Consulting · 8 min
How to Choose a Software Development Company
A buyer’s guide to choosing a software partner: questions that expose delivery quality, and red flags that show up before the contract.
The wrong partner is expensive twice: you pay them, then you pay to unwind the work. The right questions are about how they will handle uncertainty, not how many logos they can print.
Ask how they start
If the first artefact is a technology list, keep walking. If they ask who the user is, what must not break, and what “done” means in operations, you are in a useful conversation. That is the difference we describe on the about page and in IT consulting.
Ask what they will not do
A company that says yes to native apps, SAP, data science, and a blockchain in the same breath is selling appetite. Specialisation can be a cluster (web, mobile, cloud, modernization) — it cannot be everything on earth.
Ask about production
- Who is on call after launch?
- Where does the code live?
- How are secrets and environments handled?
- What does a typical increment look like?
Ignore vanity metrics
If they invent “500% ROI” and “50+ experts” without context, assume the rest is marketing. Case studies should describe a problem, a solution, and constraints. Our case studies are written that way on purpose: no fake numbers.
Use a qualification form both ways
A serious studio will ask about budget band and problem type — as we do on Get a Quote — because unpaid discovery on a $4K brochure is not how either side should spend the week.