What to Send a Dev Agency Before Your First Call

Most first calls with a dev agency go one of two ways. Either you spend forty-five minutes explaining the same context three different people already know, or you get a vague, padded quote because the agency doesn't have enough to scope against and prices in the uncertainty.

Both are avoidable. Send the following before the call and you'll get a sharper quote, a shorter meeting, and usually a faster start date. Some agencies (us included) can quote directly off a good brief without a call at all.

1. What problem you're actually solving

Not "we need a website" or "we need software," but the problem underneath it. "Our sales team is tracking leads in a spreadsheet and we're losing them" tells an agency far more than "we need a CRM." The solution might not be what you think it is, and a good agency will tell you that, but only if they know the actual problem.

2. Who's going to use it, and how often

A tool three internal staff use daily has completely different requirements from a customer-facing platform handling thousands of sessions a month. This single detail changes the tech stack, the QA effort, and the price. Say it up front.

3. What "done" looks like for launch

List the features you genuinely need for a first version, separate from the features you want eventually. Most projects balloon in scope because "nice to have" quietly becomes "must have" mid-build. If you're not sure what's essential, say so, but at least show the full list so the agency can help you cut it down, rather than pricing everything as required.

4. Any existing systems it needs to work with

Payment processors, CRMs, accounting software, an existing website, internal databases, a login system you already use. Anything the new build has to connect to or pull data from. Integrations are consistently where quotes go wrong, because "connect to our CRM" can mean a ten-minute API call or a week of untangling a system with no documentation.

5. Your actual timeline and why

"ASAP" isn't a timeline. If there's a real deadline (a funding round, an event, a client commitment) say what it is and why it matters. If there isn't one, say that too. Agencies price and staff differently for "needs to be live in three weeks" versus "no rush, get it right."

6. Your budget range, even a rough one

This is the one people leave out most often, usually out of a worry that stating a number invites the agency to just spend all of it. In practice, the opposite happens: without a range, you get a quote built to some assumed default scope, which is often wrong in both directions. With a range, a good agency scopes to it and tells you plainly what fits and what doesn't.

7. Examples of what you like, and what you don't

Two or three reference sites or products, with a line on what you like about each, save enormous amounts of back-and-forth in design. "Something like Stripe's docs but simpler" is a genuinely useful brief. So is "not like this, too cluttered," pointing at a competitor.

What this gets you

Send those seven things and most agencies can give you a real quote (price, timeline, and what's in scope) before you've had a single call. If a call still helps, it'll be spent talking through trade-offs, not extracting basic facts.

If you've got a brief like this ready, send it our way. Landing pages, MVPs, and software builds. We'll come back within 24 hours with a straight answer, not a discovery deck.