# thoughtbot thoughtbot Reviews (39), Pricing, Services & Verified Ratings - Premier Verified - 4.9 out of 5 average review rating - 7 connections joined thoughtbot's Network [Visit Website](https://thoughtbot.com/?utm_source=clutch.co&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=directory) [Get a Custom Proposal](https://clutch.co/profile/thoughtbot) **Let's make your product and team a success.** thoughtbot is your expert partner for product design and development. We help our clients lead the way through better products, faster teams, and stronger growth. ‌ thoughtbot is a global consultancy renowned for our community contributions and client outcomes. We use a human-centered design strategy for web and mobile products at every stage of the product lifecycle. Since 2003, we have produced high-quality products for over 1,000 clients. We are proud to leave every project with a stronger team and improved processes. ## Company Information - Minimum project size: $10,000+ - Hourly rate: $150 - $199 - Number of employees: 50 - 249 - 2 Locations: - New York, NY (Headquarters) - London, England - Founded in 2003 - 1 languages: English - 8 timezones: Eastern Standard Time (EST), Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), Arabia Standard Time (AST), Brazil Eastern Time (BET), Central Standard Time (CST), Mountain Standard Time (MST), Pacific Standard Time (PST), Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) ## Services, Focus Areas, Industries, and Clients ### Service Lines - 30% Web Development - 25% Mobile App Development - 15% UX/UI Design - 10% Cloud Consulting & SI - 10% Custom Software Development - 10% Low/No Code Development ### Focus Areas - Low Code Development: - 100% Airtable - No Code Development: - 100% Webflow - Cloud Computing Focus: - 95% AWS Cloud Consulting & Implementation - 5% Google Cloud - Application Platforms: - 65% Amazon Application Development Framework - 30% Heroku - 5% Google app engine - Programming & Scripting: - 55% Ruby - 35% JavaScript - 10% Other programming & scripting languages - Mobile Platforms: - 50% Hybrid & cross platform apps - 40% iPhone iOS App Development - 10% Android App Development - AWS Consulting Services: - 45% AWS Managed Cloud - 40% AWS DevOps - 15% AWS Security - User Experience Focus: - 40% UX Strategy - 30% Usability Testing - 30% User Research - Azure Consulting Services: - 35% Azure DevOps - 25% Azure Migrations - 20% Azure Analytics - 10% Azure Development - 10% Azure Security - Frameworks and CMS: - 30% NodeJS - 30% Ruby on Rails - 25% React Native - 10% React - 5% Angular - Mobile Focus: - 15% Consumer Mobile App Development - 15% Mobile Commerce - 10% Financial Mobile App Development - 10% Health & Wellness Mobile App Development - 10% Learning & Education Mobile App Development - 10% Productivity Mobile App Development - 10% Publishing & Digital Content Mobile App Development - 10% Social App Development - 10% Travel & Lifestyle Mobile App Development ### Industries - 15% Government - 30% Medical - 5% Energy & natural resources - 10% Non-profit - 10% Consumer products & services - 10% Education - 20% Financial services ### Clients - 40% Small Business (<$10M) - 35% Midmarket ($10M - $1B) - 25% Enterprise (>$1B) ## Pricing Snapshot Average rating for cost based on this provider's reviews: 4.7 out of 5 **What Clients Have Said** *(This summary is based on verified Clutch reviews.)*: Thoughtbot offers high-quality services with a pricing range from $10,000 to over $1 million, depending on project scope. Clients appreciate their value for cost, with many noting excellent project management and flexibility. While some find pricing high, the overall consensus is on the quality delivered. **Most Common Project Size**: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 31 reviews *(Pricing information for this provider is based on reviews where the project size was available.)* ### Pricing by Service - Web Development: $50,000 to $199,999 based on 13 reviews - Mobile App Development: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 based on 7 reviews - Custom Software Development: $200,000 to $999,999 based on 7 reviews - UX/UI Design: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 5 reviews - AI Development: Confidential based on 2 reviews - Web Design: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 2 reviews - Other Design: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 2 reviews - Digital Strategy: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 1 review - Market Research: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 1 review - Business Consulting: Less than $10,000 based on 1 review - Other Application Development: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 based on 1 review - Print Design: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 1 review - IT Staff Augmentation: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 1 review - IT Strategy Consulting: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 based on 1 review - Application Management & Support: $10,000 to $49,000 based on 1 review - Cloud Consulting & SI: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 based on 1 review - Microservices Architecture Services: Confidential based on 1 review ## Reviews Clutch investigates each reviewer's identity and work history. Every review goes through a rigorous, human-led verification process to confirm the reviewer's identity, and reviews that we verify are visibly marked as 'Verified' so you can trust that they come from a real client. [Learn More](https://help.clutch.co/en/knowledge/how-clutch-verifies-reviews) ### thoughtbot Review Insights Overall Review Rating: 4.9 - Quality: 4.9 - Schedule: 4.8 - Cost: 4.7 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 ### Top Mentions - Communicative (16 mentions) - High-quality work (14 mentions) - Flexible (7 mentions) - Great project management (7 mentions) - Timely (7 mentions) - Professional (6 mentions) - Collaborative (5 mentions) - Knowledgeable (5 mentions) - Proactive (4 mentions) - Team players (4 mentions) - Well-organized projects (4 mentions) - Easy to work with (3 mentions) - Exceptional performance (3 mentions) - Great team (3 mentions) - Transparent (3 mentions) - Unique expertise (3 mentions) - Accommodating (2 mentions) - Exceeds expectations (2 mentions) - Personable (2 mentions) - Receptive (2 mentions) ### Review Highlights **Challenges with Initial Project Estimates** Some clients mentioned that thoughtbot could improve on providing more accurate initial estimates for project timelines and costs. This was noted as a minor area for improvement in an otherwise positive experience. **Proficiency in Agile Development** Thoughtbot is praised for its strong agile development practices, which include rapid iteration, user feedback incorporation, and adaptive project management. Clients appreciated their ability to adjust quickly and produce high-quality, viable solutions. **Effective Communication and Collaboration** Clients consistently commend thoughtbot for their clear communication and collaboration. They integrate well with client teams, often working as an extension of the client's staff, which helps maintain alignment and transparency throughout projects. **Seamless Integration with Client Teams** Thoughtbot is noted for its ability to integrate seamlessly with client teams, contributing to a collaborative environment that enhances project outcomes. This integration helps in maintaining a smooth workflow and achieving project goals. **Focus on User-Centric Design** Thoughtbot places a strong emphasis on user needs and outcomes, often conducting design sprints and user testing to ensure the final product meets user expectations. Clients value their ability to challenge assumptions and focus on delivering user-centered solutions. **High-Quality Project Management** Thoughtbot is recognized for its organized and flexible project management. They use tools like Slack, Trello, and Jira to track progress and ensure timely delivery. Clients appreciate their structured approach and responsiveness to project needs. **Cost Considerations and Value** While thoughtbot is recognized for delivering high-quality work, some clients note the cost of their services as being on the higher side. However, many believe the value and quality justify the investment. **Commitment to Best Practices** Thoughtbot consistently applies engineering best practices, which clients find beneficial for maintaining a high standard of quality in their projects. This commitment to best practices is a key factor in their successful project delivery. **Innovative and Consultative Approach** Clients appreciate thoughtbot's innovative and consultative approach. They are seen as more than just developers, offering strategic insights and suggestions that enhance the overall project and business objectives. **Passionate and Dedicated Team** The thoughtbot team is noted for their passion and dedication to client projects. They take ownership of their work, provide valuable insights, and genuinely care about the success of the projects they undertake. ### thoughtbot Reviews #### Mobile App Development for Healthcare Company (Featured Review) **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 - Project length: Jan. 2022 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot has developed a mobile application for a healthcare company. After discussing the project details and goals, the team has created a roadmap, designs, and solutions to issues.  **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** VP, Healthcare Company - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 501-1,000 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Sep 13, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot's final mobile application has thrilled the client and received positive user feedback because of its experience. The team maintains excellent communication, tracking, and planning of the project on Slack and Trello while continuously enhancing the platform. Their hard skills stand out. ""The most impactful is thoughtbot's processes, collaboration, and guidance around product development."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. I am a vice president focused on product development and project management for a mission-driven healthcare company. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot, and what were your goals? Developing a mobile app to deliver virtual care and enhance the patient experience to support our excellent outcomes. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors? Healthcare experience, collaborative team environment, proven processes. Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used. Early discussions of product and goals, patient experience, and ongoing roadmapping, design, problem solving, and more. How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions? A project manager, designers, and front and back end developers. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables? We have been thrilled with the delivered app and users have provided great feedback about their experience. thoughtbot has continued to enhance our product throughout the process. Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness. Fantastic communication, tracking, and planning through regularly scheduled calls, meetings, and tools (like Slack and Trello). What did you find most impressive or unique about this company? The hard skills have obviously been impressive and very helpful. The most impactful is thoughtbot's processes, collaboration, and guidance around product development. Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently? no --- #### Web & Mobile App Development for Nutrition Co **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development, Web Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: Oct. 2024 - Mar. 2025 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot developed a web and mobile app for a nutrition company. The team built the app's underlying infrastructure and tested and implemented features, including a gamification function. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Head of Technology, Grady's Garden - Industry: Education - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Apr 14, 2025 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot's work was validated by the client, who was pleased with the app's core features. The team was professional, dependable, and accommodating. The team delivered quality work on time and proactively communicated challenges. The team's problem-solving skills and genuine passion stood out. ""thoughtbot proved to be a dependable and highly professional partner."