Tattoo Artist BooksHow to choose an app development company: look at apps the company has actually published, talk to a past client, and make sure every promise appears in a written proposal. Polished slides, a big team or a low price matter far less than those three things.
The company you pick shapes your app's lifespan and your budget. Below are the criteria and the questions to bring to every call. If you have not decided between an agency and a solo developer yet, read agency vs freelance app developer first.
1. Inspect live work
Portfolio screenshots are not enough. Download the app and use it. Is it fast, does it crash, is it updated? The last update date in the store tells you whether it is alive. If nothing is live, ask why; confidentiality can be legitimate, but then ask for another kind of proof.
2. Talk to a reference
Ask to speak with a past client. Did they hit the timeline? Were there surprise costs? Could they reach the team after launch? Be extra careful with a company that cannot offer a single reference.
3. Written proposal and scope
A good proposal states what is included and what is not. "User accounts" is not enough: is there social login, password reset, which screens exist? Writing exclusions down prevents "that costs extra" arguments later. To understand what drives price, see app development cost.
4. Is the process clear?
A healthy process has steps: intro, scope and proposal, design, development, testing and release, growth. Look at two points in particular:
- Design approval: Do you see and approve screens before coding starts?
- Regular builds: Do you get weekly or biweekly versions you can try on your phone? Waiting months without seeing anything is the most common complaint.
5. Ownership: code, accounts, data
- Source code: Does all of it belong to you after delivery, and under what conditions?
- Store accounts: Will the Apple Developer and Google Play accounts be opened in your name? An app published from the agency's account makes leaving difficult.
- Data: Where is user data stored and who can access it? This matters for GDPR; ask a lawyer about specifics.
6. After launch
Launch is not the end: operating systems update, store rules change, bugs appear. Is there a support plan, what does it cover and what is the response time? We go deeper in app maintenance and updates.
12 questions to ask an app development company
- Which live apps of a similar type have you built?
- Who will work on my project, and who will I talk to?
- Will you write down what is not included in the proposal?
- Do you start development only after I approve the design?
- How often and how do you share builds?
- Who owns the source code?
- Whose name will the store accounts be under?
- How do you price change requests?
- How do you run testing?
- Is there a post-launch support plan, and what does it cover?
- Will you sign an NDA for my idea?
- If I leave, how do you hand over the project?
Red flags
| Sign | Why it is a problem |
|---|---|
| Exact price and date in the first call | Numbers before the scope is defined rarely hold |
| No references, no live apps | Cannot prove they deliver |
| Vague code or account ownership | You may be locked in later |
| "We do everything" | Often means no real specialty |
| Evasive about contract and invoicing | No legal protection |
For what a contract should say, see our app development contract guide.
Does location matter?
A local team makes in-person meetings easy, but a good process with video calls and weekly builds works remotely too. Look at how they communicate and document, not just the city on the website.
Go into the first call prepared
A good conversation needs you to prepare too. Send the company a one-page brief: the app's purpose, target user, must-have features, nice-to-have features, target platforms and your desired launch date. If you have a budget range, say so; it steers the company toward a scope that fits instead of an unnecessarily long proposal.
Sending the same brief to several companies lets you compare the answers. How careful the replies are also tells you something: did the first message show they read your questions and probed the scope, or did you get a generic price list?
Evaluate after each call
Keep a simple scorecard: portfolio, communication, scope clarity, ownership terms, support, overall trust. Give each 1 to 5 and write a one-sentence reason. Emotional decisions tend to favor whoever pitched best; the scorecard pulls you back to the real criteria. Before deciding, ask any lingering doubt in writing and judge the quality of the answer: a team that answers clearly and honestly will probably behave the same way during the project.
Frequently asked questions
How many companies should I get quotes from?
Two or three. Give each the same written brief; only then can you compare quotes fairly.
Is the lowest quote the best choice?
If the scope is identical and the company meets the criteria above, possibly. Otherwise a low quote can grow through items that were not included.
I am worried about sharing my idea. What should I do?
Ask for an NDA before the first detailed conversation, and ask a lawyer about details. We cover this in how to protect an app idea.
How should payments be structured?
Usually in stages: proposal approval, design delivery, builds, release. Paying everything upfront or everything at the end are both risky extremes.
At OdenaVerse we prefer to answer all of these in writing: exclusions are listed in the proposal, nothing goes to code before you approve the design, and store publishing uses your own accounts. Our founding team comes from a tattoo studio, and we built our first app, Tattoo Artist Books, for our own business. If you would like to talk, email us.