Open with the business problem, edtech web development services not your preferred technology. What kind of user will use the system, with what frequency, and how is the job done today? An experienced team who grasps the purpose will suggest an alternative that costs less; one who only sees the requirements as given will price the list as written.
Set out the scope as user stories or scenarios: a walk through each important path. Every bit as useful, state explicitly what is out of scope. An explicit exclusion list prevents more argument during acceptance than the rest of the brief combined. Also mark which parts are firm and which are still open — estimators price uncertainty, next.js vs laravel and concealing the open questions helps nobody.
Set out your constraints. The list covers systems you must integrate with, the data you already hold and its condition, security and compliance rules, expected load, target platforms and stacks you cannot change. Where a date is genuinely fixed, explain what drives it: an experienced team can often resequence the work to hit it, but not if the date is a secret.
Say what completion means feature by feature. Testable acceptance criteria do not need any formal notation: a short paragraph describing the expected behaviour is enough. That one addition compresses acceptance testing dramatically and closes off most late-stage disagreement.
One last thing, state what you want in the response. Request a task-level breakdown, laravel vs symfony a written list of assumptions, whatever the team considers risky and a range rather than a single figure. Take a broad range as a signal about the brief: it tells you exactly which requirement is unclear. From there tighten that section and request a revised number — the next version tends to be far closer to reality.