How to Choose an IT Company: A Client's Checklist

Choosing the wrong IT vendor is expensive: lost months, missed launches, and a project that is easier to rewrite from scratch than to finish. Meanwhile, at the negotiation stage every vendor sounds equally convincing. This checklist will help you tell a reliable team from a risky one before signing the contract.

Portfolio: Look at Live Projects

Screenshots in a presentation prove nothing — ask for links to live projects and test them yourself: loading speed, mobile experience, request forms. Look for projects in the portfolio similar to yours in type and complexity: a team that built online stores will not necessarily handle an ERP.

A good sign is a vendor willing to introduce you to past clients. Five minutes of conversation with a real customer tells you more than an hour of presentations.

Process: Transparency Before the Start

• A detailed estimate broken down by stages — a “turnkey website for 50 million” with no breakdown means arguments later about what the price includes.
• A contract that fixes deadlines, stages, and each party's responsibilities.
• Payment by milestones tied to deliverables, not 100% prepayment.
• Regular demos — you see the product every 1–2 weeks, not “we'll show everything in three months.”
• A clear change process: how work beyond the original scope is estimated and approved.

Team and Communication

Find out exactly who will work on your project and who your point of contact is. If only a salesperson shows up to meetings and you never see the team, the project will likely go to subcontractors you learn about at the last moment.

Watch how the vendor behaves in negotiations: a good team asks questions about your business and goals, pushes back, and suggests cheaper options. A vendor that answers “yes, we'll do it” to everything either doesn't understand the scope or plans to milk you with change requests.

Technology and Code Ownership

• A modern stack (e.g., Next.js, React, Node.js) — any other team will be able to maintain and grow the project.
• Source code rights must transfer to you under the contract — otherwise you are tied to the vendor forever.
• Domain, hosting, and repository access are registered to you, not the contractor.
• Documentation and project handover — what you receive if you decide to continue with another team.

Red Flags

• A price several times below the market — later it turns out half the work “wasn't included.”
• A promise to deliver a complex project “in a week” — either a template or missed deadlines.
• 100% prepayment and refusal to work by milestones.
• No questions about your business — the vendor doesn't care what they are building.
• Evasive answers about who owns the code and access after delivery.

Conclusion

Choose not the lowest price but a team with a live portfolio, a transparent estimate, and a clear process — it is cheaper in the end. Global Soft works exactly this way: a detailed estimate by stages, demos every two weeks, and full transfer of code ownership. Tell us about your task — we will evaluate the project for free and show similar cases.