Top 10 Mobile App Design Agencies 2026:#1 Frenchy Digital

"All their Dribbble shots look amazing. How do I tell which one will actually design my app?"

That's a paraphrase of a founder on a call with me this month. She had six agency tabs open and every portfolio looked like a gallery. I didn't have a clean answer, so I went and checked ten of the design agencies that keep showing up when you search for mobile app design.

Here's the claim, with the date on it. On September 29, 2026 I read the public pages of ten mobile app design agencies. Three of the ten publish a price. One of the ten says, on its own site, that you own the final design files. None has a design award win I could confirm on the awarding body's own website.

Portfolios tell you what an agency can make on its best day. They don't tell you what it costs, how the work runs week to week, or who owns the Figma file when the invoice is paid. Those are the things that decide whether a design engagement goes well, and they're the things this ranking scores.

To be clear about the conflict up front: I run Frenchy Digital, which designs and builds mobile apps. It isn't in the scored table. It gets its own disclosed section near the end, scored on the same rubric (10 of 12, which would tie Cieden and place first on the tiebreak), with a plain list of who should pick someone else.

If you're still deciding what kind of partner you need at all, read consultant vs agency vs freelancer first. This page assumes you've decided on an agency and want to know which one.

Most design agency rankings fail for three reasons: the author is on the list, the agencies are scored on their own outcome numbers, and the portfolio is treated as proof of process.

The first one is common. Many of the most visible 2026 "top design agency" lists are published by design agencies, often with themselves near the top. I'm not above that temptation either, which is why my company sits outside the table.

The second is the one that makes most lists useless. Design agency homepages are full of numbers: funding their clients raised after a redesign, conversion lifts, activation rates, market caps of their biggest client. Every one of those is the agency's own claim about its own work. A redesign rarely raises money on its own, and nobody outside the agency audits the attribution.

The third is specific to design. The wrong model says the best-looking portfolio wins. It feels right, because design is visual and you can see the work. But a portfolio is curated. It shows the finished frames of the projects that went well, with none of the weeks in between.

The real model is that a design engagement is a service with a price, a process and a handoff. A beautiful app that arrives as a messy Figma file, with no empty states, no error states and no component specs, costs you twice: once for the design and again when your engineers guess at everything the frames left out.

Therefore: the question isn't "whose screens are prettiest?" It's "what does it cost, what exactly do I get each week, and do I own the files at the end?" You'll see in the scoreboard how rarely those answers are on the website.

This article is also different from our other design pieces on purpose. Our mobile app design services guide explains what the work involves. This one ranks the firms that sell it, on facts you can re-check.

To be ranked, a firm had to present itself as design-led, show mobile app design work on its own site, and show no sign of having been acquired or shut down.

I started from about sixteen names that recur in design agency rankings and search results, then cut. Here's who didn't make it, and why.

• Work & Co: One of the most respected product design firms of the last decade, but Accenture completed its acquisition on January 22, 2024. It's now part of Accenture Song, not an independent agency. Out.
• Instrument: The Portland studio is now wholly owned by Stagwell, which announced in January 2022 that it had bought the remaining 49 percent. Out.
• Development-first shops: Netguru, Uptech, Purrweb and Designli all offer UX and UI design, but their homepages lead with engineering. They belong in a development ranking, not this one.
• Fueled: Its homepage leads with enterprise web, WordPress (through its 10up practice) and AI alongside mobile. Strong mobile history, but not a design-first agency by its own description. Out of scope.
• List authors: Agencies that published their own 2026 design agency ranking with themselves near the top weren't scored here, for the same reason my company isn't in the table.

On acquisitions: the Work & Co deal is documented in Accenture's own newsroom. The Instrument deal is in a Stagwell release (the page blocks automated readers, but the same terms were reported in trade press at the time).

One ranked agency needs a note rather than a cut. MetaLab has been a subsidiary of the holding company Tiny since January 2017, and Tiny lists it among its companies. It still runs as its own studio under its own name, and it was the founder's first business rather than a bolt-on purchase, so I kept it in and flagged it.

For the other nine, searches found no acquisition, merger or shutdown news from 2024 to 2026. Absence from search results isn't proof of independence. If ownership matters to you (a new parent can change pricing, staffing and who signs your contract), ask directly.

Six attributes, 0 to 2 points each, twelve maximum, all checked on September 29, 2026 from pages anyone can open.

