1. Do they start from your business outcome, or from the technology?
The strongest sign of a serious software development company is that the first conversation is about your business, not their tech stack. Before a line of code is written, a good partner maps how your operation actually works and defines success in numbers, fewer manual hours, faster order processing, lower error rates. If the pitch opens with frameworks and buzzwords instead of your problem, you are buying technology for its own sake.
2. Will you own the software outright?
Ask directly: when the project ends, who owns the code, the data, and the deployment? Some agencies keep you dependent by withholding source code or hosting everything on accounts you cannot access. A custom platform should be genuinely yours, never a black box you cannot change or move. Get the answer in writing before you commit.
3. What does their process look like, week to week?
A vague answer here is a red flag. You want to hear about discovery and scoping, a working prototype you can react to early, iterative builds with regular check-ins, and user-acceptance testing on your real workflows, not a demo on dummy data. This is how you avoid the classic Bangladeshi software horror story: paying in full, then receiving something that does not match how your team works.
4. How do they handle maintenance after launch?
Software is only as good as its upkeep. Security patches, library updates, performance tuning, and small changes are not optional extras, they are the difference between a platform that keeps earning its place and one that quietly rots. Ask whether they offer an ongoing maintenance arrangement (often called a Digital AMC, an Annual Maintenance Contract) and what it covers. "We will hand it over and you are on your own" is a warning, not a feature.
5. Have they built for the realities of Bangladesh?
Local context matters more than most international templates admit. Payment behaviour, mobile-first users, intermittent connectivity, local logistics, and language all shape what good software looks like here. A company that has delivered platforms for Bangladeshi retail, e-commerce, or logistics will design around these realities from day one instead of discovering them in production.
6. Can they show outcomes, not just screenshots?
A portfolio of pretty interfaces tells you little. Ask what each project changed for the client: did it cut costs, raise capacity, open a new market? Named clients and concrete results carry far more weight than a wall of logos. If a company cannot describe the outcome of its own work, be cautious about trusting it with yours.
7. How do they talk about cost?
Cheapest is rarely a bargain when you factor in rework, downtime, and abandonment. A trustworthy partner scopes the work from your desired outcome and proposes a transparent, fixed plan so you know what you are paying for before code is written. For most established businesses, a focused first release costs far less than the manual hours and errors it removes, and that ROI is the number that should drive the decision.
The short version
Hire the company that talks about your business before its tools, hands you full ownership, has a real process, stays on for maintenance, understands the local market, can prove outcomes, and is transparent about cost. That is the standard we hold ourselves to at Arcane Hive.