look at the “Mobile” tab. Google shows a performance score from 0 to 100: 90 or above is considered good, 50 to 89 needs improvement, below 50 is poor. That score comes from a lab test. When a site has enough visitors, the tool also shows field data, measured on real users over the previous 28 days.

Two measurements are enough to form a view. LCP, the time it takes to display the largest visible element: good up to 2.5 seconds, poor beyond 4 seconds. CLS, which measures elements jumping around while the page loads: it should stay below 0.1. Do not demand a 100 everywhere; look for consistency. A provider whose sites are all fast knows the job. A provider with every other site in the red gets lucky when it works.

The after-launch test

A site that looked great on launch day may have aged badly. Check that the HTTPS padlock is there, that every page opens, and that the content has moved on since launch. Then do what almost nobody does: call the owner of one of those websites. Their number is on their site. Four questions are enough:

• Was the promised deadline met?
• Did the final price match the quote?
• When you ask for a change, how long does it take and what does it cost?
• Is the domain name in your name, and did you receive your logins?

That is the most reliable review you will ever get: from a real, reachable client, answering your own questions.

The provider’s own website

Run the same tests on the provider’s own site: it is their shop window, the one they look after most. It should be fast on a phone, say who they are, give an address and contact details, and let you understand what you are buying without first having to call a salesperson.

To be fair: a short portfolio is not necessarily a bad sign. Some clients refuse to be named, and many contracts, ours included, give them that right. But a provider who cannot show you a single live website gives you no evidence at all.

Test	Tool	Good sign	Bad sign
Display	Your phone, on 4G	Readable without zooming, menu and buttons easy to tap	Page slides sideways, tiny text, no call button
Speed	PageSpeed Insights, “Mobile” tab	Score of 90 or more; LCP under 2.5 s	Score under 50; LCP over 4 s
Stability	PageSpeed Insights	CLS under 0.1	Elements jumping while loading
Security	The address bar	HTTPS padlock	“Not secure”, expired certificate
Upkeep	A quick read	Dated, recent content	Old copyright year, news from three years ago
Satisfaction	A call to the owner	Deadline and price kept, domain in their name	Extra costs, unreachable provider, logins never handed over

Domain name and logins: who will own what?

This is the most important check, and it takes one line in the quote. Your domain name is your address on the internet and often the address of your email. The legal owner of a domain name is called the registrant, or holder. For a .ma domain, ANRT, the regulator that manages the extension, defines the holder as the individual or company that registered it through a registrar, and it is the holder’s name that appears in the .ma registry’s WHOIS database.

The trap is well known. In its annual report on .ma domain names, ANRT states that most of the complaints it handles involve names registered through intermediaries who registered them in their own name rather than their clients’. In other words, the provider owns your address. While everything goes well, you do not notice the difference. The day you want to change provider, you do.

The rule is simple: the quote must state that the domain is registered in your company’s name, as holder, with the provider listed only as technical contact. Also ask who pays the renewal, what it costs after year one, and who receives the reminders. This is not theoretical: according to ANRT, 93.5% of .ma names registered in 2025 were registered for one year only. A domain that expires during a dispute with a provider can slip away from you. Our domain name page explains how a registration in the client’s name works.

The domain is not the only login that matters. Here is what should be in your name, or handed over on request, in writing:

Access	What to require	Why
Domain name	Your company as holder; known expiry date	Without it, no address or email in your name
DNS zone	A copy of the settings, including the email records	Change host without cutting off your email
Hosting	Access, or a full backup handed over on request	Being able to leave with your website
Site admin	An account in your name, or an export of the content	Getting your text and images back at any time
Google Business Profile	The owner role in your name	It is your presence on Maps, not the provider’s
Search Console and analytics	Owner access in your name	Keeping your traffic history
Content and photos	Your usage rights in writing, including for licensed photos	Being able to reuse them elsewhere

That leaves ownership of the site itself: the design, the code, the text. The contract should say when they become yours (at launch, after the final payment, at the end of a commitment period) and what the provider hands over if you leave: files, backup, help with the transfer. If you already have a site and everything sits in a former provider’s name, our article on website redesign in Morocco explains how to get your domain and logins back.