• Named mobile app design work: 2 for a named mobile app (client or product name) on the agency's own site; 1 for mobile work described without a name, or named work that is mostly web, brand or TV; 0 for none.
• Design awards, confirmed at the source: 2 for a win or honoree status confirmed on the awarding body's own site; 1 for a nomination confirmed there, or an award claimed only on the agency's own site; 0 for none. Directory badges and listicle mentions don't count.
• Published pricing: 2 for price figures on the agency's own site; 1 for a described pricing model or estimate process without figures; 0 for nothing.
• Published process and deliverables: 2 for documented steps plus a list of what you receive; 1 for a timeline or partial description; 0 for none found.
• IP and design file terms: 2 for an explicit statement that the client owns the designs or files; 0 for nothing stated.
• Years operating: 2 for ten or more years stated on the agency's own site; 1 for under ten years stated there; 0 for none found.

Ties break on named mobile work, then years operating, then alphabetically.

What I excluded, and why.Funding raised by clients, conversion lifts, retention figures, downloads, market caps and satisfaction percentages, because every one is the agency's own number. Headcount, because a team of 150 tells you nothing about who designs your onboarding flow. Visual quality, because I'd be scoring my own taste and calling it a fact.

Review ratings.I didn't score them and I don't print any. The big directories block automated readers, so ratings reach me only through search snippets and the agencies' own badges, and I couldn't confirm any at the source. A number I can't see on the source page isn't a number I'll rank on.

How to re-check it.Open each agency's homepage, mobile design page, pricing page, process page and about page. Search the site for "pricing", "per month", "process", "deliverables", "you own" and "founded". For every award badge, find the listing on the awarding body's own site. It takes about fifteen minutes an agency. If an agency has published something since September 29, its score should change.

Cieden leads with 10 of 12 and Phenomenon Studio follows with 8. The famous names cluster near the bottom, because famous studios publish the least.

Do the arithmetic. The ten scores add to 57, so the average is 5.7 of 12, a little under half. The leader discloses about 1.75x what the average agency does, and more than 3x what the bottom agency does.

Now read the columns instead of the rows, because that's where the finding is.

Named mobile work: eight of ten score 2. Everyone shows work, and it's the one column that barely separates anybody. IP terms: nine of ten score zero. Pricing: five of ten score zero. Awards: nobody scores 2.

So the market is generous with portfolios and quiet about the three things that decide your risk: what it costs, what you get each week and who owns the files. Whoever you shortlist, you'll almost certainly have to ask for those in writing.

There's a pattern in who scores well, too. The top five are agencies that sell productized design (monthly subscriptions, fixed discovery phases, published rates) to startups and SaaS companies. The bottom five include some of the most celebrated studios in the world. They don't publish because they don't need to. That's fine, but it means you'll learn their price on the second call, not the first.

Every score traces to a cell below. Everything in this table is the agency's own statement on its own site, except award status, which I checked on the awarding body's site where I could.

A few cells need a note. Cieden and Phenomenon Studio each score 1 on awards because the UX Design Awards site lists their projects from 2024. For Cieden's Sitenna, the awarding site shows it as nominated. Nominations are real recognition, but they're not wins, so neither agency gets the full two points.

Phenomenon Studio also claims a Red Dot win in 2026 for app design. Search results describe the project, Wisdom, as a Red Dot Brands & Communication Design 2026 winner. I searched red-dot.org and couldn't find the listing. That doesn't mean it isn't there; the Red Dot site is large and not all of it is indexed. It means I can't credit it yet, and if you care about it, ask the agency for the link.

Clay scores 1 on awards for the same reason. Its own blog says it earned two 2026 Webby nominations, a nomination for a client site and a Webby Honoree for ACI Worldwide. The Webby winners page I fetched renders its lists in script, so I couldn't see Clay's name on it. One click in a browser will probably settle it.

Each profile says who the agency suits, what I could verify, and what I couldn't.None of this is a quality judgment. I haven't worked with any of them.

Top ranked

1

Cieden

published rates and the only file ownership line

Score: 10 of 12. Suits: SaaS and B2B companies with complex products that want a design partner with published hourly and team rates.

