Impekable

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the VP, Product & Marketing of Augustine Institute

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

The Augustine Institute helps Catholics understand, live, and share their faith through graduate-level education, formative tools, and rsources to integrate the faith into daily life.  

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

• Rebuild our Formed (Formed.org) streaming platform following a failed attempt by another vendor.

SOLUTION

How did you find Impekable?

Referral

Why did you select Impekable over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Other

How many teammates from Impekable were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

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

Impekable was retained to rebuild the Formed streaming platform, one of the primary product offerings from the Augustine Institute. The platform hosts over 6,000 pieces of video, audio, and ebook content. 

Impekable was asked to pick up the rebuild project after another group failed to execute as promised. Their work included building a new custom frontend on top of Vimeo's backend OTT solution. This began with the web and would expand to mobile and TV apps. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

During our time with Impekable, the platform had near-perfect (99%+) uptime. When outages did occur, the team moved immediately to resolve them.

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

Impekable created and maintained the product roadmap, regularly serving as business consultants versus just developers. They clearly communicated development milestones and timelines to all stakeholders and were transparent about the team's progress. They consistently delivered on-time. 

Their availability and response time sets them apart. They were available 24/7 to respond to issues and questions, and often approached us about issues before we were even aware of them. 

What was your primary form of communication with Impekable?

Virtual Meeting

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

Impekable's complete investment in our business was what made the relationship so valuable. They truly cared about the work they were doing, and it showed. They had a deep knowledge of the product, so much so that they were often the ones who trained our new employees. Additionally, they were constantly approaching us with ideas for how we could optimize and evolve the platform. This wasn't a way to generate more work and billing as it was done within the scope of our retainer. It came from a place of geniunely wanting the product, and their client, to succeed. 

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

Our partnership with Impekable came to an end due to changes to our business, not due to any fault on their part. We were extremely pleased with their work. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and CEO of Sage Care, an AI-powered CRM and virtual assistant designed to streamline and optimize operations for home care agencies, enhancing efficiency and reliability in agency management.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Impekable?

We needed help building out telephony functionality within our application to support home care agencies placing and receiving calls through our system and handling those calls with the flexibility and complexity that our agency clients require.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Impekable designed, developed, and deployed a slate of telephony features, including call forwarding logic, web-based calling for browser-based call handling, and other call handling-related features.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 2–5 teammates from Impekable.

How did you come to work with Impekable?

We found them through an online search. We chose them because they had experience with Twilio and telephony support, which was what we needed.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from May–July 2026.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Impekable delivered features to scope in a timely manner, and those features were critical in helping us close partners and better serve our existing client base. We were able to better handle calls for our clients. They were able to configure their phones in our system in a way that better aligned with their expectations, allowing more of their team to have visibility into the platform and take advantage of the AI feature functionality that depended on calls being routed properly.

How did Impekable perform from a project management standpoint?

Impekable delivered on time. We communicated via in-person meetings, and Slack.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Impekable was competent, designed features that addressed the needs of our clients, developed them in a timely manner, and was communicative. The features shipped without bugs and continue to be dependable even post-engagement.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Their knowledge of our unique industry and customer base and greater attention to detail during the design phase could have accelerated some of these projects, but on the whole, their performance in that area was satisfactory.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of an early-stage fintech company called Jupiter Card.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Impekable?

We needed a clickable prototype of our app not only for our future customers, but to show and demonstrate our offering to potential recruits and investors.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

I had worked with Impekable on a project at my last startup and they had delivered great results.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

We first began by having detailed conversations about my vision for the app, the core user journeys and customer interview findings I had. They then researched similar/competitive apps for inspiration on key UX elements.

From there, they produced wireframes and we discussed the UX extensively to ensure the core components were included and were highly intuitive. Then, the team transformed the UX wireframes into a high fidelity clickable UI on Figma complete with our branding and color themes. The team also helped design a user-testing survey based on the prototype.

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

I worked directly with UI/UX designers, a project manager and Pek.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We have received great feedback on our prototype from both customers, investors and other mentors I am in contact with. We will soon conduct a broad survey with our 6k person waitlist based on the prototype for more data.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Highly efficient. The team was very communicative and flexible when things needed to shift or when more frequent meetings were needed.

