Apiko

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Engineering

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We are an online platform that helps companies share warehouse space.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Apiko to accomplish?

• Build a public-facing extension to our online platform
• Launch a new website focused on our company's new brand

SOLUTION

How did you find Apiko?

Online Search

Why did you select Apiko over others?

• Good value for cost
• Apiko's experience building multiple sites with similar requirements to ours

What was the size of Apiko’s team?

20

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The project was to create an entirely new website for our company. The high-level requirements were that most of the content be driven by a CMS backend, and that the site contain a full-featured application interface integrated with our platform backend. Apiko oversaw and executed on most aspects of the project, including:

• business analysis and requirements gathering / documentation
• UI / UX design
• implementation of frontend and backend code, including integration with existing platform backend
• software testing
• project management
• devops services including design, implementation and operation of the system both pre and post launch

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Successful launch of the site
• User signups

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Apiko had a very professional, thorough and organized approach to project management. They were comfortable integrating into our existing project management platform. They ensured everything was tracked and gave us regular reports.

What was your primary form of communication with Apiko?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are professional in their approach to the work but also flexible enough to be able to adjust very quickly. Among other companies we considered, they had numerous projects in their existing portfolio that closely matched the user requirements and technologies we were most interested in.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Apiko could have done differently?

Looking back I wish we would have collectively identified areas of the project that started out with unusually high levels of ambiguity and uncertainty, so that we could have adapted the requirements gathering process to be more flexible in those cases.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of the music education and social media platform SYNTHO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Apiko, and what were your goals?

We wanted to develop a bespoke application for users to be able to learn on both mobile and web. Along with the educational content we have recorded over the last 3 years, we wanted to integrate social features such as a newsfeed and direct messaging so we can connect like minded individuals.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

The pricing they presented was competitive and had a strong proposal in how we could build the application.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had a discovery phase to outline the plan for the app. Then we worked on all of the designs for the application before the programming.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There was a project manager throughout who kept me updated and I felt I had full support from the team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Within 8 weeks of launching, we have already surpassed our expected amount of users in this period of time.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We stayed in touch with slack and they used hubspot and jira to further manage the projects.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

That they were able to use their initiative to go away and put together designs for the ideas I mentioned. They were very proactive in coming up with the functionality of the product and figuring out how to best turn the ideas into a reality.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

They could have been more accurate with their timing and a few features took a lot longer than we expected. I appreciate these things happen especially given there have been exceptional circumstances this year.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m a CEO at Conexwest, a nationwide storage and shipping container supplier. We sell, rent, fabricate and modify shipping and storage containers for various industries. https://www.conexwest.com/

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Apiko, and what were your goals?

We needed a tool to help us track tasks in his business, assign them to employees, and see how much work they do. We hired Apiko to build a heavily tailored solution, as no solution available on the market could meet our business needs.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We got in touch with Apiko through Upwork. After researching and considering proposals from different companies, we ultimately chose Apiko for further cooperation and product development. Their expertise, tech stack, and cost were just right for us.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Apiko built a product from scratch. From wireframes creation to complete functionality development and, at present, further improvements, Apiko has assisted us in making the project just what we need. The web and mobile solutions we created allow employees to manage tasks, assign them to the available workers, and track their progress and working hours making the manufacturing workflow much more efficient.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We’ve been working with a team at Apiko that includes a backend developer, two front-end developers, a mobile developer, two quality assurance engineers, a business analyst, and a project manager.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our experience working with Apiko has been truly collaborative. Their project management skills are excellent. They use various tools like Jira and organize daily standups to keep everyone on the same page. They never compromise quality, being a very initiative to make sure any concerns are addressed as soon as possible.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Apiko is a valuable long-term partner for custom software development. Their dedication and commitment to our project result in high-quality of their work. The developers they employ are true professionals who work quickly and efficiently to meet our requirements. They always find needed resources and solutions to satisfy any arising needs of the project.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I’m happy with Apiko’s services and enjoy our cooperation. They are responsive and reliable. We’ve achieved a ton of progress working together.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Prepare a detailed proposal about what you want to achieve. The more precise you are about what you want out of the engagement, the more Apiko will be able to satisfy your project needs. They are an excellent pick for a long-term partnership, very transparent and considerate. So just get in touch with them.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the owner of Tradition Tours; We create tours for individuals and groups (churches) to Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Turkey, and Greece.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Apiko, and what were your goals?