Quote and contract: the warning signs before you sign

A good quote takes five minutes to read: everything you pay for is there, line by line, with what you will pay in the following years. Our guide to reading a website quote in Morocco goes through it line by line. Here we only list the signs that should make you slow down.

On the quote	Healthy version	Warning sign
Price	A written total, excl. or incl. VAT stated, itemised lines	“From…”, a price given only over the phone
Later years	Hosting, domain and maintenance priced	“Free for the first year”, with no price after that
Timeline	A defined starting point (complete brief) and a duration	“Quick”, “a few weeks”
Content	Number of pages, languages, who writes the text	“Complete website”, nothing more
Revisions	Number of revision rounds included, sign-off before launch	Nothing in writing; site published without your approval
Ownership	Domain in your name; site and content yours from a set date	Silence on the subject, or ownership kept indefinitely
SEO	Listed actions: titles, descriptions, speed, Search Console	“Guaranteed first page on Google”
Payment	A schedule, an invoice with identifiers, an account in the provider’s name	Everything upfront, in cash, with no invoice
Term	Commitment, renewal and termination in writing	A commitment you discover afterwards
Exit	Files and logins handed over, help transferring the domain	Unpriced “exit fees”

The promise of first place on Google

This warning sign deserves its own paragraph, because Google has put it in writing on its page for people thinking of hiring an SEO: “No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google.” Google adds that if an SEO guarantees their changes will give you first place in search results, you should find someone else. It also advises treating unsolicited email about search engines with the same scepticism as any other unsolicited sales pitch.

An honest provider tells you what they do (one page per service, careful titles and descriptions, a fast site, a complete Google profile) and what they do not control: your competitors, and what you publish afterwards. Our article on SEO pricing in Morocco shows what you can reasonably expect, and at what cost.

The price itself

To place a quote in context, these are the ranges seen in Morocco for a business showcase website: from around 5,000 DH with a freelancer, delivered in 2 to 4 weeks; 15,000 to 45,000 DH with a traditional agency, in 1 to 3 months. These are not fixed prices. A quote far below them is not necessarily a scam, but it often hides the year-two lines. The full three-year calculation, item by item, is in our website cost guide.

Questions to ask on the first call

The first call tells you as much through how questions are answered as through the answers themselves. A serious provider answers precisely, without jargon, and agrees to confirm everything in writing. Take notes during the call; you will compare them with the quote later.

Your question	Reassuring answer	Answer that should worry you
Who exactly will build my website?	Names, a team, a single point of contact	“We work with partners”, nothing more
Can you send me three comparable live sites?	Three addresses within the hour	Screenshots, or “it’s confidential” for all of them
In whose name will the domain be registered?	“Your company’s; you are the holder”	“Ours, it’s simpler for you”
What happens if I stop in two years?	Files, logins and transfer, no argument	“We’ll see”, or exit fees
What does year two cost?	A precise amount, in writing	“It depends”
Who writes the text and supplies the photos?	A clear answer, with any cost	The topic is dodged until after signing
When does the timeline start?	At a precise step, such as the complete brief	“As soon as possible”
How many revisions are included, and when do I sign off?	A number or a rule, and sign-off before launch	“As many as you like”, nothing in writing
Who responds if the site goes down, and how fast?	A channel and a response time	The founder’s mobile, with no promised response time
Can I change opening hours or a price myself?	Yes, or a request handled quickly and included	Every change is billed
Can you guarantee the first page on Google?	“No, nobody can; here is what we do”	“Yes, guaranteed”
What are your RC and ICE numbers?	Given straight away, then written on the quote	Hesitation, or “they’ll be on the invoice”

One last, very simple test: after the call, send a written message summarising what was said and ask for confirmation. A provider who confirms in writing what they promised on the phone gives you a good preview of the relationship to come.

The 15-point checklist

Here is the full list. Print it or keep it on your phone, and tick it off for every provider you compare. It takes a little over an hour per provider.