Verifiable: its pricing page lists full project work starting at $50 an hour, $80 an hour for designers based in the USA or Canada, and team extension starting at $7,200 a month per person ($11,520 for USA or Canada). It also lists "final design files you own" among what a project delivers, which is the only ownership statement I found across all ten. Its mobile design page lays out a step-by-step process starting with research and discovery and names mobile work including the Momenta meditation app and a food app for the Finnish chain Fiksuruoka. The homepage says 9 years, and the about page describes the founding team and lists deliverables down to source Figma files with design systems.

Not verifiable: the growth figures in its testimonials and the funding numbers on its homepage are its own. Its award credit is a nomination, confirmed on the UX Design Awards site, not a win. Mobile is one service among many; most of its showcased work is B2B web software.

Visit Cieden

2

Phenomenon Studio

a full public price list

Score: 8 of 12. Suits: startups that want to see a price for every phase (audit, discovery, design, a dedicated specialist) before they talk to anyone.

Verifiable: its pricing page lists a UX audit from $2,000 (from 1 week), product discovery from $4,000 (from 2 weeks) and a dedicated specialist from $8,000 a month, with a value proposition and duration for each. Its mobile design page says a basic app UI typically takes 4 to 6 weeks and complex apps 8 weeks or more, and lists key steps per phase. Its about page says it was founded in 2019 and names mobile work including Wisdom, an app for remote care of elderly relatives.

Not verifiable: the Red Dot 2026 win (see the scoreboard note). Its Isora GRC project is listed on the UX Design Awards sitefor 2024, and the agency's own page calls it a nomination. No IP terms. The phrase "you maintain full product ownership" appears in its team extension offer, but it describes who runs the product, not who owns the files, so it isn't credited.

Visit Phenomenon Studio

3

Halo Lab

a mobile process in five steps

Score: 7 of 12. Suits: startups and SMBs that want a large in-house design team, a documented mobile process and a short trial before committing.

Verifiable: its mobile design page describes discovery and research, wireframes and concepts, UI design and design handoff to developers, says most mobile projects take 4 to 8 weeks, offers a 3-day trial for 1 to 2 screens, and names the ASI student app and the eParking.fi parking app. Its pricing page says it has 12 years of experience and explains how it estimates.

Not verifiable:the pricing page says plainly that Halo Lab doesn't have a strict price list, so it scores 1. The funding its clients raised and its review badges are its own. No IP terms.

Visit Halo Lab

4

Eleken

design by monthly subscription

Score: 6 of 12. Suits: SaaS teams that already have engineers and want a dedicated designer on a predictable monthly bill.

Verifiable: its pricing page lists a part-time designer at $4,599 a month, a full-time designer at $6,599 a month and two full-time designers at $11,999 a month, with a two-month minimum and a 3-day free trial. Its about page says it was founded in 2015 and serves SaaS companies only. Its mobile page says a polished app design takes 2 to 4 months.

Not verifiable: its mobile design page quotes a client whose app was featured on the App Store, but names no app on that page, so it scores 1 on named work. The funding and activation figures on its homepage are its own. No IP terms or deliverables list.

Visit Eleken

5

Ramotion

the most detailed process page

Score: 6 of 12. Suits: companies that need brand, website and product UI from one studio, with a written process they can hand to stakeholders.

Verifiable: its process page walks through each phase, says when steps like wireframes can be skipped, and describes delivering results as a screencast plus a PDF or Figma presentation. Its about page says it has been in the industry since 2009. Its homepage names an Apple TV app UI for NBCUniversal.

Not verifiable:most named work is brand and web, and the one named app is for TV, so it scores 1 on named mobile work. Its awards page lists third-party "top agency" articles rather than design awards. Its FAQ describes project and monthly billing without figures. The exit and funding totals on its about page are its own.

Visit Ramotion

The bottom half isn't worse at design. It publishes less, and it includes some of the most admired studios in the business.

6

Clay

consumer app work and a Webby season

Score: 5 of 12. Suits: consumer brands and funded startups that want brand, product and site designed together by a San Francisco studio.

Verifiable: its homepage names a commerce and loyalty app for Joe & The Juice and augmented reality commerce work for Snapchat. Its about page says 16 years in business and a San Francisco headquarters.

Not verifiable: the Webby recognition is on its own blog, not confirmed at the source (see the scoreboard). No pricing, process page or IP terms found. The funding a client raised after a redesign is its claim.

Visit Clay

7

Fuzzy Math

UX research first, since 2009

Score: 4 of 12. Suits: healthcare, research and enterprise teams that want UX strategy and research depth more than visual flash.

