A number produced without questions to ask a software development company is a warning, not a service level. Any serious team will come back with questions first: about users and build an mvp volumes. A vendor that quotes without asking anything is working from a template, and the gap resurfaces as a change order — at your expense.

Be wary of a gap between the people you meet and those who eventually appear in the repository. Insist on specific people rather than roles in the statement of work, with wording about substitutions. A team that talks only about a pool of resources and refuses to name people is reserving the option to staff you with whoever is free.

Require access to the repository from day one. A team that delivers a build only at the end of each phase is asking you to trust a black box. Visible commits reveal the actual pace far better than any status report. This extends to the automated test suite: if nothing runs automatically, quality claims remain unverifiable.

Ambiguous contract language around IP is never a formality. The agreement needs to state plainly that all outputs produced under it transfer to the client on payment. Check also the jurisdiction and how payments are structured: a request for most of the money up front with no deliverable attached eliminates any leverage you would otherwise keep.

Lastly, pay attention to how they communicate. Establish how much working-time overlap you will share each day, which named person handles day-to-day questions and how quickly. A few hours of overlap is usually enough; none at all stretches each small question into a day of delay. Sloppy written English in the sales phase does not improve once the work starts.