Our old WordPress website was outdated, which was creating major issues for our customers and us. As the company evolved, we decided to outsource our web development. Apiko designed and completely overhauled our systems by creating a new site based on Strapi, a new content management system, and integrated our accounting and CRM.

By making this decision, we have automated and completely digitalized most of our daily office workflow, which will minimize costs considerably and increase the growth of our revenues substantially.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Apiko came highly recommended to us by a colleague in a different industry to ours, who has used their services and highly recommended them.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We had an initial meeting to discuss the goals and objectives of Tradition Tours; from there the team delivered mock-ups using Figma as well as creating a staging/testing environment for the new site. Apiko were very attentive to our needs and didn’t just do what we asked they gave their own input and truly got to understand the inner workings of the company (it’s been like working with family).

This has enabled us to come out the other side of this project with much greater expectations and results than originally expected. To name a few of the systems used: Strapi, Figma, Stripe, Xero, Aws, and much more.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

Initially, our online meetings included a team of 5 people until everyone understood the needs of our company; from that point, we were in constant contact with our project managers with weekly calls and daily contact via slack. Our team consisted of Project managers, stack developers, and designers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

To date, we are receiving very positive feedback from our clients and the office workload has more than halved due to the work that has been done.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Multiple slack messages daily; being we were in different time zones, I was surprised to get responses from the team in the late hours of the night when I would have expected them not to be available. Messages were usually responded to within 15 minutes during regular working hours. The team excelled at communication. There were also hour-long online meetings once a week at the beginning of the project, which decreased over time as everyone got a clear scope of the project.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We were impressed with their mindset, always open to new ideas and thinking out of the box. Zero language barriers and our thought processes were in sync throughout the project.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

I'm sure if I nitpick, I will be able to come up with a few very small issues, though overall we are very happy with the services rendered to date.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Product Manager at TREEUM HOLDINGS LIMITED. We have big fintech projects in Ukraine: minfin.com.ua and finance.ua. We build fintech products for millions of people and try to create simple useful services for them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Apiko, and what were your goals?

We wanted to develop a mobile application for foreign exchange and crypto segments. Our goal, its create a simple application where a user can find exchange rates from banks, and financial companies and make orders in this. And second goal, its create a simple crypto function for buying and saving cryptocurrencies.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched for companies with expertise in mobile development and good expertise in UI/UX design. We made a shortlist with 10 companies by this criteria and after that, we interviewed companies from this list. After the interview, we make our choice of Apiko company, because they had a good portfolio with mobile applications, and they had design think practices. They were professionals in mobile development and they had a proactive position in membership for our project

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Firstly we had meetings for creating a scope of the project and requirements. After that, we had meetings with Business Analytics and Designers for creating documentation and mockups for our application. We had weekly checkup meetings, where we can see the progress of the project and details daily reports for this. After documentation and mockups, UI/UX designer started creating screens of applications and user flows. The second step is its mobile development. We had good communication with the team lead of the development team and the project manager.

We had roadmaps with segments of work, where we had cost, time for the work, and a queue of tasks. The third step is QA and implementation. We had the support of Apiko team in publish step, they consulted us with the rules of stores and we together published the first version of an application

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

• 1 Project Manager
• 1 Business Analytic
• 1 UI/UX Designer
• 1 Team lead
• 2-3 React Native Developers
• 1 QA

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Application have MAU around 80 000 and 100 000 downloads

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Easy in communication, win-to-win strategy, active used agile methods for project and they felt our problem and our needs

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They were adaptive to feedback and showed fast design processes and good communication.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Quality of details in design and quality of UX. It's ok, but sometimes we insisted on prolongation this phase of work because the result did not suit.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm an executive at a talent-match company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Apiko?

