An estimate that arrives instantly counts as a warning, not a service level. An experienced provider will come back with questions first: about users and volumes. A vendor that quotes before understanding the scope is simply pricing a guess, and a guess resurfaces as a change order — on your budget.
Be wary of any distance between the people you meet and those who eventually appear in the repository. Ask for specific people rather than roles in the statement of work, with a provision that requires notice before anyone is swapped. A team that only offers roles and never names individuals is reserving its own flexibility at your cost.
Require commit-level visibility from day one. A team that shows nothing between demos expects you to take delivery on faith. Visible commits show you how many people are really working far better than any status report. The same applies to the build and deployment setup: hire expert laravel developer if it does not exist, bespoke software development company assurances about quality remain just talk.
Loose wording in the contract around IP is not an accident. The document needs to state explicitly that all outputs produced under it belong to your business upon settlement of the relevant invoice. Check also which is better laravel or .net country's law applies and how payments are structured: a large upfront payment with nothing due in return for weeks takes away your only leverage.
Finally, look at communication. Ask how many hours the teams will share with your working day, who handles your questions and on what response times. Four hours of overlap generally works; none at all turns each small question into a twenty-four hour round trip. Sloppy written English in the proposal does not improve once the work starts.