Choosing an expert and funding the project
How to read a proposal, what to check on a profile, how to plan milestones, and what happens at checkout.
Review proposals
Each shows the expert’s approach, price, timeline, and how many revision rounds are included. Read the approach first and the price second — a proposal that understood the problem is worth more than one that undercut it.
Check the expert
Open the profile: skills, reviews from real completed projects, success rate, and verification status. Only approved, identity-verified experts can be hired at all.
Agree the milestones
Split anything substantial into stages so payment releases as work is approved rather than all at the end.
Send the contract
Selecting an expert creates a contract for them to accept. Nothing is charged at this point.
Fund escrow
Once accepted, pay into escrow on the hosted checkout. The money is held and does not reach the expert until you approve work.
How to read a proposal
The cheapest proposal is rarely the cheapest project. Three things predict how it will actually go:
- Does it restate your problem accurately? An expert who has understood it will describe it back to you in their own words, sometimes correcting you.
- Is the scope bounded? "I will build X, Y, Z; not A" is a professional answer. "Full automation solution" is not.
- Are the revision rounds stated? This is the number that decides how the end of the project feels.
Planning milestones
A contract can be one milestone or several, up to 5 by default. One milestone is right for small, well-defined work. Several are right when the project has natural checkpoints, because each one is a place where you see something real and the expert gets paid for finished work.
One milestone
- Small or tightly scoped work.
- Simplest to run — one submit, one approval.
- The whole amount rides on the final approval.
Several milestones
- Larger work with real checkpoints.
- You see progress before the end.
- The expert is paid for each finished stage.
- Each stage is approved, revised, or disputed on its own.
At checkout
Payment happens on our payment processor’s hosted checkout. Card details are never entered into AutoGineer and we never see or store them. The session stays open for 30 minutes by default; if it expires, nothing was charged and nothing was reserved — just start it again.
What funding actually buys you
Only verified, approved experts can be hired. Your money is held in escrow, not paid out, until you approve the work — and if it goes wrong there is a dispute process that can read the whole record.
A minimum engagement value may apply. If one is set, you will be told before you send the contract rather than discovering it at checkout.
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