We hired Apiko to build our MVP.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Apiko is building our MVP from scratch using React and Node.js.

What is the team composition?

I'm mostly in contact with a project manager from their team

How did you come to work with Apiko?

I found them through a Google search.

How much have you invested in them?

We've spent around $100,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

I started working with them in August 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We measure the success by how they're delivering on time and according to our expectations.

How did Apiko perform from a project management standpoint?

I'm satisfied with their project management; we use Google Meet and Slack for communication and Jira and Confluence for project management.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could communicate better with their customers and be more transparent with costs.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a clear idea of the cost because it becomes very expensive otherwise.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CPO of Billy, headquartered in Copenhagen

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Apiko, and what were your goals?

We wanted to created a great mobile app loved by our users. Our old contractor had done a terrible job :-) Luckily we found Apiko and we never looked back.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched for vendors and they basically popped up.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We created a mobile app ground up. To start off, we copied the UX from the old app, but with new code. Afterwards we have improved UX and have kept developing it since. We use react native and rest api's.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

4 people. We have 1 tech lead and 2 developers. Additionally we have had good sparring with a project manager when needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have 3-4000 users on the app, who are generally very happy with it. We've just started with reviews,, so let's see how it goes :-)

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We worked with Apiko like any internal developer team, with standups, grooming etc. We use Jira and slack, and it works great.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We simply love the team assigned to us. They provide great work and are very dedicated to our product development. Kudo's.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Basically things have worked out pretty fine. Nothing of importance.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior software engineer at Jetpack Shipping, a nutraceutical fulfillment company that integrates e-commerce clients into our fulfillment centers from various environments.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Apiko?

We hired Apiko to scale up the prototype we used to connect all of our customers’ e-commerce environments into a unified structure. The challenge was that every client may have their own type of shopping cart software platform, so the data varied for each of them. To fulfill their orders, we had to unify their platforms into a unified model.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We’ve built the prototype of our software and passed the model to Apiko, which helps polish and scale it up as it connects to CRMs. The software has to unify several APIs and adapters into one environment that allows us to manage everything in a much smoother and cleaner way.

The team has built the platform to scale with custom environments, too. This lets us adapt to fluid environments, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. On top of that, the platform opens more doors for us to bring new customers.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with 2–3 people from Apiko. We’ve cycled a few employees for various roles, but we’ve kept one backend developer throughout the engagement. Apiko has also added a few frontend developers to either help us scale or work on complementary projects so that they don’t interfere with the main one.

How did you come to work with Apiko?

We found Apiko through research. A few people from our team looked into various companies. Personally, I had positive experiences with developers from Ukraine; there was a different kind of coding culture there in terms of more modern apps. As a result, when we had the shortlist of different agencies, we ultimately decided to pick Apiko. Their cost was also suitable for us. 

How much have you invested with them?

The investment has scaled up and down, but we’ve spent somewhere between $100,000–$200,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Apiko in December 2019, and the engagement is ongoing. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

I’m truly happy with Apiko’s services so far. I’m looking forward to doing more work with them. 

How did Apiko perform from a project management standpoint?

For project management, we use tools like Jira. Apiko is concise and clear in their work, and any time we become busy, the team keeps up well with updates and tickets. I haven’t seen any issues here. We have daily standups and use Slack, email, and Skype to communicate. Our teams do calls 3–5 times per week, while product deployments are done weekly.

