Start with relevant experience, not the size of the portfolio. Ask to see two or three projects that sit close to your technology stack, and then ask which engineers actually built it. A solid partner will put you on a call with the tech lead. Answers that name nobody at this stage usually mean the delivery team is not the team you were shown.

The paperwork needs a slower read than the pitch. Three sections matter more than the rest: intellectual property assignment, non-disclosure, vue.js software development company and termination and handover. Every artifact has to transfer to you once invoices are settled, together with documentation, pipelines and deployment scripts. Look closely at wording that leaves framework code in the vendor's hands, since this is frequently the dependency that makes switching painful.

Ask how they estimate. A serious estimate is accompanied by the assumptions behind it, a task-level breakdown and a range rather than a single number. A fixed-price contract works only when the scope is genuinely frozen; in any other case the provider adds a risk premium and you pay for it anyway. A time-and-materials model puts the risk on your side, so it requires a sprint cadence, demos and a budget cap.

How the work is run matters as much as headcount. Find out what happens when the scope changes, node js development company who signs off on a feature and how quality assurance works. A mature team can show you a live build at the end of each sprint. Clear, written acceptance criteria stay the practical protection against an argument at delivery time.

Finally, plan for the handover while the relationship is still good. Ask that the repository stays under your account from the first commit, and moscow software development agency that the documentation is refreshed in every sprint. A provider confident in its own work will agree quickly; resistance at this point reveals quite a lot.