You're considering outsourcing your software development to a team based in Vietnam, but the whole topic feels unclear: which providers should you choose, how do you scope the project, how do you manage a team 8,000 kilometres away? This guide lays out the path for first-timers. Assumed prerequisites: you have a product idea, a rough budget, and the willingness to work with a remote team.
- 🔑 Vietnam is home to top-tier tech companies capable of covering the entire software development lifecycle.
- ⚠️ Choosing a provider based on price alone is the number one mistake offshore beginners make.
- 💡 Precise upfront scoping (user stories, acceptance criteria) cuts back-and-forth in half from the very first sprint.
- 🚀 A small, senior Vietnamese team augmented by AI can compete with a Parisian team costing two to three times as much.
Why Vietnam remains the benchmark for offshore development
Why Vietnam over India or Eastern Europe?
Vietnam established itself as a leading offshore destination because its tech sector was built on solid industrial foundations. FPT Software now employs over 41,000 engineers across 29 countries, generating roughly $1.6 billion in revenue. TMA Solutions has been operating for 25 years with 4,000 active engineers on projects in 30 countries. These are not emerging players: they are software industrialists.
The quality-to-cost ratio remains hard to beat. A senior developer in Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi costs a fraction of what an equivalent profile would cost in Paris or Berlin, without sacrificing technical rigour. For French startups and SMEs looking to build a serious product without overpaying, it is a tangible lever.
Offshore development now accounts for close to half of all software work at major American companies, according to data shared on specialised forums. Vietnam is capturing a growing share of that flow thanks to its execution culture and the upskilling of its engineers on modern stacks (React, Node.js, AWS/GCP cloud). The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Vietnam among the most competitive emerging digital economies in Southeast Asia.
This is not a fallback destination. It is a strategic choice I made for GoLive Software, and one I recommend to any team looking to build fast and well without blowing up its budget.
The provider landscape is rich and varied: groups like Kyanon Digital (500 experts, operating in Asia-Pacific since 2012) or AXEN handle large-scale projects, while a constellation of specialised boutiques serve startups and SMEs perfectly. You can find the right team regardless of your project's size, provided you know where to look and what to evaluate.
Step 1: Define your scope before looking for a provider
What types of projects are truly suitable for outsourcing?
Before contacting a single provider, define exactly what you are outsourcing. Offshore works very well for web and mobile application development, SaaS platforms, API integrations, back-end work, QA, and automated testing. These are assignments with a definable scope, measurable deliverables, and objective quality criteria.
What remains difficult to fully delegate: product vision, structural architecture decisions at the very start of a project, and the direct relationship with your end users.
Outsource code, yes. Outsource product judgement, no.
One point often underestimated by beginners: AI does not change this equation. Some founders believe that with tools like Claude Code or Cursor, they can generate their product without engineers. Eric, who manages mobile app projects and experimented with AI agents for seven months as a replacement for his offshore teams (Philippines, India, Vietnam), describes the result this way: "it's like working with offshore teams, except it's faster and it tests its own work." But he also acknowledges it requires a lot of oversight. A non-engineer can generate snippets of code, but cannot handle architecture, security, edge cases, or long-term maintenance. For a deeper dive, read Vibe coding and offshore developers: what actually changes.
Ask yourself three questions before getting started: do you have mockups or at least a specifications document? Do you have a technical point of contact on the client side? Does your budget cover at least two months of development? If you answer no to two of these questions, offshore is not the right step for you yet.
A project that starts without specifications ends up writing them during development, in real time, under pressure. That is the recipe for budget overruns, constant friction with the team, and a result that looks nothing like what you had envisioned.
Step 2: Identify and evaluate Vietnamese providers
How do you evaluate a Vietnamese provider without travelling there?
The Vietnamese market offers three provider profiles, each suited to different needs. The daily rate varies depending on the size of the organisation and the seniority of the team assigned:
| Profile | Size | Specialities | Best for | Indicative daily rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large group (FPT, TMA, CMC Global) | 1,000+ devs | Enterprise, AI, IoT, cloud | Long-term projects, large budgets | €250-420/day |
| Mid-size agency (KMS Tech, Saigon Technology) | 100-500 devs | Web/mobile, SaaS, QA | Dedicated teams, structured projects | €200-360/day |
| Specialised boutique | 10-50 devs | Specific stack, SaaS product | Startups, MVPs, rapid iterations | €170-300/day |
For French startups and SMEs, boutiques and mid-size agencies often offer the best ratio: engaged senior teams, direct communication, and flexibility on scope. The article on attractive daily rates for web developers in Vietnam breaks down the ranges by experience level and project type.
The classic mistake: choosing based on the lowest price.
A provider that responds to your RFP without asking questions about your product is not a good deal. Always require: a portfolio with products in production, contactable client references, and a paid technical test or mini-sprint before signing a long-term contract. The stability of the team assigned to your project is also a reliability indicator: be wary of organisations that swap out your technical contact at every exchange.