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and position.I am the Head of Technology of Grady's GardenDescribe what your company does in a single sentence.We are a food and nutrition company that help families and communities incorporate a healthier lifestyle **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What specific goals or objectives did you hire thoughtbot to accomplish?Build an app as a platform for our comprehensive health-focused curriculum and animated contentConcept and develop games for the app **SOLUTION** How did you find thoughtbot?ReferralWhy did you select thoughtbot over others?Pricing fit our budgetGreat culture fitReferred to meCompany values alignedHow many teammates from thoughtbot were assigned to this project?2-5 EmployeesDescribe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.We engaged thoughtbot to architect and build our consumer-facing digital education app MVP, which aims to cultivate lifelong healthy habits in children via engaging digital experiences. Their responsibilities included the initial development of the application and its underlying infrastructure, and subsequent feature testing and implementation. The primary outputs were a consumer-facing web application MVP and an associated native app **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?MVP testing with our target ICP resulted in the validation of core features such as gamification and efficient digital education dissemination, positioning us well for initial onboarding and adoptionDescribe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?thoughtbot proved to be a dependable and highly professional partner. They consistently delivered quality work on time, and their clear, proactive communication regarding any challenges allowed for seamless adjustments to project plans with stakeholders. Additionally, they were very accommodating of any adjustments we requested and consistently made themselves available for collaborative alignment to benefit the projectWhat was your primary form of communication with thoughtbot?Virtual MeetingEmail or Messaging AppWhat did you find most impressive or unique about this company?thoughtbot's genuine passion for our project and social mission, reflecting a shared sense of purpose, significantly amplified the positive impact of our partnership for us. The team was highly responsive to our feedback and demonstrated strong problem-solving skills when challenges arose. The team’s proactive approach to identifying potential issues and offering effective solutions was particularly impressive, as was how organized they wereAre there any areas for improvement or something thoughtbot could have done differently?One area for potential improvement was the timeliness of the discovery phase and the proposed solution; it was longer than anticipated and resulted in an output which didn't fully align with our vision. This ultimately led us to take a more direct approach to outlining the specific requirements to ensure the final application met our needs and timeline expectations. --- #### App Dev for Primary Care Medical Practice **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development, Other Application Development, UX/UI Design, Web Design, Web Development - Project size: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 - Project length: Jan. 2023 - Apr. 2025 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot developed a telehealth application for a primary care medical company. The team worked across the whole web stack and mobile to deliver a superior Rails app. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** CTO, CloseKnit - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Mar 28, 2025 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot helped the client meet their deadlines, grow their team, and build a solid codebase with little to no code debt. The team had strong project management with a high degree of flexibility. They were always professional and willing to accommodate the client when needed. ""They can really deliver a high-quality software project that is easy to maintain over time."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and position.I am the CTO of CloseKnitDescribe what your company does in a single sentence.CloseKnit is an a virtaul forward hybrid advanced primary care medical practice. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What specific goals or objectives did you hire thoughtbot to accomplish?Develop our core platformAccelerate delivery of critical feaures during high growthDevelop the foundations of our software engineering culture **SOLUTION** How did you find thoughtbot?Well known in the industryWhy did you select thoughtbot over others?Great culture fitGood value for costCompany values alignedHow many teammates from thoughtbot were assigned to this project?6-10 EmployeesDescribe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.ThoughtBot worked across the full web stack and mobile to deliver a superior rails telehealth application. They coded, designed, and product managed the deliverly along with our own team. The mentored jr devs and helped up implement scrum as we continued to hit our deadlines. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?We hit our deadlines and grew our team while building out a solid codebase with little to no code debt.Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?Srong project management with a high degree of flexiblity. When we needed them to flex they did. We hit our deadlines without much drama and ThoughtBot was always professional and willing to accomodate us when we were in need!What was your primary form of communication with thoughtbot?Virtual MeetingWhat did you find most impressive or unique about this company?They are super strong engineers who all seem to follow the same set of rules and engineering culture. They can really deliver a high-quality software project that is easy to maintain over time.Are there any areas for improvement or something thoughtbot could have done differently?Nothing that I can think of.  --- #### Custom Software Development for Home Care Services Company **The Project** - Services: AI Development, Custom Software Development, Web Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: Nov. 2024 - Apr. 2025 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot has been tasked with developing an app for a home care services company. The team has finished the Ruby on Rails app's dashboards and built an MVP AI-powered customer support tool. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** CTO, Clara - Industry: Information technology - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Mar 24, 2025 **Feedback Summary**: Thanks to thoughtbot's work, the client's payroll process has become faster, and the accuracy of the AI agent's response has improved. thoughtbot has been incredibly flexible, adapting to fit the client's project management style. The team's communication and expertise have impressed the client. ""All developers have been self-directed, thoughtful about technology, and make good tradeoffs."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and position.I am the CTO of ClaraDescribe what your company does in a single sentence.Clara connects families with in-home caregivers for seniors. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What specific goals or objectives did you hire thoughtbot to accomplish?Set the foundation for our Ruby on Rails appExplore AI agentic solutions for customer supportTrain our internal engineering team in Ruby and Rails best practices **SOLUTION** How did you find thoughtbot?Online SearchWhy did you select thoughtbot over others?High ratingsGreat culture fitTechnology expertise (Ruby on Rails)How many teammates from thoughtbot were assigned to this project?2-5 EmployeesDescribe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.○ Finish caregiver/coordinator dashboards○ Fully automated payroll system for domestic employers in California○ MVP AI-powered customer support tooling tied into Close CRM workflows **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?Our payroll process takes half the time it did when they startedOur MVP AI agent is able to respond correctly, with no human editing, 30% of the time and growingWe have live products for both sides of our marketplace -- the families and the caregiversDescribe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?Thoughtbot has been incredibly flexible, adapting to fit our project management style. We switched tools from Notion to Linear, stopped and started standups at various times, and had a bit of the normal startup chaos but they stuck it out with good attitudes throughoutWhat was your primary form of communication with thoughtbot?Email or Messaging AppWhat did you find most impressive or unique about this company?Ruby on Rails expertiseAll developers have been self-directed, thoughtful about technology, and make good tradeoffsStrong communication throughoutAre there any areas for improvement or something thoughtbot could have done differently?Pricing is high. The value is still there given the quality of the engineers but it is high. --- #### Web App Dev & Tech Support for Home Services Company **The Project** - Services: Custom Software Development, Microservices Architecture Services, Web Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: Apr. 2023 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot has developed a web app for a home services company. The team has set up the app's infrastructure and developed features. They’ve also provided maintenance and long-term technical assistance. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 4.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Director of Engineering, Home Services Company - Industry: Home Services - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Nov 19, 2024 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot has helped the client scale their app to millions of homeowners and send over 1.4 billion notifications about local neighborhoods. The team has been professional, timely, and communicative. Overall, they’ve successfully delivered high-quality work and built a scalable and secure app. ""I was routinely impressed by thoughtbot's commitment to building high-quality software."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and position. I am the Director of Engineering of a home services company Describe what your company does in a single sentence.We empower people to make life's most important financial decisions confidently, starting with their homes. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What specific goals or objectives did you hire thoughtbot to accomplish?Build a new consumer facing digital product to keep homeowners informed about their neighborhood. **SOLUTION** How did you find thoughtbot?ReferralWhy did you select thoughtbot over others?Great culture fitReferred to meHow many teammates from thoughtbot were assigned to this project?2-5 EmployeesDescribe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.We hired Thoughtbot to help build and launch a consumer facing digital product that keeps homeowners informed about events happening within their neighborhood. The scope of work included: initial application development and infrastructure set-up, ongoing feature development, bug fixes & maintenance, as well as assisting with long-term technical strategy. The key deliverables were a consumer-facing web application and several web-based microservices responsible for data ingestion & processing. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?The application has scaled to millions of homeowners with over 1.4 billion alert/notifications sent about local neighborhoods.Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?Thoughtbot was always extremely professional. They routinely delivered work on time and with a high degree of quality. When complications did arise, they were quick to communicate the issue to key stakeholders so that timelines or scope could be adjusted appropriately. What was your primary form of communication with thoughtbot?Virtual MeetingEmail or Messaging AppWhat did you find most impressive or unique about this company?I was routinely impressed by thoughtbot's commitment to building high-quality software and their discipline in following engineering best-practices. They know how to build software "the right way", with solutions that are well-tested, well-monitored, scalable, and secure.Are there any areas for improvement or something thoughtbot could have done differently?The flightdeck/AWS Platform modules and tooling are well-intentioned (enforce security best practices, simplify K8s cluster set-up, etc.), however they create an extra layer of obfuscation around industry-standard tooling that requires extra learning/ramp-up time when onboarding new teammates. They also create an additional dependency which can complicate updating certain components of the tech stack (upgrading the AWS terraform provider version for example, or the K8s version of the EKS cluster).  --- #### Custom Software Dev for Congressional Software Company **The Project** - Services: Custom Software Development - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: July 2022 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: A congressional software company has hired thoughtbot to develop features for multiple projects. They've done a code audit, trained new teammates, and developed the first version of an enhanced product. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Executive, Prolegis - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 11-50 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Apr 16, 2024 **Feedback Summary**: The client is satisfied with thoughtbot's support, professionalism, and expertise; the team has integrated seamlessly into the client's processes and culture. Moreover, they're responsive, organized, reliable, and communicative partners. They deliver on time and provide updates about the progress. ""We've built a relationship that we hope will last beyond the contract."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and position.I am an Executive at ProlegisDescribe what your company does in a single sentence.Provides software for congressional staff to help them in their daily work on capitol hill. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What specific goals or objectives did you hire thoughtbot to accomplish?Software development of new features within applicationRedesign software interfaceImplement SDLC best practices to engineering functionMigrate cloud provider **SOLUTION** How did you find thoughtbot?Online SearchReferralWhy did you select thoughtbot over others?Great culture fitGood value for costReferred to meCompany values alignedHow many teammates from thoughtbot were assigned to this project?6-10 EmployeesDescribe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.We started with Thoughtbot on a smaller engagement in July 2022 to address short-term concern about the Elastic Search service (which was outdated) and asked them to do a code audit and roadmap of future improvements. From there Thoughtbot started on those improvements, and then ramped up from there to accomplish everything on the roadmap across multiple projects, and then helped hire and train new development team members. The last engineering project accomplished together, outside of the ongoing platform support they still provide, was developing and launching the first version of the enhanced product for our biggest customer to date. on time and under the original estimated budget. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?Cloud migration of data and application from Huawei Cloud to AWS. Partnering on the projects from UI/UX overhaul of application to development of custom functionality within application for Prolegis' largest client to date, on time and under budget. Continued support of the production, demo, and staging environments as well as providing technical leadership when requested. Partnered with Prolegis in hiring process of new developers and then with the training of those developers.Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?Thoughtbot was extremely organized and communicated on a reliable cadence with progress, issues, and timelines within the multiple projects with our company. All projects were delivered on time or early. Thoughtbot has always and continues to be extremely responsive to all of our needs and requests.What was your primary form of communication with thoughtbot?Virtual MeetingEmail or Messaging AppWhat did you find most impressive or unique about this company?The overall skill of all the staff we interacted with was of the highest level from a technical and professional perspective. Those are qualities which can be found in many companies, however, what sets Thoughtbot apart from others is the true 'partner' approach, they were able to integrate themselves seamlessly into the process and culture of our company; we've built a relationship that we hope will last beyond the contract.Are there any areas for improvement or something thoughtbot could have done differently?None that I can think of at this point. --- #### CMS Dev for Pet Insurance Company **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: Oct. - Nov. 2022 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot developed a CMS for a pet insurance company. Following a discovery session, they assisted in the migration onto Contentful. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 4.5 - Cost: 3.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Marketing Manager, Pet Insurance Company - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 11-50 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Nov 30, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: Thanks to thoughtbot's work, the client was able to update their website by themselves. They communicated effectively and promptly via Basecamp and Slack. They were responsive and collaborative throughout this engagement. Their helpful attitude and professionalism were hallmarks of their work. ""They actually pulled in someone on their end to help QA since we couldn't."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. I lead marketing and e-commerce at Antelope Pets, which owns Doggo, a pet insurance and training services provider. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot, and what were your goals? thoughtbot helped create and design our website a few years ago, and we wanted to migrate to a CMS where a non-technical person could update the site content. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors? We had previously worked with thoughtbot and it was great. We ultimately went with them again because they had been thoughtful and efficient with their time previously, and because they had historical context on the account. Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used. We had a kick-off meeting to align on the site roadmap and goals. We had a hard limit for our budget, and prioritized each goal based on urgency. We used Notion and Basecamp for project management, ultimately migrated onto Contentful. thoughtbot was able to complete all of our P1s and P2s over the course of 6 weeks. We did not get to P3s. How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions? We had a project manager and a developer. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables? We are able to update our site without the help of developers now. Our developer stayed on through the entire day for our last day with them to work out any smaller kinks or bugs we hadn't caught earlier. Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness. They used Basecamp for project management, Slack for communication. Daily syncs from Monday through Thursday, every Thursday would be a demo and every Monday would be planning for the week. We often switched these around based on what priorities were for the week. What did you find most impressive or unique about this company? Very responsive, developer worked with our team easily despite having no technical members of our team. They actually pulled in someone on their end to help QA since we couldn't. Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently? Generally very laid back, sometimes we could've used some more guidance, particularly on the dev side, for how something should be set up. More of a lack of skills on our end rather than theirs. --- #### Market Research & Website Prototype for Citizen Movement **The Project** - Services: Digital Strategy, Market Research, Other Design, Print Design - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: July 2022 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot has helped a citizen movement develop their environmental initiative’s value proposition. They’ve built a website prototype and brought in 5–10 expert testers to provide feedback, among other tasks. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Founder, Warriors for Humanity - Industry: Education - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Sep 26, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: Thanks to thoughtbot’s work, the client has gotten invaluable feedback on their concept, and several investors are interested in it. The team excels at project management; they’re flexible, responsive, and collaborative via Miro. Their proactivity and genuine care for the project stand out. "“I can’t speak highly enough about them; they’ve made us feel valued.”" **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the founder of Warriors for Humanity, a global citizen movement that provides a platform for people to make a difference and leave a legacy. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We wanted help with a concept that promotes writing handwritten letters and honoring the legacy of people like teachers, community members, and coaches while they’re alive. The movement encourages people to write to these figures and acknowledge their legacies and the impact they’ve had, and then plant a tree to honor that legacy.  The goal of this idea is to have a personal and environmental impact. Moreover, we thought we could create this initiative on every continent. After identifying the challenge, we wanted to narrow down the idea and go to market. We hired thoughtbot to help us create marketing ideas and concepts. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? thoughtbot has created product design sprints to help us uncover our value proposition. They’ve conducted customer research to gather information and test our ideas. The team has also created a clickable prototype of our website to see what the product will look like. They’ve helped us create materials and talking points to help us navigate future stakeholder and investor conversations.  First, we spent 4–5 days scoping out the idea and brainstorming. On the first day, we met to start defining the concept and narrowing down our messaging. We then had two days of workshops where we refined the messaging and defined what the concept would look like in terms of marketing. Then, we collaborated to develop user flows for our website. From there, they helped us design comprehensive product market research and surveyed potential customers using SurveyMonkey.  After that, thoughtbot went through the product design phase, where they created the clickable website prototype from a number of angles. When that was finished, they invited 5–10 market researchers to test the prototype and give us feedback. Based on the testers’ feedback, the team is helping us tweak the user flow. Additionally, they’re developing a slide deck for us to present to investors.  What is the team composition? We work with a product strategist and two designers.  How did you come to work with thoughtbot? A few people recommended them and put me in touch with them, and I knew one of their teammates going in.  How much have you invested with them? We’ve spent around $25,000–$30,000.  What is the status of this engagement? We started working together in July 2022, and our engagement is ongoing. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?  The impact of this engagement has been massive because we now have a much deeper understanding of my customers. Moreover, the prototype has allowed us to get feedback on our initiative early on and understand where to start in order to make the most impact. thoughtbot provided influential senior testers with the right background that we couldn’t have gotten without them. These testers were really honest and provided useful feedback.  As a result of our work with thoughtbot, we have several investors interested in working with us. We’re also more confident in our business plan and have a far more compelling story to tell based on the design sprint findings. The team has helped us find nuggets of information and a strategy that I couldn’t have come up with on my own. Overall, I’m happy with where we are and excited about the future. I’m confident we’ll get the investment we need to get off the ground.  The team works independently, which is wonderful. Additionally, their flexibility is really impressive, and it has allowed us to walk through the stages in a way that adapts to our time availability.  How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? I give their project management a top rating. They use Miro for brainstorming, planning sprints, and storyboarding. Additionally, we use Google Docs, Google Meet, WhatsApp, and email, where we’re in regular contact. We also talk on the phone and have a regular conference call. They’re always available to take our calls or messages.  What did you find most impressive about them? thoughtbot really cares, loves the concept, and wants to educate us on why they do what they do. They’re very proactive, friendly, and genuine in their interest in what we’re doing. The team is very sensitive in terms of how they approach advice and direction.  Their design sprints and the uncovering of the value proposition have been amazing. The team’s research and prototyping work are also really strong; thanks to them, our story for our investors is far better. I also appreciate the way they’ve walked us through the storyboarding. Additionally, thoughtbot’s customer relationship management is fantastic. They’re interested in me as a customer, our product, and relationship development between the individuals involved. I can’t speak highly enough about them; they’ve made us feel valued.  Are there any areas they could improve? No, everything has been top-class.  