Verifiable: its work page describes native mobile application design that helps GHLF patients manage their health, and its footer says it has done UX design, strategy and innovation since 2009, with offices in Chicago and Toronto.

Not verifiable:no pricing, process page, awards or IP terms on the pages checked. A patient satisfaction and NPS change quoted on the work page belongs to its client's testimonial and isn't scored.

Visit Fuzzy Math

8

MetaLab

the famous portfolio, nothing else published

Score: 4 of 12. Suits: well-funded companies that want the studio behind some of the best-known consumer apps and can afford to find out the price on a call.

Verifiable: its work pagenames mobile work for Slack, Uber, Threads, Waking Up, Patreon and others, and its homepage says it has helped startups and brands design, build and ship products since 2006. It's a subsidiary of Tiny.

Not verifiable: no pricing, process, awards or IP terms on the pages checked. The about page rendered almost no text for my reader, so I may have missed something there.

Visit MetaLab

9

ustwo

employee-owned, twenty years in

Score: 4 of 12. Suits: large organizations in health, finance and mobility that want a design and build studio with a behavioral science and games background.

Verifiable: its homepage shows app work for Peloton (the Lanebreak experience) and Helios Fertility, says it has partnered with organizations for 20 years, and describes itself as employee-owned and a B Corp.

Not verifiable: no pricing, process page, awards or IP terms on the homepage. The client satisfaction score it quotes is from a survey it commissioned. Note that ustwo games is a separate company.

Visit ustwo

10

Tubik

illustration-rich UI with awards claimed

Score: 3 of 12. Suits: consumer products that want a distinctive visual style, illustration and motion alongside interface design.

Verifiable: its homepage names the Nova Post app for the postal and courier company, and lists recognition from Webby, Red Dot, FWA and Awwwards.

Not verifiable:I couldn't confirm any of those awards on the awarding sites in the time I had, so it scores 1. No founding year on the pages I read. Its contact form offers budget buckets, which isn't pricing. No process page or IP terms found.

Visit Tubik

The rank matters less than the fit. A 4 that matches your constraint beats a 10 that doesn't.

Decide your one non-negotiable first (a budget ceiling, file ownership, a monthly model, consumer polish, a team that also builds) and see who survives it. Then compare the survivors on everything else.

Two rows deserve a longer word.

The monthly subscription buyer.A per-designer monthly rate looks cheap next to a project quote, and for an ongoing product it often is. But a subscription prices time, not outcomes. If one designer at about $6,600 a month takes three months to reach a finished app, you've spent about $19,800, and nobody promised you it would be finished in three. Ask what a typical app of your size took, in months, for their last three clients.

The design-then-build buyer. If you're hiring a design agency and a separate development team, the handoff is where your app loses detail. Ask the design agency for a sample handoff file before you sign: are there components, tokens for color and type, every state for every screen, and notes on motion? If the answer is a folder of flat frames, the engineers will fill the gaps with guesses. A shared design system is the cheapest insurance against that.

It's also worth knowing what your engineers will build with before the designer starts. A React Native or Flutter build can reuse one set of components across iOS and Android; a native build may want platform-specific patterns. Our ranking of hybrid app frameworks covers the tradeoffs, and it changes what you should ask a designer to deliver.

This is a scenario, not a client.

Consider a seed-stage founder building a habit-tracking app for iOS and Android. She has $40,000 set aside for design and a separate engineering contractor lined up. Her investor has one condition: the company owns every design file, illustration and icon outright.

Step one is ownership. One of ten agencies already says in public that the client owns the final files: Cieden. The other nine aren't out; they just have to put it in the contract. So she emails all of her shortlist the same line: "Please confirm in writing that all design files, source files, illustrations and icons are assigned to us on payment." How fast and how cleanly each answers is the best free signal she'll get.

Step two is the budget, and here the arithmetic is worth doing out loud. At Eleken's full-time rate of $6,599 a month, $40,000 buys about 6 months of one designer, or about 3.3 months of two. At Cieden's published $50 an hour, it buys about 800 hours; at the $80 USA and Canada rate, about 500. At Phenomenon Studio, a $4,000 discovery phase uses about a tenth of the budget and leaves about $36,000 for design.

Now compare against published timelines. Phenomenon Studio says a basic app UI takes 4 to 6 weeks; Halo Lab says 4 to 8 weeks for most mobile projects; Eleken says 2 to 4 months. So $40,000 is probably enough for a first version of a habit tracker at most of these agencies, with room for a round of usability testing. That's useful to know before the first call, not after the proposal.

