Look first at relevant experience, not the number of logos on the website. Request two or three engagements that resemble your technology stack, and then ask whether those engineers are still with the web development company saudi arabia. A serious vendor will introduce you to the people who would work on your project. Evasive answers at this stage almost always mean the delivery team is not the dedicated team model vs project-based outsourcing differences you were shown.
The paperwork needs a slower read than the pitch. Three clauses do most of the work: intellectual property assignment, confidentiality, and notice periods and handover. Everything produced must transfer to you on payment, together with designs, scripts and infrastructure configuration. Look closely at any clause that keeps reusable components with the vendor, because this is frequently the dependency that makes switching painful.
Ask how they estimate. A credible estimate arrives with a list advantages of laravel vs wordpress assumptions, a task-level breakdown and a range rather than a single number. A fixed-price contract works only when the specification is complete; in any other case the supplier prices the risk in and you pay for uncertainty either way. Hourly billing moves the risk back to the client, so it demands a cap, regular demos and transparent reporting.
The delivery process matters more than headcount. Ask what happens when the scope changes, who signs off on a feature and how quality assurance works. A team will be able to demonstrate running software rather than status reports. Written acceptance criteria remain your only real protection against the it-was-never-in-scope conversation.
Last, think about the end of the engagement at the start rather than at the end. Insist that the repository stays on infrastructure you own from the beginning, and that documentation is updated as part of the work. A partner who is comfortable with this accepts it without argument; a long negotiation over it says most of what you need to know.