An app company's website can show anything: polished mockups, a wall of app icons, a count of apps delivered. Your phone is harder to fool. A good deal of what matters about an app development company in India, or anywhere else, can be checked on Google Play and the App Store in less time than a sales call takes, as long as you know where to look.
This checklist is for founders and managers comparing app companies in India. We are an Indian team that builds apps, so these are also the checks we expect buyers to run on us. Pricing has its own article, on what a mobile app costs to build. Here the questions are whether a company can deliver, and whether you will own what it delivers.
Apps you can install, not screenshots
Ask every company on your shortlist for store links to three apps it built that are live today, and install them on your own phone. A recording shows the path someone rehearsed. Installing the app shows you what happens when you tap the wrong thing, lose signal or leave it in the background for an hour.
Spend ten minutes on each app. Sign up. Do the main task the app exists for, whether that is booking, ordering or tracking, and go as far as the payment screen. Switch to airplane mode halfway through and see what happens. Close the app and reopen it. You are not judging the idea, which belonged to the client. You are judging the build, which belongs to the company.
Some good work cannot be installed: internal staff apps, or apps for clients who asked not to be named. That is normal. Ask for a live walkthrough on a call, or a test build on your phone through TestFlight or a Google Play testing track, rather than a video.
What the store listing tells you
The developer name
Every Google Play listing names its developer, and the App support section shows the account holder's details. Google's rules on developer information shown on Google Play say an organization account displays its legal name, legal address, email and phone number, while a personal account shows the legal name, country and email. On the App Store, the Information section has a Seller field, which Apple fills with the organization's name for a company account and the person's legal name for an individual.
This is the part that is easy to misread. An app that belongs to the client should carry the client's name, not the app company's, so the store page usually cannot prove who built it. Ask for a reference instead: a short call with the client, or permission to contact them. And if all of a company's portfolio apps appear under its own developer account, ask why. It may have built its own products, which is fine. Or it may publish client apps from its own account, which is exactly what you do not want for yours.
The update history
Google Play shows an "Updated on" date, and the App Store shows a version history. An app last updated years ago tells you nobody is maintaining it, and on Android it may not even be offered to people with newer phones. Google's target API level requirements say that since August 31, 2026, new phone apps and updates must target Android 16 (API level 36) or higher, and existing apps must target at least Android 15 (API level 35) to stay available to new users on devices running newer Android versions.
Recent updates are a good sign, but ask who made them. Clients sometimes move maintenance to another team after launch, which says nothing bad about either company, but it does change whose work you are looking at.
Who will own your developer accounts
Whichever app development company in India you hire, your app should be published from your own Google Play and Apple developer accounts, with the company's developers added as team members. Whoever holds the account holds the listing, its ratings and reviews, and the ability to publish every future update. An app can be moved to another account later, but the current holder has to start the transfer, and that is the last thing you want to depend on if the working relationship has ended. Starting in the right account is far simpler.
Opening accounts can take weeks, so the company should plan for it in the first week of the project, not the last. Organization accounts on both stores need a D-U-N-S number, and Google warns that getting one can take up to 30 days. Apple also requires an organization to be a legal entity with a public website and a work email on its own domain. If you publish from a personal Google Play account created after November 13, 2023, the app must first run a closed test with at least 12 testers opted in for at least 14 days before you can apply for production access. Our article on Google Play's closed testing rule explains how to plan for that honestly.
If a company suggests skipping the closed test by publishing from an older account it controls, say no. Your app would start life in someone else's account, and if that account was bought, it falls foul of Google's Play Console requirements, which prohibit buying, leasing and selling accounts obtained through illegitimate means on third-party marketplaces.
Are store submission and testing in the quote?
Some quotes stop at "app development". The work between a finished build and a live listing is real, and you should know who does each part:
- Test builds on your phone throughout the project, through TestFlight on iOS and a testing track on Google Play, not only at the end.
- Testing on real devices your customers use, including mid-range Android phones, not just emulators.
- Store listing text, screenshots and the privacy policy.
- Google Play's Data safety form, which every app on a closed, open or production track must complete, even one that collects no data, and which must account for what third-party SDKs inside the app collect.
- Running the closed test, if your account needs one.
- Answering store review questions and fixing rejections.
Ask for each line to be marked included, excluded or priced separately. Two quotes can look far apart simply because one covers this work and the other leaves it for later.
Support after launch, in writing
Support is where vague quotes cause the most arguments, because each side remembers a different promise. Before you sign, get these written down:
- A warranty period in which defects in delivered work are fixed without charge, and a definition of a defect.
- Response times for a crash that affects every user compared with a cosmetic issue.
- Who handles the platform changes the stores keep requiring, such as Google Play's yearly target API level update, and at what rate.
- Crash reporting set up before launch, with a dashboard you can see.
- A handover package: the code in your repository, build instructions and every credential, so another team could take over.
If your app collects personal data from people in India, add one more question. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 were notified on November 14, 2025, with an eighteen-month period for phased compliance. They expect a separate consent notice that explains the specific purpose for which personal data is collected, and prompt notice to affected users after a breach. Ask the company how the app will handle both.
A worked example: choosing an app development company in India
Say you run a meal-subscription kitchen in Pune. You want an app where customers choose a plan, skip or pause days, pay by UPI and get a message when their tiffin leaves the kitchen. You shortlist two companies and run the checks above.
Company A shows 40 app icons on its website. You can find three of them on Google Play. All three are published under Company A's own developer name, and the most recent was last updated in 2024. The quote says "app development" and nothing about store submission, test devices or support, and it suggests publishing from Company A's account "to save time".
Company B shows six apps. Four are on the stores under their clients' names, so you ask for a reference, and one owner agrees to a ten-minute call. Two of the four were updated in the last three months. The quote lists test builds every two weeks, named test devices, store listing and Data safety work, and a 60-day warranty. It proposes one cross-platform codebase for iOS and Android, because nothing in the feature list needs platform-specific work. For an app like this, we would make the same call and build it with Flutter for both platforms.
Company B's quote is about a fifth higher. But Company A has already told you three things: its portfolio does not survive a search, its apps are not maintained, and your app would live in its account. Ask A to price the missing items before you compare totals. If the gap closes, the choice is easy. If it does not, you know exactly what the lower price leaves out.
Before your next call with an app company, write six questions at the top of the page. Which three apps can I install today? Whose name is on those listings, and can I speak to one of the clients? When was each last updated, and by whom? Will my app be published from my own accounts? Are submission and testing in the quote? What does support look like in writing? An app development company in India that answers all six plainly deserves a closer look, whatever its website says.
Put the same six questions to us. Our portfolio shows the projects we built, each with a case study and a link to the project's own site where one is public. If you are planning an Android app, our Android developers can look at your feature list and launch plan, or you can describe the app you have in mind. Every enquiry gets a reply within 24 hours.
