What to Ask a Mobile App Development Company Before You Sign Anything

Commissioning a mobile app is one of the most significant technology investments a business can make — and one of the most common sources of expensive regret. The pattern repeats so reliably it has become a cliché: a business owner has a clear idea, they find a development company that sounds capable, they sign a contract, and six to eighteen months later they are either starting over with a new vendor or maintaining an application that barely does what it was supposed to do.

This guide gives you the eight questions to ask any mobile app development company before committing — along with what a strong answer looks like and what a weak one reveals. These are not trick questions. A good development partner will welcome every one of them. A bad one will deflect, generalise, or become visibly uncomfortable. That reaction is itself useful information.

This is the most revealing question on the list, and it belongs first. Every serious mobile app development company runs a formal discovery process before writing a single line of code. Discovery is how a competent team identifies what you actually need to build — not just what you think you need — by exploring your users, your workflows, your integrations, your compliance requirements, and your definition of success.

What you are listening for in the answer:

• Duration and structure: Discovery should take one to four weeks for most projects, not a thirty-minute call. If a vendor offers to scope and price your project before a discovery engagement, treat it as a red flag.
• Deliverables: Ask what you receive at the end of discovery. The answer should include a written scope document, user flow diagrams, technical architecture outline, and a refined project estimate. "We figure it out as we go" is not an answer.
• Billing for discovery: Reputable companies typically charge for discovery — and that is a positive signal. Free scoping rushed to a proposal is a commercial exercise, not a genuine requirements exercise.

Every mobile app is built on one of two fundamental architecture approaches: native (a separate codebase for iOS and a separate codebase for Android) or cross-platform (a single shared codebase that deploys to both). The right choice depends entirely on your specific use case, user expectations, budget, timeline, and feature requirements. A mobile app development company that recommends one approach without asking you questions first is recommending their preferred technology, not the right solution for your project.

Neither is universally superior. The right answer for a consumer-facing app with complex animations and heavy device integration is different from the right answer for an internal business tool with forms and data views. Ask your vendor:

• What are the trade-offs for my specific use case? Not in general — for this project.
• What have you built on the recommended platform? Ask for live examples in a similar category — consumer, enterprise, healthcare, e-commerce.
• What limitations will I encounter? Every approach has constraints. A vendor who presents no downsides has not thought it through carefully enough.

Case studies on a development company's website are marketing material. They are selected for maximum impressiveness, described in the most flattering terms, and typically show the finished product at its best moment. What you need is not a curated portfolio — it is verifiable evidence of capability in an application category similar to yours.

A mobile app development company with genuine experience in, say, healthcare apps, on-demand service platforms, or B2B enterprise tools will be able to give you working app store links or demonstrate applications you can install and use yourself. If they cannot, the portfolio is either old, exaggerated, or built on technology that has since changed significantly.

In your evaluation conversation, push beyond the initial portfolio presentation:

• Download the apps they name. Use them. Check performance, UX quality, and active maintenance (look at app store review dates and when the last update was released). A polished demo and a maintained live product are different things.
• Ask about the technology versions used. An app built on React Native 0.63 in 2021 does not tell you much about a team's current capability with React Native 0.74 in 2025. Ask which version they actively develop on today.

Development agencies present their senior engineers in pitches. The work is frequently done by more junior staff or offshore contractors who were not part of the conversation. This is not inherently a problem — well-structured teams with strong senior oversight and clear processes can deliver excellent work regardless of where the developers are located or how experienced they are individually. The problem is when the staffing reality is concealed from clients until after the contract is signed.

Ask the mobile app development company directly: who will be on my team, what are their roles, and how much of the day-to-day development work will be handled by the people I am meeting now versus other team members I have not yet spoken to? This question does not need to be adversarial — frame it as wanting to understand the working relationship you are entering.

Specific things to establish:

• Named project manager: Is there a dedicated PM for your project, or will a developer act as the project contact? A dedicated PM is a sign of operational maturity.
• Senior engineer involvement: Will a senior engineer review code throughout, or only at final review? Ask about the PR review process and who approves merges to main.
• Offshore structure and time zone overlap: If any development is offshore, what are the actual overlapping working hours? Four hours of real overlap per day is workable. One hour is not.
• Rotation policy: What happens if a team member leaves or rotates off your project? Is there a documented knowledge transfer process, or does institutional knowledge leave with the person?

Scope change is inevitable in app development. User research reveals something unexpected. A stakeholder has a new requirement mid-sprint. A third-party API turns out to work differently than documented. The question is not whether scope will change — it will — but whether the development company has a clear, fair, and documented process for handling it when it does.

What a good change control process looks like:

• Any change outside the agreed scope is documented in a written Change Request (CR) before work begins.
• The CR specifies the additional time, cost, and impact on overall timeline.
• Both parties sign off on the CR before development of the change starts.
• Minor changes below a defined threshold (e.g., under four hours of work) may be handled with a lighter process — but the threshold and the lighter process should still be documented.

The Right Questions Lead to the Right Partner

The purpose of this framework is not to make vendor selection more stressful — it is to make it more honest. A mobile app development company that has invested in proper discovery processes, robust QA, clear IP terms, and written post-launch SLAs will welcome every question here. These questions do not trip up competent vendors. They filter out the ones who rely on confidence and vague promises to close contracts.

Pre-Signing Evaluation Checklist

Use this checklist to track your evaluation across vendor conversations. Every unchecked box is a follow-up question:

A vendor that satisfies every item in this checklist is not guaranteed to be perfect — but they are demonstrably committed to the practices that separate professional mobile app development from costly disappointment. That commitment, evidenced before the contract is signed, is the strongest indicator available of how the engagement will actually unfold.