Look first at proven experience, not the number of logos on the website. Request a couple of engagements that sit close to your domain and your stack, and then find out whether those engineers are still with the azure software development company. A solid partner will put you on a call with the engineers. Evasive answers at this stage almost always mean the demo work came from somewhere else.

The agreement warrants more scrutiny than the proposal. Three clauses do most of the work: intellectual property assignment, the NDA, and termination and handover. Every artifact should transfer to you as it is paid for, including designs, scripts and infrastructure configuration. Be careful with wording that leaves framework code with the vendor, as that is often the dependency that makes switching painful.

Ask where their numbers come from. An honest estimate comes with a written set of assumptions, a breakdown by feature or module and an explicit range. A fixed-price contract works only when the scope is genuinely frozen; otherwise the vendor pads the number and you pay for it anyway. Time and materials moves the risk back to the client, so it demands a cap, regular demos and transparent reporting.

The delivery process matters as much as the number of developers. Ask how a new requirement enters the plan, who defines done and how quality assurance works. A dedicated team vs freelancers should be able to walk you through a live build at the end of each sprint. Clear, written acceptance criteria remain the practical protection against the it-was-never-in-scope conversation.

Before signing, consider the end of the engagement before it becomes urgent. Insist that the repository stays under your account from the beginning, and that a readme and architecture notes are kept current as the code changes. A vendor software development lifecycle with nothing to hide says yes immediately; hesitation here tells you most of what you need to know.