Step three is the handoff. Her engineering contractor will build in React Native. She asks each agency for a sample of the files it hands to developers, and asks whether it builds components that map to code. The agencies with a published process (Cieden, Phenomenon Studio, Halo Lab, Ramotion) can answer from their own pages. The others need a call.

Step four is the famous names. MetaLab or ustwo might be her dream, and nothing stops her asking. But neither publishes a price, and a seed budget of $40,000 may simply not be a conversation they take. A ten-minute email saves her a month of hoping.

Notice what the rank did in all of this: not much. The top scorer publishes the most, which saves an email or two. But any of the ten could say yes to her ownership clause tomorrow. The total is a summary; the columns are the tool.

Design agency homepages are dense with numbers, and almost none of them should travel as fact.

The first group is client funding. Several agencies credit their redesigns with rounds their clients raised: a Series B here, more than $100 million there, over $1 billion across all clients. A redesign may help a pitch. It doesn't raise a round, and the attribution is the agency's own. Not scored, not repeated as outcomes.

The second is conversion and retention lifts: doubled activation, fewer drop-offs, percentage gains in engagement. Every one is published by the agency about its own work, with no method, no baseline and nobody outside checking.

The third is portfolio counters: 500+ products, 350+ projects, 98% satisfied customers. Round numbers with a plus sign after them. Not scored.

The fourth is review ratings and badges. I didn't see any rating on a public listing I could read directly, so there are no ratings in this article. "Top design company" badges from directories and listicles aren't awards, and I didn't count them as awards.

And the last is our own. Our product design page makes claims about development cost savings and onboarding time reductions. They're our numbers about our work, which is exactly the category I refused for everyone else, so I don't use them here either.

Once you have two or three design proposals, these are the lines I'd look for first.

• No clause assigning files to you: Nine of ten ranked agencies publish nothing on ownership. Get a written assignment covering Figma files, illustrations, icons and any fonts or assets licensed for the project.
• Happy-path screens only: A proposal that counts screens but never mentions empty, loading, error and offline states is quoting you for the demo, not the app.
• No usability testing: If nobody outside the team uses a prototype before engineering starts, the first real test is your launch.
• Handoff undefined: Ask what engineers receive: components, tokens, specs, redlines, motion notes. Frames alone aren't a handoff.
• One platform designed, two promised: If the app ships on iOS and Android, ask whether both platforms' conventions are designed, or whether one is stretched to fit the other.
• Revisions unlimited, scope undefined: Unlimited revisions on an undefined scope means the scope will be defined later, by the invoice.
• Outcome numbers on slide one: Another client's conversion lift is that client's context. Ask for two references from apps like yours instead.
• Monthly rate with no end date: A subscription should come with an estimate of how many months your scope needs, and a way to pause.

A good design proposal reads like a build plan: phases, deliverables per phase, who is on it, what you own. If you want to see what we put in ours, our product design service lists the packages and what each one includes.

A disclosure ranking has three failure modes, and you should know them before you rely on it.

First, it rewards agencies that write things down, and punishes celebrated studios that don't need to. MetaLab and ustwo sit near the bottom of this table and near the top of most designers' admiration. That's why I call it a shortlist tool, not a verdict. The cost of this failure is small: you might skip a great studio. The fix is cheap: email the ones you love and ask.

Second, claims can be stale or wrong. A pricing page can be a year old. An award badge can refer to a nomination. The cost is bigger here, because a buyer might skip the check. The fix is the same: ask for the document behind every claim you rely on.

Third, the rubric can't see taste. Whether an agency's visual style fits your brand is the most important question in hiring a designer, and it's the one I refuse to score, because it's mine, not a fact. Look at the portfolios. Just don't let them be the only thing you look at.

Why publish it anyway? Because the alternative is a list ranked on portfolio glamour and funding numbers nobody checked. The downside of a disclosure ranking is bounded: at worst it sends you three extra emails. The downside of a ranking built on agency claims isn't.

Here's what I chased and couldn't establish.