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

They always deliver incredibly high-quality UI/UX that incorporate the latest learnings from industry standards and are bespoke to our complex use case. They truly helped bring our entire product concept to life. The final result is one that takes our complex system and makes it as simple as possible for users - that is hard to do!

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

Earlier access to the prototype for offline feedback between meetings may have helped.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a mobile marketplace that empowers schools to be able to fundraise more efficiently and effectively, and I’m the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Impekable?

We were looking to build a platform that would allow transactions to occur for product discovery and provide an environment with everything that you would need for standard marketplace offerings.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Impeckable fullfiled the agreement that was first discussed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How did the relationship evolve?

We worked through the issues and Impekable offered to make things right and they have followed through on that promise. 

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

Impeckable made things right and fulfilled the agreement so both parties are content with the outcome.

UPDATED REVIEW

This review was published on February 13, 2020.

George Bruton

CEO, OurCampus

Advertising & Marketing

11-50 Employees

Carlsbad, California

Jul 2018 - Ongoing

Project summary

Impekable was hired to build a completely custom platform for an educational and brand fundraising marketplace. They provided a Magento site with some login capabilities. This review includes the vendor's response.

Feedback summary

The product was launched six months late, costing the client thousands of dollars and forcing them to redo the project completely. The Impekable team missed all deadlines and provided a product that was broken and severely limited in its capabilities.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a mobile marketplace that empowers schools to be able to fundraise more efficiently and effectively, and I’m the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Impekable?

We were looking to build a platform that would allow transactions to occur for product discovery and provide an environment with everything that you would need for standard marketplace offerings.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The platform itself is supposed to be custom but is currently built on Magento. The unique features that we offer include the media division of our company where brands are buying and placing advertisements, as well as a locker delivery and parts delivery system. We needed those to be totally custom for each consumer and provide strong visibility into the data and analytics of their content.

What eventually happened was that we realized they significantly underbid the project in order to get our business. In the initial meetings, we thought they might just have had a really efficient process, but as soon as we sent our first deposit over things started to change pretty rapidly.

Their team immediately pushed us toward off-the-shelf projects instead of custom-built ones. That would have been fine if those had delivered the functionality we needed, but they ended up being incredibly limiting to what we were able to offer our customers.

What is the team composition?

When we first started there was one project engineer in the US and a team of five offshore, and we’ve increased or decreased that number depending on how much work we had to do.

How did you come to work with Impekable?

We did some research online and found their company on Clutch, which convinced us that they would be a good fit for our project.

How much have you invested with them?

In total, the cost of the project was projected to be $176,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project started in July 2018, and things are not going very well so we have not officially wrapped up the project as of yet.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Ultimately, we ended up with barely 5% of the operational capacity that we were planning to offer and are looking at shutting down the business for the moment. For example, they gave up on enabling Bluetooth capability pretty early on, and the backed where customers should be able to log in and see the data of where they are spending money with us looks absolutely nothing like the wireframes that we gave them.

Their platform doesn’t have the capabilities we need and barely provides the functions it does have. We ended up with a marketplace app that doesn’t even have a tracking function, and because of that, we are going to have to spend a lot more money completely redeveloping a whole new platform.

How did Impekable perform from a project management standpoint?

We had meetings and were constantly being updated on what was going on, but the number of missed deadlines was unbelievable. The whole process was supposed to take 6 months, and we ended up launching after a year. Even then, the scope had been scaled down tremendously just to be able to launch the app at all.

At one point they even admitted to us that they were underwater on the project and didn’t even want to develop it anymore. They claimed that they could develop the custom features we originally wanted but quoted us a price at that point of almost $1,000,000, which was much higher than what we could have gotten at a different agency.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Honestly, I wish there were some positive feedback I could give them, but it’s negatives all around. We gave them a lot of ground in terms of giving up elements of the scope in order to launch on time, and even then, they missed deadlines and offered only band-aid solutions to the problems the platform had.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I think the biggest step they could take to improve would just be to have transparency around the scope and quoting at the beginning of the project. The wireframes that we offered them were detailed enough that everyone bidding should have known exactly what we needed and how much it would take to build.

