Commissioning a mobile app: what to settle before you sign

Where do you start when commissioning a mobile app?

One question: without this app, who does what job today, and how? If you cannot answer it in a sentence, there is no scope yet, and every quote collected at this stage is guesswork. "Let our customers place orders" is not a scope, it is a wish. "Let our dealers see their balance and place an order, and let that order land in accounting" is a scope — because it contains two external systems and a permission model.

Once that sentence is settled, the second question answers itself: which screen the first release cannot work without. Everything else can wait for version two, and usually should. The point of a first release is not to deliver the whole product but to make the assumption measurable.

Should I build native or React Native?

It looks like a technology preference, but it is a usage-profile question, and the answer sits in your data rather than your opinion. If the app uses the camera continuously, collects location in the background or handles heavy graphics, it needs a layer that runs close to the device. For most other work a single codebase ships to both stores without a second team's cost. A firm that names a technology before asking you this question derived the answer from its own convenience, not from your business.

How long does commissioning a mobile app take?

Timelines follow the connections rather than the screens. The ranges below come from Neuros's own delivery record and describe the time after scope is settled — settling scope is a separate piece of work.

What should I ask a software company?

What these questions have in common is that the answer can be given in writing. A firm that answers verbally will run the project verbally too.

• After delivery, who holds the source code, the store accounts and the domain?
• Which of your apps can I download and use from the store right now?
• Is everything out of scope written out item by item in the contract?
• How many people will work on this project, and who — by name and role?
• If the app fails store review, whose obligation is the fix, and does it carry a fee?
• How is maintenance priced; are bug fixes and new features separate lines?
• When the operating system ships a major release, how does the update schedule work?

Should the App Store account be in my name?

The company that owns the app. This is the cheapest and most frequently skipped item in this guide. If the account belongs to the development firm, so do the app's reviews, download history, ranking and subscription revenue; changing vendors then means publishing the app from scratch, and existing users do not come with it.

Opening the accounts is an administrative process rather than a technical one, and it usually needs to start before development, because organisation verification can take days. For the Apple side see our App Store developer account guide, and for Google our Google Play developer account guide; both are the texts we send our own clients.

What should a software contract include?

• Transfer of intellectual property: it should say plainly that source code, design files and documentation pass to you on delivery.
• Account ownership: store accounts, domain, cloud accounts and analytics accounts under your corporate identity.
• The out-of-scope list: what is not included, item by item — nearly every later dispute comes from work missing here.
• Acceptance criteria: what "working" means, which devices and versions it was tested on, and when delivery counts as accepted.
• Maintenance and response times: the free support period, then response time, fix priority and monthly release count.

Does an app need maintenance after launch?

Stores do not distribute a standing app forever. Google Play requires apps to meet a target API level and raises that level every year; an app that falls behind stops appearing on new devices. On the Apple side review guidelines are updated regularly and existing apps are subject to them too. A maintenance agreement is therefore not an add-on service but the condition of staying published.

Should a software firm quote a fixed price?

On a well-defined first release a fixed price protects you: the risk sits with the supplier and you know a number. But asking for a fixed price before the scope is settled forces the supplier to write the risk into it, and the quote for the same work comes back markedly higher than it would after discovery. The right order is two stages: a short paid discovery, then a fixed price against a settled scope.

Do I get the app's design files?

When design files are left out of the delivery scope, changing firms means redesigning the app. The sentence to look for is not "designs are delivered" but "source design files and the design system transfer in editable format". Handing over screenshots is not handing over design.

Do the stores take commission on in-app purchases?

If you sell digital content or subscriptions the stores require their own payment systems and take a commission; for physical goods and services you can use your own payment stack. That distinction affects your business model directly and has to be settled while scoping — discovered later, the whole pricing model has to be rebuilt.

What does it take to send push notifications?

Yes, and they are usually left out of scope. Notification infrastructure is not merely a technical connection: which event notifies whom, how often, under which permission, is a product decision. Apps that get the permission prompt moment wrong lose notification consent permanently — once a user declines, asking again goes through system settings.

Will the app work without an internet connection?

In field, logistics and retail apps it almost always does, and it is an architectural decision that cannot be added later. An offline app holds data on the device, merges it when connectivity returns and resolves conflicts. That third item is the hard part: when two users edit the same record while offline, the product has to decide which one wins.

Which phones will the app be tested on?

Left out of the contract, this item becomes an argument on delivery day. Three things need settling: which operating system versions are supported, which screen sizes are tested, and which is the oldest supported device. "Works on all devices" is not a testable commitment.

Why is my app crashing and how do I see it?

They should be, because both are the only way to see anything in the first week after launch. In an app without crash reporting the user deletes it silently and you learn months later from a falling download count. Ask for the setup to be in the delivery scope and the accounts opened under your corporate identity.

“You judge a software firm not by its portfolio but by a piece of work that is still live.”