• Design quality: No neutral benchmark of design agencies exists, and I commissioned no test projects.
• Two award claims: Phenomenon Studio's Red Dot 2026 win and Clay's 2026 Webby Honoree weren't visible to my reader on the awarding sites. Both may be real.
• Tubik's awards and founding year: Listed on its site, not confirmed at the source, and no founding year on the pages I read.
• Review ratings: Directories block automated reads. None is printed or scored.
• Pages I didn't open: I checked homepages, mobile design, pricing, process and about pages. A deeper page might publish pricing or ownership terms.
• Acquisition status: Searches found no 2024 to 2026 acquisitions for the ten, which isn't proof there were none.
• Contract terms: IP assignment usually lives in agreements nobody publishes. Absence on a website isn't absence in a contract.

None of this makes the list less useful. It makes it a shortlist you can audit.

Frenchy Digital is my company. That's a conflict of interest, and it's why this pick sits outside the scored table and is labeled as mine.

So let me score it the same way first. Named mobile design work: 2, because our case studies name apps we designed and built, below. Awards: 0. We don't hold a design award, and I won't count a directory badge. Pricing: 2, because our product design page publishes packages. Process: 2, because the same page lists what each package delivers. IP terms: 2, because full source code, design file and IP ownership transfers to the client. Years: 2, because we have been operating since 2016 in France, with our US company since 2019.

That's 10 of 12, tied with Cieden. Both score 2 on named work, so the tie breaks on years operating, where we score 2 and Cieden scores 1. That places us first of eleven, by one tiebreak, and I'd rather show you the arithmetic than hide it.

So why is it still my pick?Because the rubric measures what design agencies publish, and a founder building an app cares about something the rubric can't see: whether the design survives contact with the code. We design and build in the same team, so the person who drew the component is a message away from the person who ships it. That's not in the table, because I can't score it from anyone's website. I can show you ours.

For Fighter Cut, our own weight-cut app for combat athletes, the whole interface runs on hand-rolled SVG charts with no chart or component libraries. Its companion app for coaches, The Corner , shares the athlete app's paper-and-ink design language: Barlow Condensed display type, a cream paper ground, near-black ink and a single blood-red accent. Two apps, one visual system, one team.

The design decisions there were product decisions too. A coach sees a fighter by a generated public name rather than a legal name, and nutrition only appears if the fighter turned it on. When a sign-in check fails silently on a gym's shared network, the button says why and offers a retry instead of looking like a wrong password. Those are the states most proposals never price.

To be clear about the limits of that evidence: both apps are in TestFlight, with public release gated to October 2026. We publish counts from the code, not downloads or users, because there aren't public ones to publish yet.

For a client example on native platforms, LIVV Audio is a Bluetooth headphone control app we built with Swift on iOS and Kotlin on Android, with feature parity across both, custom equalizer profiles and a React admin dashboard. If your app is native, our iOS app development page covers how we work there.

On price, we're a senior-led, Black-owned app and AI agency in Los Angeles. Our product design page publishes three packages: a design sprint at $10,000 to $18,000, full product design at $25,000 to $40,000 over 6 to 10 weeks, and enterprise product design at $45,000 to $50,000 and up over 10 to 16 weeks. When design rolls into a build, a single-workflow build runs $28k to $70k over 4 to 9 weeks and a multi-workflow platform $70k to $180k over 9 to 16 weeks. Senior time is $150 to $225 an hour. You get a fixed-price phased proposal within 5 business days, a 30-day post-launch warranty, and full source code and IP ownership.

Run the same arithmetic as the worked scenario. The founder's $40,000 sits at the top of our full product design band, exactly 1.0x its $40,000 ceiling, and at about 0.8x the floor of our enterprise design package. Against Eleken's full-time rate, the same money buys about six months of one designer. Which is better depends on whether she wants a finished design in a fixed window or a designer on tap.

You can get from this page to a defensible shortlist in about a week.Here's the order I'd do it in.

1. 1.Write down your one non-negotiable (a budget ceiling, file ownership, a monthly model, a team that also builds) and use the buyer-type table to cut the list to two or three agencies.
2. 2.Email each of them the same four requests: the IP assignment clause from their standard agreement, a sample developer handoff file, a list of deliverables per phase, and a fixed price or monthly estimate with a number of months. Note who answers all four, and how fast.
3. 3.On the call, ask who will design your app by name, how many other projects they're on, how usability testing works, and how they design empty, loading and error states. Screenshot every page you relied on, dated, and keep it with the proposal.

Whoever answers those emails with files rather than adjectives is probably your agency. Time to send the emails.