It would have saved everyone an incredible amount of money if, when they lost their first project manager the first month in, they had been able to admit that they made a mistake and weren’t going to be able to produce the app for the cost they had quoted us originally. Just explaining that they needed to use solutions that would pigeonhole our capabilities would have put us in a much better position entirely.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Walk through your whole plan incredibly carefully. They have a skillset of knowledge that you don’t have, but it’s up to you to make sure they stick to the milestones you have on a weekly basis. As soon as those start to get missed you have to treat that as an immediate red flag instead of letting it go and letting things snowball into a much larger problem.

Star Ratings

Overall rating: 0.5 – It was a learning experience because I know what not to do now

Quality: 0.5

Cost: 0.5 – I wish I had my money back

Schedule: 0.5

Willing to refer: 0.5

Company Responses

The vendor responded on March 12, 2020.

We appreciate having the opportunity to respond to this one bad review among many good ones. However, this customer has sued us, and, therefore, we feel it’s inappropriate to go into a long discussion of what happened. Suffice it to say that we disagree with a lot that the customer has said, but we totally agree with them on this point:  

"Walk through your whole plan incredibly carefully. They have a skillset of knowledge that you don’t have, but it’s up to you to make sure they stick to the milestones you have on a weekly basis."

We ask that our customers meet with us weekly for this purpose. Some don’t do this. And there are other facts that this customer has not disclosed that have to do with their obligations laid out in our SOW, which are parts of the iterative development process. If Impekable made an error, it was that we normally work with larger companies. Those tend to have teams with a deeper understanding of this iterative process and are familiar with the work that is required on both our part and theirs. We misjudged this customer’s technical knowledge and skillset, and regret that they felt the need to both sue us and post this review before the matter was resolved.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Mythic Markets is a marketplace that allows anybody to invest in fractional shares of their favorite pop culture assets. I am the co-founder & CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Impekable?

We needed to build a demo of an upcoming product for testing in the market. All existing engineering resources were assigned to other projects and we needed outside help on this new prototype.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a mobile web app built quickly to demonstrate a new product to our stakeholders.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

Referral from one of their existing clients. We considered using internal resources to build this, but didn't have the capacity at the time.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

The project is a prototype of a trading product we're developing. Our design team provided the front end UX design, visual assets, and specs, and Impekable's engineering team implemented them (front end only).

What was the team composition?

Our product team primarily liaised with a project manager and engineering lead. I believe these resources interacted with additional resources internally at their studio. Although I'm not sure how many resources were involved in total, the size of the team we interacted with did not change.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business?

We needed to create a working prototype to demonstrate a future product for our stakeholders. We'll be demoing in the coming weeks, but it's likely have a major impact on the future of the business.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

We kicked off with an intro call, set weekly check-ins, approved timelines and set the order for which pieces to build. The team was extremely responsive to any and all requests, especially during Q/A. We used Zoom, ClickUp, Github, and Google sheets.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team was very responsive and worked quickly. Time was of the essence in our interaction with Impekable and they turned our project around quickly, and within budget.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We noticed that our company's name was misspelled in the URL and title of the product. An easy mistake and an easy fix, but the devil is in the details.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of Base10 Genetics, a precision medicine company that provides a genomic-driven health program for large insurance payers and their patients.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Impekable?

We were looking to develop a web application.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

In addition to conducting research to pinpoint our market and end-customer, Impekable assisted us in some of our business decisions. They then created multiple frameworks and concepts for us to choose from. 

Using programming languages such as HTML and Java, the team did concept, coding, backend, frontend, and design work to arrive at the finished product. They integrated Stripe and Salesforce into the overall web app as well.

What is the team composition?

Besides Pek (CEO) and the project manager, there were about five people working on the project, including UX and other designers, and programmers.

How did you come to work with Impekable?

Unlike other companies we interviewed, they really wanted to understand our situation and evaluate if their services were even needed before walking us through a very complex process in a satisfactory way.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from October 2017—April 2018.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We had roughly 500 users within the first few months after we launched the website, and we received a lot of good feedback. The users loved the design and flow, finding the app to be intuitive. 

There were very few crashes. My backend team reported on average only 3–4 crash tickets per month in the first few months the website was live, and those were minor fixes. Impekable has a multi-talented development team that seems to understand a lot of different platforms. 

How did Impekable perform from a project management standpoint?