Finally, check the English (or French) proficiency of the tech lead. The most common barrier is not competence: it is communication. A brilliant developer who does not grasp your business nuances will produce features that are technically correct but miss the actual need.
Step 3: Scope the project before the first sprint
What documents should you prepare before signing an offshore contract?
A sprint (a 1-to-2-week iteration in Agile methodology, during which the team delivers a functional increment) without prior scoping costs more than no sprint at all. Prepare these elements before signing anything:
Without these elements, do not start.
User stories describe features from the user's perspective ("As a… I want… so that…"). They are not technical specs, but they orient the team around expected value. Each story must have acceptance criteria: the precise conditions under which it is considered done.
Also agree on the tech stack with the provider from the outset, and include an intellectual property clause in the contract: the code produced must belong to you upon delivery. Finally, break the project into intermediate milestones with measurable deliverables. Never pay for an entire project in a single instalment.
Agile methodology is particularly well-suited to offshore because it structures short cycles with visible deliverables. If you are just getting started, the article Agile methodology for your web or mobile project gives you the practical fundamentals. A good provider will ask these questions themselves before starting: if they agree to begin without specs or user stories, that is a red flag.
For mobile projects in particular, you will find additional delegation advice in 5 tips for outsourcing your mobile app development.
Step 4: Manage the team and course-correct
How do you handle the time difference and cultural factors with a team in Vietnam?
Vietnam is at UTC+7, which is 5 to 6 hours ahead of France depending on the season. The useful overlap window falls between 9 AM and noon on the French side (2 PM to 5 PM on the Vietnamese side). Schedule your weekly video call during this slot, and let day-to-day work run asynchronously.
A daily written update or a short 2-to-3-minute Loom video from the tech lead is a far better substitute for a daily standup meeting. The key: every task must exist in a tracking tool (Jira, Linear, Notion) with an owner and a due date. Without this discipline, misunderstandings accumulate silently and become expensive to fix.
One cultural point to be aware of: Tết (Vietnamese New Year, usually in January or February) is the most important holiday period of the year. Factor this window into your roadmap from the start.
On the technical side, teams that integrate AI tools into their workflow (Claude Code, Cursor) deliver noticeably faster. A Reddit commenter confirms this about his own project: his team saw a 20 to 30% productivity increase since adopting Claude Code. The blog ai-first.fr documents these practices if you want to understand how augmented developers actually work.
It is not AI replacing engineers: it is engineers using AI to deliver more. A study from MIT, cited in specialised discussions, notes that 95% of companies that adopted AI did not see significant productivity gains. The real variable remains the quality of the team and the rigour of the process. AI amplifies good developers and exposes poor ones, which reinforces the advantage of offshore teams that are already technically strong.
Schedule a monthly retrospective with the team lead: what worked well, what is slowing down deliveries? This 30-minute session prevents the build-up of silent frustrations on both sides. Teams that practise these regular adjustment sessions hit their milestones far more often than those that chain sprints without ever pausing to fix the process.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need to be fluent in English to work with an offshore team in Vietnam?
No, but a conversational level is necessary for day-to-day technical exchanges. Most reputable providers have a bilingual tech lead or project manager. If you work through a French-Vietnamese firm like GoLive Software, client-side management is handled entirely in French. The language barrier is rarely the real problem: the clarity of specifications is what makes the difference.
What is the minimum budget for a first offshore project in Vietnam?
Expect a minimum of €20,000 to €30,000 for a functional MVP over two to three months with a small team. Below that, time constraints make it impossible to deliver something maintainable. This budget typically covers one senior developer, one mid-level developer, and occasional access to an architect or tech lead for structural decisions.
How do you verify the quality of code produced by an offshore team?
Plan for regular code reviews (at least weekly) with a trusted developer on the client side, or outsource this review to a neutral third party. Require automated test coverage from the start of the project. Code without tests is technical debt that explodes at the first major evolution, offshore or not.
Will AI make outsourcing to Vietnam obsolete in the coming years?
The trend is not towards substitution but amplification. Developers who master AI tools deliver faster, which strengthens the cost advantage of offshore teams without diminishing quality. Companies that have tried replacing their engineering teams with AI agents run into the same problems: architecture, security, edge case handling, long-term maintenance. Offshore augmented by AI is a trajectory of increasing capability, not a threat.
What are the signs of a bad offshore provider, even if the price is attractive?
Be wary of a provider that accepts any scope without asking questions, does not propose intermediate milestones, or whose portfolio contains no products in production. A technical contact that changes at every exchange is also a negative signal. The stability of the team assigned to your project directly reflects how the provider manages its human resources internally.
Vidéos YouTube
- Top 10 Offshore Software Development Companies in Vietnam · Kyanon Digital Official
- Top 10 Software Development Outsourcing Companies in Vietnam · Kyanon Digital Official
- Top 7 Drupal Developers in Vietnam · Kyanon Digital Official
- I Replaced My Dev Team with AI Agents (7 Months Later) · Overpass Apps
