How to choose a software development company

Choosing badly is expensive in a specific way: you do not find out for six months, and by then you own a codebase nobody wants to touch. These are the questions that predict the outcome.

1. Can they show you something running?

Not a portfolio of screenshots — a URL you can open and an app you can install. Anyone can show mockups. Far fewer can show a system that has been in production for two years and still works.

2. Who actually writes the code?

Ask who will be on your project by name, and whether they are employed or subcontracted. The team that sells is often not the team that builds.

3. What happens after launch?

Software is mostly maintenance. Ask what support looks like in month seven: who gets paged, how fast, and what it costs. A partner with no answer is planning to disappear.

4. Do you own everything?

Source code, repositories, cloud accounts, domains, app store listings, API keys. If any of it sits in the vendor's account, you are renting your own product. Get this in the contract.

5. How do they handle being wrong?

Every project has a wrong assumption in it. Ask for an example of one they got wrong and what they did. A partner who has never been wrong has not shipped much.

6. Can they say no?

A company that agrees to everything in the first meeting is either not listening or planning to charge for the difference later.

7. Do they understand your market?

Right-to-left interfaces, slow connections, local payment rails and messaging habits are not details. A team that has never built for this region will discover them at your expense.

We are an EU-registered company with engineering in Sofia and Damascus, and everything we have built is linked from our work — live, running, and clickable. If those seven questions are on your mind, start a conversation.