A practical checklist for founders and CTOs: what to check before you sign, the questions to ask on the first call, red flags in proposals, and how to compare agencies fairly.
A practical checklist for founders and CTOs: what to check before you sign, the questions to ask on the first call, red flags in proposals, and how to compare…
Pick the team that can show you **shipped work similar to yours**, explains **how they will reduce your risk in the first 4 weeks**, and gives you **full ownership of code, accounts and IP** from day one. Price matters, but a cheap team that ships the wrong thing is the most expensive option you have. The rest of this guide turns that into a checklist you can use on every vendor call.
Spend 30 minutes per agency before booking calls: • **Portfolio match** – do they have live apps or platforms in your category (marketplace, SaaS, health, fintech)? Download the apps. Open the websites. • **Independent reviews** – check Clutch, GoodFirms or Google reviews. Read the 3-star ones; they tell you how the team behaves when things go wrong. • **Team size vs. your project** – a 10–50 person studio gives a $30K–$150K project senior attention. At a 2,000-person firm that same budget is often a junior squad. • **Time-zone overlap** – you need at least 3–4 shared working hours for daily
1. Who exactly will work on my project, and can I meet the tech lead before signing? 2. Show me a project like mine. What went wrong, and how did you handle it? 3. What do you need from me each week? 4. How do you estimate? What is included and excluded in this number? 5. What happens if scope changes mid-project? 6. Who owns the code, the cloud accounts, the app store accounts and the designs? (Answer should be: you, from day one.) 7. How will I see progress? Look for a staging link, weekly demos and a shared board – not just status emails. 8. How do you test? Automated tests, QA on real devi
• **A fixed price with no discovery.** If they quote a full product after one call, the number is a guess and change requests will fill the gap. • **No list of assumptions or exclusions.** Every honest estimate says what is not included (third-party fees, content, store submission, etc.). • **Everything in one big milestone.** You want 2–4 week milestones with something you can click at the end of each. • **Code in their repository, not yours.** Ask for your own GitHub/GitLab org from week one. • **No mention of security or compliance** when you handle health, payments or personal data (HIPAA,
Put every proposal into the same table: If you're unsure which pricing model fits, read our guide to [fixed price vs. time and material](/blog/fixed-price-vs-time-and-material-software-projects).
The lowest-risk way to choose is a **short paid discovery (1–2 weeks)**: user flows, clickable prototype, architecture and a detailed estimate. You get something useful even if you walk away, and you see how the team communicates before you commit the full budget. At Interestbud we run a short discovery before quoting builds, and the client owns every output from it – designs, documents and the estimate. Further reading: [Custom Software Development Cost UK 2026](/blog/custom-software-development-cost-in-the-uk-2026-pricing-guide) and [Custom Software Development for US Healthcare — HIPAA 20
Want a second opinion on a proposal you already have, or a scoped estimate for your idea? [Talk to our team](/contact) or try the [app cost calculator](/tools/app-cost-calculator) for a first range. You can also see [our recent work](/portfolio) to check if it matches what you are building.