A contract checklist for hiring a software studio in India

Hiring across borders means you cannot walk into the office. What protects you instead is paper you can hold and accounts in your name. Here is the checklist we would want if we were the buyer, and where Samastack stands on each line.

Before any money moves

1. A written scope with a fixed number. Not an estimate and not a rate. The scope describes what will exist when the build is done; the number is fixed against it. If the studio cannot write this down, it does not know what it is building yet. Our first call is thirty minutes, and the written scope with the number follows within two working days.
2. Milestones you can see. An advance to start, one or two milestones tied to working software you can open, and the last payment at handover. Walk away from anyone asking for half up front.
3. An NDA, if your company needs one. Say so before the first conversation. It should cover both sides and it should not be a reason for delay.

While the build runs

4. A named lead. The person on the first call should be the person in every weekly demo and at handover. Ask for the name, and ask whether that person can be substituted. Here there is one lead on every project, from the first call to the end.
5. A live link every week. Progress you can open beats a slide of progress. If the studio cannot show working software weekly, ask why.
6. Response times in writing. How fast do questions get answered, and in what hours? Ours is one working day, with the weekly call in your hours.
7. Where the repository lives during the build. Some studios hand over zip files at milestones. Ours stays with us while we build and is open to you whenever you ask; at handover it moves to accounts in your name.
8. Pushback. A studio that agrees with everything during sales will agree with everything during delivery, which is how scope quietly grows. We tell you on the first call if a packaged product would serve you better, and we say so on every industry page.

At handover

9. IP assignment. The code, the designs and the documentation belong to you, in writing, on final payment.
10. Everything in your name. Source code and full git history in your repository, hosting and domain registered to you, in the cloud region you choose. The item-by-item list is public.
11. Documentation for the next developer. Written for whoever comes after us, not for us. If you stop working with the studio, you keep a running system another developer can take over.
12. No retainer. Support should be optional. Ours is a care plan you can start, pause or stop any month. It is never a condition of anything.

The two questions that reveal the most

Ask who owns the app store accounts and the hosting accounts. If the answer is the studio, you are renting your own software. Ask what happens if you stop paying. If the answer is anything other than "you keep a working system", keep looking.

The ownership panel on the worldwide page is our version of this checklist, written from our side of the table. Bring it to the call.

Where this applies: clients outside India, every question, answered, what you own at handover.