With a 24–48-hour turnaround most of the time, they’re very responsive. Communication was clear and frequent, and they were organized. When they missed deadlines, they were proactive in updating me and took financial ownership. Additionally, they completed 90% of tasks on time and within budget, which is rare.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team was professional and worked fast — an advantage in the startup world. It felt like working with an internal team rather than a vendor. After the project was completed, they even followed up with us to see how things were going.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I have no suggestions. I’m a satisfied customer.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Know your customer. They will help you target your market well.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of a venture-backed technology company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Impekable?

We focus on machine learning algorithms and AI solutions development. When we find companies with expertise in other areas, we tend to leverage them

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Impekable built an SDK for our software application using Twilio’s API. Their team developed a feature for receiving text messages and web chat capabilities. Mostly, their team worked on the backend, but they also designed the actual chat and text icons.

What is the team composition?

We worked with 3–4 people from Impekable. My central point of contact was Pek (CEO, Impekable). Our product officer was in contact with another individual.

How did you come to work with Impekable?

Twilio recommended Impekable to us. Their methodology and familiarity with the Twilio API are what attracted us to them. They provided a workshop before we engaged, which I found useful.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started the project in August 2019. We received the finished product in November but plan to continue working with Impekable.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We’ve been testing the product extensively and have been satisfied with their work. Their methodical approach combined with their experience make them an ideal developer to contract.

How did Impekable perform from a project management standpoint?

We had regular calls, updates, and demos, so we always knew what was happening throughout the entire process. We shared a Google sheet to track the project. We had specific goals and timelines that were met. If an issue came up, Impekable informed us immediately. Their team was always available.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Overall, it was a positive experience and I’ve had some terrible experiences in the past. It was a pleasure to work with Impekable. Their team was professional and skilled in their craft. We will continue to work with them.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I wouldn’t have changed anything. They’ve got a good take on how to approach and manage a project as well as expectations to deliver successful results.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have dedicated points of contact on both sides.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the data science lead at a research company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Impekable?

We needed help taking our MVP product—a web app—and bringing its frontend up to production quality.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Impekable started the redesign process by leading user interviews and user testing sessions. After looking at our initial drafts and mapping the user journey, their team delivered design mockups with clickable screens. They used Sketch and InVision to provide these mockups.

How did you come to work with Impekable?

We chose Impekable based on their portfolio as well as feedback from their clients and providers in the same space. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project ran from March until October 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Based on the user testing, Impekable took a complicated idea and turned it into screens that look simple and easy to use.

How did Impekable perform from a project management standpoint?

Impekable did a great job. They took our rough ideas and dove deeper, showing their understanding of our domain very well. We used a project management tool and Google Hangouts to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their ability to pivot and turn around new ideas quickly stood out to me. In general, Impekable’s customer service was very good.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Impekable could do better to leverage their experience with prior clients and get our project started faster. I’d also appreciate it if they were more willing to break out of traditional workflows to work more flexibly with us.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Panasonic Beta is an innovation incubator of Panasonic.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Impekable?

We wanted to develop a design system so that we could produce digital products for other organizations. After struggling to find a solution in-house, we looked to a third party to help us complete the project.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Impekable is helping us create a design system. By the time their team came on board, we had already created a few design initiatives. They produced a few design options as well, and we worked together to select the best fit for the platform. They are currently implementing the design on the frontend of the system. Impekable is building the platform in Node.js and managing the content with Wagtail.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with their senior product manager, who oversaw a team of 10 developers and designers.

How did you come to work with Impekable?

They are based in our area, so we were already aware of their presence within the developer community. When we decided to outsource our project, they were one of the first names mentioned. Meeting their team, and getting a glimpse of their past work assured us that they would be a great fit.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We are delighted with the work that they have delivered so far. Impekable is doing a phenomenal job transforming our abstract vision into a functioning web product.

How did Impekable perform from a project management standpoint?

Their workflow is incredibly efficient. The design tools that they use make it simple to manage and share design files. We met their design team every week before they started executing the project; however, we have only met their development team via online video services. Phone, email, and Slack are other methods that we use to communicate. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The team at Impekable is deadline-driven, but they always take time out of their schedule to make sure that our needs and wants are fulfilled. Their open and honest communication is the foundation of their success. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Impekable should consider giving their clients permission to view and edit files at the beginning of the process. Having access to the material helps us track their progress.