Look first at proven experience, offshore software development not the size of the portfolio. Request a couple of case studies that match your stack, and then find out which engineers actually built it. A solid partner will put you on a call with the tech lead. Evasive answers at this stage generally mean the delivery team is not the team you were shown.

The paperwork needs a slower read than the pitch. A few clauses carry most of the weight: intellectual property assignment, confidentiality, and exit terms and enterprise php development handover. Everything produced should transfer to you on payment, along with documentation, pipelines and deployment scripts. Be careful with language that leaves framework code outside the transfer, because it is usually the part you cannot replace later.

Ask where their numbers come from. A credible estimate arrives with the assumptions behind it, a task-level breakdown and a best case and a worst case. A fixed price works only when the requirements are stable and documented; when the scope is still moving the vendor pads the number and you pay for uncertainty either way. A time-and-materials model puts the risk on your side, offshore development uk so it requires a sprint cadence, demos and a budget cap.

How the work is run beats the number of developers. Establish how a new requirement enters the plan, who writes the acceptance criteria and how testing is organised. A team will be able to show you a working build every one or two weeks. Clear, written acceptance criteria remain the practical protection against the it-was-never-in-scope conversation.

Finally, consider the handover before it becomes urgent. Require that the code repository sits in your organisation from the first commit, and that a readme and architecture notes are kept current as the code changes. A provider confident in its own work accepts it without argument; hesitation here says most of what you need to know.