How to choose an ecommerce development contractor: listen to their questions, not their portfolio
Most teams pick an ecommerce contractor by portfolio and price. I'd look at something else: the questions they ask before they give you a number.
A portfolio tells you the team once built something that looked good. A quote tells you how badly they want the deal. Their questions tell you whether they understand that your store already makes money, and that breaking it is not an option.
One caveat up front. I don't have market data on contractors, so you won't find "8 out of 10 agencies do X" here. This is a checklist from the other side of the table. I estimate Bitrix and headless projects myself, and I see where clients lose money before a single line of code is written.
What they ask before the price
The first call says a lot. A good contractor talks very little about themselves. They ask.
Here's what I want to hear:
- what brings in revenue today, and what can't go down for even a day;
- which systems sit next to the store: ERP, warehouse, shipping, payments;
- where the team actually loses speed, whether that's releases, catalog, search or checkout;
- who on the business side makes the final call.
If instead you get the stack, the 40-person team and the awards, that isn't bad in itself. But nobody asked about your business.
I wrote about what I find out before estimating in Should you rewrite Bitrix? Why I map scope before naming a price.
How they answer "how much?"
You want a number in the first email. Fair enough. The problem is a contractor who gives you one without asking anything.
A fixed price before discovery means one of two things. Either there's a big buffer for the unknown baked in, and you pay for it. Or there's no buffer, and in a couple of months you'll be hearing about "extra work" and "that wasn't included".
An honest answer sounds more like: "I'll give you an exact price after a short review. For now, here's a range and what moves it." A range with reasons is worth more than a nice round figure.
The longer version of why I avoid fixed prices at the start: Why I do not give a fixed price before discovery.
Do they offer a small first phase?
A good sign is a contractor who suggests starting small on their own. Not six months, not "the whole store", but one piece of work that shows within a few weeks how the team operates.
That gives you something simple: a cheap exit. If quality, communication or deadlines are off after the first phase, you've lost one phase. Not a year's budget.
If they only want the big contract, ask why. Sometimes there's a good reason. Often it's just how they close the sale.
What that first piece can look like: Do not start a rewrite with a six-month estimate. Start with the first work slice.
What they say about your current code
Ask them to look at the store before you sign. Even briefly.
If half an hour later you hear "it's all bad, we need to rewrite it", be careful. Legacy Bitrix can be heavy, but it sells. A contractor who wants to tear down a working system right away either hasn't looked closely or is selling the project they'd rather build.
I'd rather hear: this works and shouldn't be touched, these two or three places hurt, and this is where I'd start. How I look at someone else's project in the first few minutes is in What I check in the first 15 minutes on a project that's already on fire.
Do they pin down the boundaries?
Before kickoff, ask what goes into the contract besides the list of tasks. I look for three things:
- what "done" means, in concrete terms rather than "it works";
- what is explicitly out of scope;
- who on your side settles disagreements.
Sounds like paperwork. It's cheaper than anything that comes later. I once had a client who understood "done" differently from me, and it cost five months of rework. Another time I lost two weeks because I agreed a decision with the wrong person. Details in Three conversations before the project starts.
If the contractor raises these topics without being asked, that's a good sign. If they wave it off with "we'll figure it out as we go", you'll be the one figuring it out, and paying for it.
The repo and the access are yours
People skip this one because it's boring. They shouldn't.
Agree before you start that the code repository, hosting, domain and the Bitrix license are registered to your company. The contractor gets access. They don't own it.
This isn't about distrust. Contractors change. People leave, teams get overloaded. If you hold the code and the access, switching teams is unpleasant but doable. If you don't, you negotiate from weakness.
A short checklist
Before you sign, check that:
→ they asked about revenue, integrations and who makes decisions; → the price came after a review, or as a range with reasons, not in the first email; → there's a small first phase you can stop after; → someone looked at your current code, and "rewrite everything" wasn't the first answer; → the contract defines "done", "out of scope" and the person who decides; → code, hosting, domain and license are in your name.
If three or more of these fail, I'd keep talking to other teams.
If you're choosing a contractor right now and want a second opinion on a proposal, send it over. I'll tell you which questions I'd ask before signing.