To be clear, we’re the ones doing the management. However, Apiko resources help us set up tickets. Whenever I haven’t set tickets up, the team sets them up themselves. In other words, the engagement has been truly collaborative. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Apiko’s work is clean and structured — I get what I ask for as long as I give them the details of what I want. Sometimes, they even give us more than what we expect. They’re considerate of the product, and it shows in their work. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

If they have people in our region or a US branch close to Ohio, then that’d be great.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Pick somebody that you’ll want to work with for the long term. Apiko is highly oriented toward building relationships for the long haul, so consider if you want to work with them across many projects. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the manager of the digital team. Our organisation serves people with eating disorders through innovative clinical treatment, research and policy.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Apiko, and what were your goals?

Development of the mobile application companion to our existing online therapy platform for people with eating disorders.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Apiko spent a lot of time understanding what our features were while putting together their proposal

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We provided Apiko with access to our existing online therapy platform and a feature list, they then created a detailed Requirements doc and mobile designs. They then began development and eventually testing, and submitted the App to the App Store and Google Play.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had a core team of a project manager & client manager. Supporting them were developers and a designer, and a QA engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

App was developed in record time (around 10 weeks) with no major issues

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Extremely communicative, very detailed, have a great understanding of how much to involve the client vs. manage things themselves

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

A great team to work with, go above and beyond. When looking through our existing web eTherapy platform to make the mobile app version, they tracked the bugs that they noticed on the website and fixed them on the mobile version without being asked to, and handed us detailed bug reports about what they noticed on web.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Nope!

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of a startup that helps writers create websites where they can publish their work and collect payment from readers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Apiko?

I'm an experienced product manager and was looking for professional, affordable developers to help turn specs into a functioning product.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Apiko serves as my primary web engineering team. At the beginning of the project, we provided them with detailed specs which they were able to turn into a well-functioning web app in a matter of months. We continue to work together to introduce new functionality to the platform.

The vendor has served as the primary engineering team for the company. They also have resources to help with design, quality assurance, and product planning. For our platform, their team has used Next.js on the frontend and Node.js on the backend. They've also successfully configured integrations with tools like Mailgun for email, Stripe for payments, and AWS for hosting.

What is the team composition?

Apiko is able to scale their resources according to our needs. We started with two engineers but now use three of their engineers, as well as a business analyst, a QA specialist, and a project manager.

How did you come to work with Apiko?

I was looking for offshore resources when I came across Apiko while checking out reviews on Upwork — they stood out because of their rare blend of professionalism, experience, and cost-effectiveness.

I interviewed a couple of other agencies but Apiko had a clear plan and did an excellent job communicating what their expectations were, how they worked, and how the projects would progress, so I ended up choosing them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere in the range of $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

Our ongoing partnership started in June 2020 and we plan on being long-term partners.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Our site is now live and operating according to our specs, thanks to Apiko. The product was delivered on time and since then, we’ve had very little downtime because of the solid structure.

As for the metrics, it’s still extremely early to tell, but we’ve had over a thousand users so we’re on track to have a great performance for the rest of the year.

How did Apiko perform from a project management standpoint?

We were able to seamlessly plug into their process, so the project management has been really great. They’re are willing to do pure staff augmentation but in our case we needed the additional support of a project manager and QA specialist so our in-house team can focus on other aspects of the business.

They manage our day-to-day engineering work on Jira and Confluence and track the hours through Hubstaff. Additionally, we typically communicate through Google Meet and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re very impressed with their professionalism and competitive pricing. On top of that, we also like their deep experience and how they have internal resources like DevOps specialists, who are able to jump in and solve complex engineering problems when they arise.

They’re also highly-proficient communicators, so nothing in the development gets lost in translation.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There were some issues with the schedule certain features were delivered by, but that was partly because the specs of the product evolved over time. Since then we’ve gotten better at predicting the releases.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I recommend having a clear and detailed specification of what you want to build, rather than coming into the partnership with just an idea with no real plan for implementing it. This will allow their engineers to get started a lot sooner instead of spending weeks developing a true spec.