Do you have any advice for potential customers? Regardless of what stage your idea is at, the thoughtbot team can help you. They care and will work to educate you on why they do things the way they do. To work with them, you must have the time and buy into the process. Trusting them will save you time and money; by the end, you’ll have a clear, concise, and compelling story.  This is an exciting process to go through because you’ll work together to create something. Plus, it takes you out of the weeds, and you get a helicopter view of where you stand. You’ll also get an expert opinion that yields amazing feedback and suggestions. In all, the nuggets of gold you’ll get from them will be invaluable. --- #### Frontend Design & Dev for Business Acquisition Marketplace **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: June 2022 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot provides development services for a business acquisitions marketplace. The team develops the frontend of the client's product using React while integrating third-party tools and implementing designs. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 4.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Co-Founder, Baton Market - Industry: Business services - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Aug 26, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: The company is ready to launch the product, and they've been receiving positive user feedback ahead of the launch. thoughtbot has managed the engagement well, communicating closely with the client using tools like Jira, Notion, and GitHub. Their resources are self-sufficient and work well together. ""The engineering team has great attention to detail and is product-minded, often thinking about complex edge cases."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. I'm one of the cofounders of Baton, a two-sided marketplace for small business acquisitions, helping small business owners understand the value of their business and work towards a lucrative sale. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot, and what were your goals? We're a seed stage startup and needed to build our Minimum Lovable Product for a beta launch in September. Our Head of Engineering has a backend/data focus so we were looking to augment the team with Front End resources to support us until we're able to make full-time hires. We brought on the Thoughtbot team to build the front end of our small business owner onboarding flow from scratch. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors? I had worked with a Thoughtbot engineer previously at Kickstarter and had a great experience, so I thought of Thoughtbot for this project for a few reasons. I knew we wanted to bring on senior engineers who could make architecture decisions and set us up for long-term success, as well as bring a high attention to detail and ability to work with a high degree of uncertainty in an agile fashion given how early we are. It was important to us that the team was embedded with us day-to-day and could participate in sprint ceremonies so they'd have proper context and collaborate with the rest of the team. Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used. We kicked off the project in late June, and at that point, we essentially had user flow wireframes. From there the Thoughtbot team scaffolded the front-end application, setting up the React codebase and integrating Storybook and other tooling. We built out backend support in parallel to the front end work, building react components along the way, integrating with several 3rd party tools, implementing behavioral tracking, and then finishing with implementing our new design system. How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions? We worked with two senior front-end engineers as well as an account manager. The communication was great and we really enjoyed our collaboration from start to finish. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables? We're about to launch these new features but the impact of this work is extremely high for us as it is the first custom feature work we're putting out into the world with our new branding. Our north star goal is focused on owner acquisition, so this onboarding flow is critical to us hitting our goals for the year. We've been getting excellent user feedback ahead of the launch, and once we've released, this will empower the growth team to scale up top of funnel efforts. Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness. We had daily standups in the morning, as well as weekly grooming/planning sessions, bi-weekly retrospectives, and weekly design reviews. We used slack for daily communications, JIRA for project management, Notion for documentation, and Github for version management. The engineers were very self-sufficient and often filed and groomed their own tickets, which was a huge help. We had a fun time working together! What did you find most impressive or unique about this company? The engineering team has great attention to detail and is product-minded, often thinking about complex edge cases and communicating often about their needs and blockers. I've worked with a lot of agencies and this level of communication and attention to detail are rare to find. Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently? When we got started, we only booked one engineer and got feedback a few weeks in that we really needed to add a second resource to get the scope implemented in time. We had a limited budget and they worked with us which was much appreciated given we're a pre-seed company and need to be cautious with resources. --- #### IT Services & Development for Nonprofit Organization **The Project** - Services: Cloud Consulting & SI, Custom Software Development, IT Strategy Consulting - Project size: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 - Project length: Feb. 2021 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot has helped a nonprofit scale and maintain a software solution devoted to public health. They’ve migrated the product from Heroku to AWS and worked on the system architecture and code features. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Chief Customer Officer, Multi-State Partnership for Prevention - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jun 28, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: Internal stakeholders are exceedingly satisfied with thoughtbot’s work. The system works seamlessly, and it has allowed the client to stay in the business. The team leads the project management and communication, and they stand out for their expertise, ethical mindset, and collaborative spirit. "“They function like us, celebrate our wins, and help us with downtime. We feel like extremely close partners.”" **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the chief customer officer for the Multi-State Partnership for Prevention. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We brought them on to help us scale and maintain a SaaS software devoted to public health. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? thoughtbot has helped us with the conversion from Heroku to AWS, so they’ve helped us a lot with our system architecture and the code behind the features. Since our company is entirely virtual, they’re fully virtual members of our team. Moreover, they help us build out the skills in our team. While they work to improve the performance and features of our system, they also mentor and upskill our team members. We’ve never intended to have them forever, so they teach our team how to do this. What is the team composition? The team always has between 5–7 developers. We’ve worked with Chad (Founder & COO) and Joe (CTO). How did you come to work with thoughtbot? They were recommended to us.  We interviewed them as potential technical partners. We decided to engage them based on the interview and the references we got. How much have you invested with them? We’ve invested over $1 million with them. What is the status of this engagement? We started working together in February 2021, and our relationship is ongoing. We now have only a few specialized people, but we still have a great partnership. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? Our system is performing perfectly. We don’t have metrics, but we’re 100% sure that we wouldn’t be in the business anymore if it weren’t for thoughtbot. They came in and identified how to scale the system and maintain it. Moreover, they did a complex migration without downtime for our customers. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They’re great. They’ve set the standards for our technical and project communication. We were having trouble scaling up to our business demands; thoughtbot helped us structure the foundation for project management and communication that we still use today. We use Jira to manage and track the tickets and development. Also, we primarily use Slack and Zoom to communicate. What did you find most impressive about them? From day one, they’ve helped us as team members, not outside consultants. They function like us, celebrate our wins, and help us with downtime. We feel like extremely close partners. Additionally, the team has the expertise we need, but they’re also conscientious and ethical. If they make a mistake, they lead by example and are accountable for it. The people in our organization have seen that and understood that this is how partners treat each other. They’ve helped us develop our engineering culture. Are there any areas they could improve? I can’t think of anything. Bringing them in is one of the best decisions we’ve ever made. We’re still working with them, so I don’t have anything to complain about. Do you have any advice for potential customers? If your project meets their capabilities, I’d highly recommend them. thoughtbot is a great partner, and they’re very knowledgeable. Also, they have an excellent reputation in the engineering world. --- #### Web Design for Contract Management SaaS Company **The Project** - Services: Web Design - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: February 2022 **Project Summary**: A contract management SaaS company tasked thoughtbot with designing and developing a prototype representative of a website's MVP. They tested the prototype across five users from targeted and related markets. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Founder & Managing Director, Contractuali UG - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Feb 28, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: Despite time limitations, thoughtbot accurately presented the client's vision for the product. The prototype was well-received by the users, and as a result, the company produced an excellent blueprint for their engineering initiatives. Overall, thoughtbot's design skills were top-notch. ""I was extremely pleased by how polished the prototype was, given the number of features it covered."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. I am the Founder and Managing Director of Contractuali UG (haftungsbeschränkt) a (future) contract management SaaS, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot? We engaged thoughtbot to design and develop a prototype representative of the Contractuali MVP to test with users and give investors a more concrete illustration of what capabilities the product will provide. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor? We requested proposals from two vendors that have capabilities in the tech stack in which we plan to build the service. We were impressed by thoughtbot's level of interaction and feedback during the proposal process as well as the proposed structure of the design sprint. Thoughtbot also took our previous designs and planning into account, allowing us to significantly reduce the cost of the engagement. Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project. The design sprint took place over the course of a week and was broken down to quickly and efficiently move from ideation, sketches, and storyboards to an interactive prototype. The produced prototype was then tested across five users from our target and related markets. The testers provided feedback on the UX/UI as well as the usefulness of the product within their respective markets. How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions? The design sprint was very collaborative. We worked directly with two thoughtbot UX/UI designers. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success? Given the duration of the sprint was only one week, we are extremely pleased with the delivered prototype and feel it accurately represents the vision we have for the product. This was reflected by the positive feedback we received from users. Overall, we now have a great blueprint to guide our engineering push! How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs? Communication with the UX/UI designers was frequent and timely. In fact, for most of the sprint, we were collaborating directly with each other on video calls as we worked through the prototyping process. The sprint wrapped up nicely with a post-mortem meeting in which the findings of the test sessions were shared and recommended next steps were outlined. A member of the thoughtbot engineering team was also on this call to get a leg up on any technical challenges that the prototype presents. What did you find most impressive or unique about this company? The UX/UI work was really top notch. I was extremely pleased by how polished the prototype was, given the number of features it covered. Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently? Not this time. This was a fairly short engagement with almost constant face-to-face interaction. As such it was not prone to some of the pitfalls surrounding communication, deadlines, etc. of longer engagements. --- #### Web-Based SaaS Platform Dev for Law Learning Platform **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: Apr. 2015 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: An law learning platform hired thoughtbot to develop and design their web-based SaaS platform.The team integrated an administrator dashboard, CMS, and user progress-tracking functions into the site. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Co-Founder, Hotshot - Industry: Education - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jan 26, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: Over the course of the engagement, thoughtbot has built and evolved a stable and widely favored SaaS platform. Though the team is more flexible with their agile processes, they continue to maintain solid project control and deliver high-quality development work. ""Though they follow an agile methodology, they’re not dogmatic about it; their processes are well-balanced."" **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m one of the two co-founders of Hotshot. We make videos and other learning materials to help lawyers learn and help organizations — whether it’s a law firm or a law school — provide training programs. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We have a SaaS-like product, since people have to log into our website to be able to watch our videos. In this regard, the web experience is fundamental to our business, so we worked with thoughtbot on the development of our website. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? Our initial engagement with thoughtbot involved the development of a website from scratch. Their team built it such that we, as administrators, could upload videos, manage users, and manage customer permissions through a CMS and an administrative interface. They also developed it in a way that could allow users to track their own progress. Over the course of our partnership, we also worked with thoughtbot on several other projects, mostly involving the addition of features to our SaaS platform. We asked them to give it a scalable, modern, and high-end design since we have a prestigious customer base. The quality, professionalism, and simplicity of the interface were as important to us as the site’s overall reliability. What is the team composition? We usually work with 1–2 people at a time. Over the years, we’ve interacted with a total of 7–8 people from thoughtbot.  How did you come to work with thoughtbot? I was looking for high-end web development agencies on Quora and spoke to about 3–4 different providers. Of them all, thoughtbot seemed to be the best people to work with. We really liked the way they operated and ran their engagements. How much have you invested with them? We’ve invested between $500,000–$1 million.  What is the status of this engagement? I first found thoughtbot in Q2 2015, and we are still engaged with the team. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? The thoughtbot team has developed a very stable platform that experiences very little downtime, if any at all. It’s also highly flexible seeing as we’ve been able to add several features to it with no issue. Though we don’t have the numbers for it, the user feedback we’ve received has been almost universally positive. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They’re very good in terms of project management. We use Zoom and Google Meet, but Trello and Slack are our main, day-to-day communication tools.  What did you find most impressive about them? They’ve got really high-quality developers and designers. Though they follow an agile methodology, they’re not dogmatic about it; their processes are well-balanced.  Are there any areas they could improve? No, there’s nothing for them to improve upon. We’ve been very happy with their services. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Different web development agencies have different approaches and price ranges, so you have to make sure that the provider you hire is a good fit for your organization.  --- #### Business Consulting for Software Company **The Project** - Services: Business Consulting - Project size: Less than $10,000 - Project length: Oct. - Nov. 2021 **Project Summary**: A software company hired thoughtbot to provide business consulting. They helped the client understand the capabilities in the market of the software tool they wanted to develop. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Executive, Distribute - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jan 3, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: The client was delighted with thoughtbot's work, which exceeded their expectations. Their on-point schedules and budget management were key to the team's satisfaction. The team also praised their thorough approach to explaining each part of the process to ensure the project's success. ""I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — they did great."" **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m an executive at a software company; we’re developing a staff product tool. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We needed expert consulting for our business. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? thoughtbot did business consulting for us. They had a well-thought-out process which started with a two-week sprint of product research to find out whether we should build this product or not. We used online whiteboard tools to do whiteboard sessions where we created hypotheses and storyboarding for the platform that helped us understand if what we wanted to build was something that the market needed.  What is the team composition? We worked with four people from their team, including Kelly (Associate Director) and Jimmy (Developer). How did you come to work with thoughtbot? They were referred to us by a friend who worked with them in the past. How much have you invested with them? We spent around $10,000 with them. What is the status of this engagement? We worked together from October–November 2021. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? I give them five stars out of five; I’m delighted with their work, and they exceeded my expectations. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They were on point; they stuck to the schedules and budget and kept me in the process loop. In terms of communication tools, we used Zoom, Slack, email, and Miro. What did you find most impressive about them?  They were thorough and helped us understand if we were on the right track or not, which is good. They also took pride in ensuring that we didn’t build something we didn’t want, so they went through all the necessary steps to ensure that we weren’t wasting money on something useless that couldn’t help us increase revenue. Overall, everything was amazing. Are there any areas they could improve? I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on — they did great.  Any advice for potential customers? Keep an open mind because they will help you think through many things. They’re experts on their work, so they understand how to build and test products and validate hypotheses. Being open will increase your chances of success with the product you’re making with them. --- #### Frontend Development for Fitness Wearables Company **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: Feb. - Apr. 2021 **Project Summary**: Working with a fitness wearables company, thoughtbot migrated an e-commerce site to a custom React frontend platform. The new platform uses the Gatsby framework and was designed collaboratively page-by-page. **Review Rating**: 4.5 - Quality: 4.5 - Schedule: 4.0 - Cost: 4.0 - Willing to Refer: 4.5 **The Reviewer** Senior Product Manager, Fitness Wearables Company - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 201-500 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jul 8, 2021 **Feedback Summary**: A/B testing conducted at the end of the engagement showed improvements in revenue per session, page load times, and development errors. Remaining flexible early on, thoughtbot helped their partner naturally settle into project processes that worked for all parties involved. ""They’re very knowledgeable and personable." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the product manager of accessory sales at a fitness wearables company. I own the e-commerce experience for the customizable add-ons to our main product line. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? Prior to working with them, we relied on Shopify for the front- and backend of our e-commerce site. Shopify’s frontend was prohibiting us from completing another project of ours, so we brought them in to migrate our site from the Shopify Liquid templates to a custom React frontend platform. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? The new platform uses the Gatsby framework. It is designed to allow consumers to look at our product collection, filter and search within that collection, log into the site with membership credentials, and ultimately purchase a product. We spent the first several weeks of the project determining what processes and infrastructure to use. From there, we collaborated to rebuild the website page-by-page. We provided them with a PowerPoint presentation that gave an overview of our site and product suite. What is the team composition? We worked with two software engineers, one of whom was brought on as a subcontractor by them. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? I didn’t start with the company until about two weeks before the project started, so I don’t have much direct insight into the selection process. However, my understanding is that they were selected due to their demonstrated expertise, low price point, and trustworthiness. How much have you invested with them? We spent $167,000 with them. What is the status of this engagement? We worked together from February–April 2021. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? When we were launching the new website, we conducted some A/B testing between the old and new sites. The new site had a 2.5% increase in revenue per session, a 40% decrease in page load time, and a huge decrease in development errors. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They were great. Since we were all new to each other coming into the project, they were flexible with figuring out the processes that worked best for all of us. We used Confluence for documentation and communicated via Jira, Slack, and Zoom. What did you find most impressive about them? They’re very knowledgeable and personable. Josh (Managing Director) checked in regularly to make sure all our needs were met. In the end, the project was a great success. We ended on time and on budget. Are there any areas they could improve? We had a hard deadline for this project, so we wanted to start working on development as soon as we brought them in. However, there were some staffing issues on their end that caused delays. We both could have communicated about these better. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Be flexible with the processes you use. We figured everything out as we went, which helped the project go well. Trying to synchronize between internal and external processes can be a major challenge, so keeping everything loose was a major plus. --- #### Mobile App Development for E-Learning Company **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: Oct. 2020 - Apr. 2021 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot developed the frontend of two iOS and Android applications for an e-learning company. The first app allows therapists to prescribe exercises. The second allows patients to access them. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Senior Product Manager, Relias - Industry: Education - Client size: 501-1,000 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — May 7, 2021 **Feedback Summary**: Although the app is not fully functional yet, thoughtbot's work has received very positive feedback from therapists and end-target patients. thoughtbot integrated to the client's team in an exceptional way. They identified the client's goals and let the end-users led the direction of the project. ""thoughtbot was extremely attentive, flexible, and they addressed everything immediately." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the senior product manager of the therapy product at Relias. We develop online healthcare education content. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We assessed all of the changes that were happening within the healthcare system and realized that there were some gaps in our offering. We were providing education to healthcare providers, specifically physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists. However, in order for therapists to get the best outcomes, they needed tools to help them engage with their patients. We wanted to develop two mobile applications with thoughtbot. One would be for therapists to use to prescribe exercises. The second one would be for patients to receive those exercises. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? First, we defined the problem that we were trying to solve. thoughtbot was very flexible and designed a mini-sprint with us. We had already done a ton of formative work for them to accelerate the process. Instead of going through a full five-day sprint, we only went through a one-day sprint. After that, we validated the problem through rapid prototyping and user interviews. We finalized the designs, validated them, and built the iOS and Android apps. thoughtbot did the frontend of the app, and our in-house team built the backend. What is the team composition? The team composition changed quite a bit for a whole variety of reasons. In total, we worked with five people from thoughtbot. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? My company put out a request for application (RFA) with a highly competitive bid. We liked that thoughtbot definitely had the level of expertise that we were looking for. They were very clear and well versed in how to run design sprints, design thinking, and rapid iterative prototyping, which are things that our company was embracing. That was the deciding factor. They had a process and system in place that we wanted to adopt. We were really interested in working with them and seeing how they use those tools. What is the status of this engagement? We formally worked with them from October 2020–April 2021. The initial phase of the project is done, and we’re on hold for a little bit. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? We internally had some challenges, so our app is not fully functional at this point in time. However, the frontend of the app, which thoughtbot developed, is done. We’ve experienced a couple of minor bugs, but they were immediately fixed. Despite the app not being a product ready for people to buy, we’ve been validating it in the market as a fully functional frontend. We’ve gotten really positive feedback from the therapists working in this space and our end-target patients, which are older adults. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? We set up a superefficient communication system. We had a standup meeting with thoughtbot once a week. thoughtbot was extremely attentive, flexible, and they addressed everything immediately. They integrated into our team exceptionally well and were easy to work with. What did you find most impressive about them? thoughtbot didn’t bring any preconceptions or misconceptions to the table. They were really good at listening and understanding the project. We worked together to identify the problems. After that, they let our end-users dictate the direction of the project, which was really powerful. Sometimes, there’s a tendency to put in features to make things look super snazzy. However, they understood that we needed a clean and simple design because that’s what our end-users wanted. They were excellent about sticking to that and didn’t misdirect us at any point. Any advice for potential customers? The processes that we put in place together and the way they attended to our daily engineering standards helped significantly. --- #### UX/UI Design for Tech Startup **The Project** - Services: UX/UI Design - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: Nov. - Dec. 2020 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot redesigned a software platform that matches clients with a mental health therapist. They created a new UX/UI and facilitated user testing, identifying assumptions to be tested. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Founder, Health Match 360 - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Dec 29, 2020 **Feedback Summary**: Handing over a prototype of the new platform and user testing results, thoughtbot provided value on numerous levels. Their personable resources forged a comfortable and productive atmosphere ideal for knowledge-sharing. Their communication was thorough and they were committed to the project. ""We all meshed; it felt like we were on the same team." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. My company is Health Match 360. We’re a tech-startup that’s building a therapist-matching platform to help clients get matched with mental health therapists. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? Our biggest challenge was to redesign the beta version of our platform. We needed to spruce up the UX and UI. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? We worked through a one-week design sprint, and the first two days were spent coming up with essential ways to solve the problem. They walked us through each step of the process and identified the assumptions we wanted to test during the eventual user testing stage. On days three and four, we worked with the designers and developers to build out the prototype. Day five was user testing. In the end, they gave us a PowerPoint and a number of spreadsheets that outlined all the information they gathered. One of the capabilities we wanted to build was a way for clients to schedule a free consultation with a therapist. That got really good feedback, so we’re going to build it out how they designed it. What is the team composition? We worked closely with three people, including a marketing director and two of their full-stack developers. There was also a designer, who facilitated the first two days. There were five total people. The last resource was a senior client success manager. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? One of my mentors told me about a program thoughtbot was launching: a one-week pro-bono design sprint for start-ups. They were looking for start-ups founded by traditionally under-represented founders, as well as those who faced tight deadlines. How much have you invested with them? It was funded under a pro-bono grant, but the estimated value was $20,000. What is the status of this engagement? We worked together for one week, spanning the end of November to the beginning of December 2020. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? I didn’t have a really clear idea about what to expect, but I wanted to have a new design for each page of the platform, and possibly some rebranding and user testing, by the end of the project. We got much more than that by the end of the project. The prototype they delivered was beautiful, they did rebranding that I loved, and the user testing was more than I expected. They also did a nice job of educating us throughout the process so we could do our own user testing in the future. I have a much clearer idea of how to do that on our own just thanks to watching how they do it. It was pretty awesome. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? Before we started, most of our communication was by email, and then we had a Zoom intro meeting right before we started. During the design sprint, it was all done on Zoom. They used a couple of other tools, including a digital whiteboard, as well as Figma. What did you find most impressive about them? Their vibe stood out to me. I know it’s cheesy, but they were all so pleasant, warm, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable. We all meshed; it felt like we were on the same team. Are there any areas they could improve? It was my first-ever design sprint so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but they blew me out of the water. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Work with them sooner rather than later. They helped us test our assumptions, and that’s something I wouldn’t have gotten to until later down the road after sacrificing time and money building out things that wouldn’t be useful. They’re invaluable. --- #### Web Design & Dev for Health Care Startup **The Project** - Services: Custom Software Development, Other Design, UX/UI Design - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: Oct. 2019 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot designed and developed a product for a health care startup. They also built a website to support the product. The team implemented an API to enable the service flow. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** CEO & Founder, Health Care Startup - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jun 24, 2020 **Feedback Summary**: By efficiently scaling resources, thoughtbot produced accurate and timely deliverables cost-effectively. The team provided insightful suggestions that not only led to product improvements but also ensured a collaborative partnership. Their dedication and responsiveness enable ongoing engagement. ""thoughtbot’s committed to their client’s success." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the CEO and founder of a health care startup. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughbot? We needed to build out one of our products for our website. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? thoughtbot built our website and the product, which essentially creates a flow. To get the end product, users have to go through a couple of steps. Based on the information a user provides, our platform creates a product, which calls an API. If a user accepts the product, we take them through a checkout flow that creates a bind. What is the team composition? We worked with an account manager, a designer, and a few engineers. The number of teammates varied between 1–4 depending on the amount of work. One of thoughtbot’s best qualities was their ability to scale. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? I originally found them through a piece of press about the best engineering firms that work with startups. I then went to their website and read a couple of customer testimonials. I actually recognized a company on that list and then reached out to their CEO. He spoke so highly of thoughtbot's team. We provided them with a scope of work, which their team reviewed. We ultimately agreed upon the scope and moved forward with the project. How much have you invested with them? We’ve spent between $200,000–$999,999 on the project so far. What is the status of this engagement? We started working together in October 2019, and our relationship’s ongoing. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?  They were able to add more resources when we needed them. thoughtbot also reassigned those resources to other projects so that I didn’t have to sustain the maximum capacity of engineers when it wasn't needed.  Their team was able to scale the team to accommodate our launch deadline. There were also times when we needed basic tasks done, and they scaled down the team. It was a cost-efficient way for us to accommodate the surges of work that happen when you’re a startup. They have great attention to detail, which was important to our product. They’re also strategic thinkers. If they have a question about a design decision, they won’t accept and implement it. Their team questions us, so it feels like a thought partnership. The best engineers are the ones who question the design and through that line of questioning, they ultimately make the product better. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? We have retro at the end of the week with our account manager when we freely talk about projects. We sort out anything that needs to be sorted out. Separately, if there are any issues, I feel comfortable reaching out to my account manager. They’re always addressed. Their team’s communicative. Historically, we’ve also co-located with their engineering team. That was an advantage, especially around critical launch deadlines. We were able to closely work with them, which kept the timeline sharp. Obviously, that’s not possible because of the coronavirus. What did you find most impressive about them? thoughtbot’s committed to their client’s success. The best possible contractors are the ones that believe in your goals and work alongside you. The team from thoughtbot's in this project with us. As a startup, we need as many of those people as possible.  Are there any areas they could improve? No, we’ve had a successful partnership. I really appreciate thoughtbot and feel fortunate to have chosen them to work with us. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Get them involved early. They provide a thought partnership, which is unique. The earlier you get them involved the better outcome will be. You don’t want to design a product in a vacuum and show up with a finished package because their team can help you achieve even more success. --- #### Android Driver App Dev for Transportation & Mobility Firm **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: Oct. 2019 - Mar. 2020 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot developed an Android application to serve as a partner app for the existing iOS driver application of a mobility solutions provider. They used existing client processes and infrastructure languages. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Director of Engineering, TransLoc - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Mar 26, 2020 **Feedback Summary**: The application provided by thoughtbot received very positive feedback during beta testing stages and has generated excitement about its eventual reception in the market. They worked hard to align their values and processes with the client and communicated closely at all times throughout the work. "“The fact that they functioned like an extension of our team made the process as easy to manage as possible.” " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the director of engineering at TransLoc, a smart mobility company offering transport and mobility solutions to help folks get where they need to go. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? Our in-house mobile app development team has too many work initiatives right now, and we had determined a need for an android driver application that we didn’t have the capacity to develop currently. We reached out to their team to help us in building that. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? They provided engineering and development resources to build out our Android driver app. Their team worked closely with our in-house folks to make sure that it was built similarly to our other apps so that we would be able to take over from them when it was complete. We already had an iOS driver app in place, so they worked on building out the app infrastructure in a similar way so that our engineers would be able to come in and recognize what they had built. What is the team composition? Our team interfaced directly with two of their engineers for the project. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? In looking for a development partner, we evaluated several different companies. We decided that thoughtbot’s philosophy and engagement process for their partners aligned most closely with the way that we worked, so we decided to go forward with them. How much have you invested with them? The total cost of the project was about $250,000. What is the status of this engagement? From our initial kickoff to the final wrap up, we worked together between October 2019–March 2020. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? Towards the end of the development process, we put the app out into beta testing with a couple of our customers and received some really great feedback. That process gave us a lot of confidence that there was an existing market need for the app, so we’re excited about the success of the app that we anticipate going forward. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? I think they did a great job of maintaining complete consistency with the way that our team operates, which made partnering with them incredibly easy. They communicated primarily over Slack, email, and phone calls, but they also used our team’s JIRA instance whenever we made a request around changing procedures or workflows, and they were always very receptive to those. Ultimately, those efforts enabled us to become familiar with the application really quickly and to be able to jump in and provide what they needed to be able to continue their work on their project smoothly throughout any issues that came up during development. What did you find most impressive about them? What stood out to me the most from their process was the ability to adjust to our workflow and align their core values to align with our own. They produced really high-quality code, asked great questions, and identified issues that ended up benefiting our iOS apps as well, but ultimately, the fact that they functioned like an extension of our team that made the process as easy to manage as possible. Are there any areas they could improve? There were some initial concerns about whether we would need a project manager from their side, but it turned out we were able to manage the collaboration perfectly well without one. That really was the only potential issue that we came across. Do you have any advice for potential customers? If you’re looking for a high-quality application built using a similar method to what your existing team does, they are definitely the right partner for you. --- #### Hybrid Mobile App Dev for Ratings & Reviews Platform **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development, UX/UI Design - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: June - Nov. 2019 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot augmented the staff of a women’s ratings and reviews platform to help build a corresponding mobile app to their online platform. The app is iOS/Android accessible was built in React Native. **Review Rating**: 4.5 - Quality: 4.0 - Schedule: 3.5 - Cost: 4.0 - Willing to Refer: 4.0 **The Reviewer** CTO, Ratings & Reviews Platform - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Feb 5, 2020 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot’s efforts met expectations. The app is now in beta-testing and is well-received by users. The team learns quickly and efficiently adds to the teams they join. Customers can expect a hardworking team that gets the job done. "“The end result is something that we are all happy with.” " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I am the CTO of a ratings and reviews platform for women to rate the places they work. We collect ratings from working women about companies and then we make job and company matches based on that data. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We wanted to create an application that would be complementary to our online platform. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? We came with a pretty fleshed out idea as well as early mocks of what we thought the app would be. We went through a design sprint, but essentially it was more of a getting everyone on the same page sprint. It was a week-long group of meetings where we met and came up with different ideas. I created more mocks based on what was talked about in the design sprint, and I created wireframes for user testing, but they essentially facilitated the conversation. Our online platform is pretty big and the mobile application is a companion to our regular product. We went with React Native and built it to work on Android and iOS. For the most part, we made use of their frontend developers on a day to day basis. The main features that we ended building into the first pass of the app are a customized home feed where users are delivered what we call, a “daily drop” of content such as articles, polls, questions, links to other things and every day the user gets a new one in their home feed. We also have a job matching section that utilizes the company’s existing functionality to match women to jobs but it delivers them in a more of a daily batch of 10 jobs at a time. We also built the ability to respond to those jobs in sort of a “Tinder-like” way; not actually swiping, but the concept is swiping up on a job. We also built a community section, which is kind of based on existing functionality but with some changes where people can post questions to the community, get answers, and get notifications about answers to their questions. Finally, we built a profile management system where people can update a résumé in the app. What is the team composition? We worked mainly with one developer who they embedded in the office with us. He came into our office half the week to work here with us. Nearer the latter part of the project, we added a second frontend developer who worked on the mobile app for us. A third ran the meetings but wasn’t really plugged in on the day-to-day. There was a fourth person who ran the design sprint at the very beginning but then was hands-off for the rest of the time. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? Their company has an office in the same co-working space we use. We met one person from just around the office and when we decided that we wanted to build an app with a third party, we contacted her. How much have you invested in them? We’ve spent approximately $25,000–$50,000. What is the status of this engagement? We worked together from June – November 2019. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? We have hundreds of beta users currently using the app. It is a pretty small number, but we are trickling it out. We are seeing increased engagement numbers for the users that are using the app. Engagement is up as far as the number of times they engage with it in a month compared to what we had before. Our team of developers are mostly backend developers, but they left it in a good state and they worked with us in a way that we have been able to continue working on the app and we have added quite a lot of functionality ourselves. They gave us quite a good foundation for doing that and a good understanding of how we can continue working. We worked really closely with them the entire time. The end result is something that we are all happy with. We have continued to meet up with the developer that worked with us in-house. We go to lunch with him every once in a while, and it is still a friendly relationship. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? There wasn’t much project management on their end, since we ran most of the project ourselves. What did you find most impressive about them? The second developer they added was able to plug in very quickly and hit the ground running even though he was remote. He was a very good addition to the team. Are there any areas they could improve? There were occasions where we expected them to give more expert advice throughout the project. It didn’t feel like they were pushing on some of those decisions as much as we maybe thought they would. I say that with a caveat, as we had some issues at the beginning of the project that potentially scared them and made them hesitant to push on decisions. Acting more as experts, would have been a real help to us on a lot of things since we didn’t know what we were doing. Do you have any advice for potential customers? If you can host the developer in-house, do it. If you feel hesitant to do the design sprint because you feel like you already know what your product is and you don’t need to do it, do it anyway because it can be helpful. --- #### Web Dev & Design for Consumer Energy Service **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: Jan. 2018 - Dec. 2019 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot designed and developed a custom website from scratch. The unique energy shopping platform was written Python and built on a Django framework. Recently, they updated the design and backend. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 4.5 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 4.5 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Founder & President, Real Simple Energy - Industry: Arts, entertainment & music - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jan 24, 2020 **Feedback Summary**: The website meets project requirements and has helped the business become successful. thoughtbot delivered a reliable and high-quality product at a reasonable price. Their team used Trello to maintain transparency and communication. Their advice helped determine which features were most important. "“They did an excellent job managing our budget while creating a solid MVP.” " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the president and founder of Real Simple Energy. We’re a startup energy shopping agent. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We initially hired them to build our website, which had very specific needs, so we couldn’t do it ourselves. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? For our first project, they built our website from scratch. We’ve had three different engagements with them, though. Our subsequent projects have been big design and backend improvements for the original website they built. The site is written entirely in Python with a Django framework. They created a completely customized retail energy search engine for home electricity purchasers. What is the team composition? We’ve worked with a backend developer, a frontend designer, and a frontend engineer. We have one point of contact, but also speak a lot with Dawn (Designer & Managing Director, thoughtbot). How did you come to work with thoughtbot? We were referred to them by two completely different contacts. Neither one of those contacts knew that the other had recommended them, which just reinforced the recommendation. How much have you invested with them? We’ve spent between $80,00–$100,000. What is the status of this engagement? The first project lasted from January–April 2018, but our most recent build-out lasted from October–December 2019. