What to Look for When Hiring a Contractor to Build Your Product

Hiring someone to build software for your business is a big decision, especially if you’re not technical yourself. The right contractor saves you months. The wrong one costs you months — and you might not realise it until the product is live and the problems start.

Here’s what to look for.

Before you hire

Be clear about what you need — not how to build it

You don’t need to write a technical specification. But you do need to explain what the product should do, who it’s for, and what success looks like. “We need a way for customers to book appointments and for staff to see the schedule” is enough to start. Let the contractor figure out the how.

If a contractor can’t ask good questions about your business problem, that’s a red flag. The best ones care about understanding the problem before they start building.

Ask about what happens after launch

This is the question most people forget. Building the product is only half the work. Who maintains it? Who fixes things when they break? Who handles updates when a service you depend on changes?

A good contractor will have answers for this. A bad one will say “we’ll figure it out later.” Our post on why launch is only the beginning goes deeper on what to expect after go-live.

Check their work, not just their portfolio

A polished portfolio site doesn’t tell you much. Ask to see the admin side of something they built. Ask how they handle security. Ask what their deployment process looks like. The answers will tell you whether they build things that last or things that demo well.

During the build

Insist on regular check-ins

Don’t wait until the end to see the product. Weekly or fortnightly demos — even rough ones — let you catch misunderstandings early. If a contractor resists this, that’s a concern.

Watch for shortcuts

Fast progress isn’t always good progress. If the contractor is shipping features without tests, without documentation, and without explaining how things fit together, the speed will cost you later. We see this pattern often — the hidden risks of building too fast covers the common problems.

Make sure you own the code

This sounds obvious but it’s worth confirming in writing. You should own the source code, the hosting accounts, and the credentials. If the contractor disappears, you need to be able to hand the project to someone else.

When you’re not sure

If you’re about to launch something a contractor built and you’re not confident it’s ready, a short outside review can help. Our build supervision service is designed for exactly this — giving you oversight without slowing the team down.

The goal isn’t to replace the contractor. It’s to make sure the decisions being made are ones the business can live with.

The one thing that matters most

The single most important thing when hiring a contractor is this: will you be able to run what they build after they leave?

If the answer isn’t clearly yes, something needs to change before launch. That might mean better documentation, a handover plan, or an independent review. The product rewrite case study shows what happens when this question doesn’t get asked early enough — and the cost of fixing it later.