Point	What to check	How
1. Reviews	Number of reviews consistent with how long the provider has existed	Google profile and registration date
2. Banner	No Google warning about removed reviews, or a clear explanation	The Google profile
3. Criticism	Recent and negative reviews read; factual replies	Reviews sorted by date, then by rating
4. Identity	Company name, RC, ICE and tax ID, or auto-entrepreneur certificate	In writing, then Directinfo (OMPIC)
5. Matching names	Same name on the quote, the invoice and the bank account	The quote and the bank details
6. Delivered sites	Three recent live sites, tested on a phone	Your phone, on 4G
7. Speed	Mobile measurement of delivered sites and the provider’s own site	PageSpeed Insights
8. Client called	One client called directly, with your four questions	The number on their website
9. Domain	Registered in your company’s name, as holder	Written in the quote
10. Logins	Site, hosting, DNS, Google profile, Search Console yours or handed over on request	Written in the contract
11. Ownership and exit	Date from which the site is yours; files and transfer if you leave	The contract or terms of sale
12. Price	Written total, itemised lines, cost of later years	The quote
13. Google	No ranking guarantee	The quote and the call
14. Timeline and sign-off	Starting point, duration, sign-off on each page before launch	The quote
15. Commitment and payment	Term, termination, payment schedule, invoice	The contract

How do you decide? Four points are deal-breakers in our view: no verifiable identity (point 4), no live website to show (point 6), a domain that will not be in your name (point 9), and a guaranteed first place on Google (point 13). Any one of these four in the red is enough not to sign. For the rest, count: a provider who ticks thirteen points out of fifteen and is upfront about the other two beats one who looks perfect on paper but will not put promises in writing.

Run the same checklist on Bzaf Studio

We are not asking you to take our word for it. Here is what you can check about us, point by point, and where.

• Delivered sites (points 6 to 8). Our Our work page shows seven websites in different sectors, all live, each with its address. Open them on your phone, run them through PageSpeed Insights, and call their owners: their contact details are on their sites. We publish no scores or testimonials here: measure for yourself.
• Reviews (points 1 to 3). We quote no rating here. Wherever you read reviews about us, apply the same rules as for anyone else.
• Identity (points 4 and 5). Our terms of sale identify the seller: BZAF STUDIO, Immeuble Zénith Business Center, rue Mouslim, 40000 Marrakech. Ask us in writing for our RC and ICE numbers before you order, and check them as you would for any provider. Payment is by bank transfer, to the account shown in the order confirmation we send within 24 hours.
• Domain and logins (points 9 to 11). The domain name is registered in your name: you are the holder. Our terms state that once paid in full, the website, its content and the domain name belong to you; for the plan, payment in full means the twelve monthly payments of the commitment period, and until then we keep ownership of the site. Your files and logins are handed over on request, and when you cancel we help you move the site and the domain to the provider of your choice.
• Price (point 12). It is written on the offer page: the All-Inclusive Plan costs 399 DH incl. VAT a month, with a 12-month commitment then month to month, or 4,550 DH incl. VAT a year, which is 238 DH less than twelve monthly payments. There is no build fee; the first month is paid when you order. It includes a showcase website of up to 30 pages with a custom, mobile-first design, a blog, FAQ, contact form and WhatsApp button, SEO on every page, a second language, your Google Business Profile, legal pages, the domain, hosting and maintenance with SSL, backups and small changes, and one blog article written for you every month.
• Google (point 13). Our terms say it plainly: no position on Google is guaranteed. The SEO included covers the technical and editorial optimisation of each page.
• Timeline and sign-off (point 14). Your site goes live 5 working days after we receive the complete brief. You approve each page, and nothing is published without your written agreement; an email or a WhatsApp message is enough.
• Commitment (point 15). The plan runs for a 12-month commitment. If a business client cancels before the end, except for a legitimate reason, the remaining monthly payments are due: it is in our terms of sale, so read them before ordering. If you order as a private individual, Law 31-08 gives you 7 days to withdraw.

We are not the right choice in every case, and you may as well know before the call:

• You want an online shop, with a cart, payments and stock: the plan is a showcase website.
• Your site needs well over 30 pages, with a catalogue or a directory.
• You need custom development: a client area, a link to your management software, an app.
• You would rather pay once and manage everything yourself for years: a fixed-price build from a serious freelancer who passes the checklist above will cost you less over time.

We work from Marrakech, as an agency since 2021, for businesses across Morocco, from Casablanca to Rabat, and we reply within 24 hours on WhatsApp. Run the fifteen checks, on us and on everyone else, then compare. If we pass your list, the order page takes five minutes.