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?  It’s hard to measure the impact with metrics because we started from scratch. They took our vision and turned it into a reality. They created a totally bespoke website—nothing else is like it, so that has enabled our business to thrive. We’re very pleased with how it worked out. Since the project ended, I’ve considered what we paid them, our engagement, and what the competition could have done for us, and I don’t think the project could have gone better. We have a really solid and reliable product and we paid a fair price. We easily could have paid twice as much for a lower-quality site. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? Communication throughout the project was excellent. They regularly updated the Trello board so we could easily see what was going on. They were very responsive and answered all questions we had about the process. We used InVision early on, and then Slack as well. What did you find most impressive about them? I was impressed by the developers’ confidence and ability to execute. They weren’t afraid to tell us that something could be done in a better way or if something else needed to be a priority. As someone with little development experience, that was very valuable. They did an excellent job managing our budget while creating a solid MVP. At one point, we wanted to add ten more features, but could only afford five. They were great at talking us through that and helping us narrow down the features we needed. Are there any areas they could improve? It would be really nice if we could also hire them at an hourly or daily rate. Right now, they charge by the week and they encourage us to let issues build up until they can put a developer on a project for a full period. Of course, the rates aren’t cheap and a week can add up. There also isn’t a huge difference in price between senior and junior developers. I think that the rates should be more commensurate with the seniority of the developer. --- #### Ruby on Rails Development for Healthcare Connector **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: Sep. 2016 - Mar. 2017 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot developed a Ruby on Rails web app and PostgreSQL database for a healthcare company. The new platform helps people find healthcare facilities using filters and editable vendor profiles. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** VP of Engineering, Health Care Coordination Company - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Nov 15, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot delivered a user-friendly platform that received a lot of positive feedback. Even though it has been in use for several years, the code is still solid and they continue to expand without any issues. Working with their partners in-person they delivered top-notch service. ""They asked great questions and truly understood the users and their goals.” " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the VP of engineering at a healthcare coordination company. We help hospitals place patients in post-acute care facilities to improve patient outcomes as they move through the care continuum. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We needed to rebuild our entire platform but didn’t have time to build up our own team. We hired thoughtbot to augment our existing team for both the design and development process. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? We created a search tool for discharge planners at hospitals can use to find the appropriate facility for discharged patients. It helps users collaborate with patients by incorporating their preferences and leverages Medicare information to ensure that they’re going to a high-quality facility. Facilities are able to create and edit profiles to show information like what services they provide and what insurance they accept. thoughtbot worked through one design sprint with our team before moving into the development stage. They built a web app with Ruby on Rails and integrated a PostgreSQL database. Because thoughtbot was working closely with our internal team, they used the same tech stack as our older platform. However, they didn’t think our older code was salvageable, so they built the platform from the ground up. What is the team composition? We worked with one designer and 1–2 developers. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? Our head of product worked with them before and I’ve used their Gems before. I’ve also attended Chad’s (Developer & CEO, thoughtbot) discussions. They have a great reputation within the engineering community and I’ve had great experiences with them. How much have you invested with them? This project cost between $250,000–$300,000. What is the status of this engagement? The project lasted from September 2016–March 2017. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?  All of our existing users thought the new version was a major upgrade. The interface is much friendlier and easier to use. Our team of engineers felt that they benefitted a lot from working with the thoughtbot team and were able to develop new skills. We ended up with a nice, clean, well-tested code base that we continue to extend. It has lasted for the last four years and is still going strong. Working so closely with our team, it was easy for them to stick to our vision. It’s been a really positive experience all around. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? Communication was really great, and their team was very thoughtful. They asked great questions and truly understood the users and their goals. They helped our team refine our own development provides to ensure functionality for the customer. We worked in-person and used Slack so it was very easy to collaborate with them. What did you find most impressive about them? By asking a lot of questions, they earnestly try to understand the root of the problem and come up with the most effective solution. Are there any areas they could improve? Even though their questions ultimately helped us achieve a better product, it also created challenges when we were trying to move on. When we had a clear vision of what we wanted to build, we didn’t feel the need to dive into the details and instead needed to convince them that it was better just to get everything developed. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Really engage in discussions with them. You can definitely leverage their knowledge, skills, and expertise, but it’s important to keep in mind what you want. Sometimes, you need to hold your ground when you know what you want to get out of the engagement. --- #### Web Design and Dev for Pet Platform **The Project** - Services: Custom Software Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: July - Oct. 2019 **Project Summary**: After a brief design sprint, thoughtbot redesigned and redeveloped a knowledge-sharing app using an existing codebase. Features of the product include a social feed, a profile creator, and a search tool. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 4.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Founder, Knowledge Platform for Pet Owners - Industry: Arts, entertainment & music - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Nov 5, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: The client now has a stable codebase with comprehensive supplementary documentation. thoughtbot leveraged an iterative and transparent approach to ensure that the client was up-to-speed throughout the engagement. Their professionalism, flexibility, and dedication set them apart. ""That level of professionalism was extremely refreshing and distinguishes thoughtbot from other providers." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. We’re a startup social networking company, and our product is a knowledge-sharing platform for pet owners. I’m the co-founder and CEO of the organization. Right now, we’re in sort of a pre-launch stage. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We hired thoughtbot to help us redesign and rebuild our app. We had another development company take a first cut at the app, and we just needed a bit more firepower to get it over the finish line. thoughtbot was brought on to rework what was already there, both from a development functionality perspective and a design perspective. Our project was unique to them because they were inheriting a codebase that wasn’t theirs to begin with. Diana (Managing Director, thoughtbot) told us before the engagement started that they don’t usually take on clients like us. There were a lot more unknowns compared to a project where they would be building the product from scratch. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? We started with a design sprint, which was a week-long brainstorming process to come up with a design based on extensive user testing and feedback gathering. thoughtbot set out to identify which functionalities were the most important to our users. They took a platform that felt like a traditional social networking app and redesigned it to be more focused on knowledge sharing.  We retained the social networking elements, but the goal was to build a community of pet owners who can easily share knowledge with each other. They delivered a set of features that you would expect with a social network—feed, profile creation, onboarding, search functionality—and kept those as the key pieces of functionality. Everything was built and designed for iOS. What is the team composition? We started with a team of three individuals from thoughtbot—two designers and one programmer. After the design sprint, we transitioned to having just a head designer and a lead programmer.  How did you come to work with thoughtbot? We wanted to work with a company that had an office close to us. Since we’re a Connecticut-based organization, we started looking for New York City-based development firms. We were referred to thoughtbot by a friend of my business partner, who had interviewed with them and thought that they were an exceptionally strong development company. After interviewing a handful of other development companies, we felt that thoughtbot was the best fit for us, from many different perspectives. One is that they were incredibly professional and well-organized, both in terms of their organizational structure and their ability to produce materials quickly. We felt comfort in the fact that they had a well-thought-out process in place. I care greatly about efficiency and structure, and that was important for my business partner as well. I also appreciated how their thought process was clear and how they were able to articulate their plans well. That gave us confidence in their abilities from the outset. How much have you invested with them? We spent close to $150,000. What is the status of this engagement? We started working with thoughtbot in early July 2019 and finished with them in October 2019. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?  We’ve only worked with a couple of other development firms, but, from our perspective, the thing that worked well for this engagement was how dedicated they were. We had both a designer and a developer from thoughtbot that were singularly focused on our project. This brought a level of focus that was critical to making our time with them successful. The designer and developer were also both incredibly talented and diligent in their workflow.  For example, our developer was excellent at documenting every single change that was made. As a result, we now have a codebase that any other developer could step in and quickly understand because it’s so well documented and organized. That level of professionalism was extremely refreshing and distinguishes thoughtbot from other providers. The other element of the engagement that helped a lot was the level of collaboration between the designer and developer. There was a constant flow of communication, and every time the designer worked on a deliverable, they confirmed the feasibility with the developer. If there was ever a moment when the design was a bit off, they could make adjustments very quickly. It was amazing how in-sync they were. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? We had an exceptional working relationship with them. thoughtbot follows an iterative design and development process, meaning that they didn’t lay out a schedule for the whole engagement at the very beginning. It’s a week-by-week process.      We used different tools, like Slack and Trello, to stay in constant communication. We were tracking progress with them all day, every day. Because we were always on the same page, we were able to test out features that they had developed in real-time. Having a small team also helped with this. There was a tight feedback loop that we maintained throughout the engagement. Every morning, we’d have a standup meeting to plan out the day, and, at the end of the week, we’d have what they called a “retro” meeting. This was typically 45 minutes of discussing the successes and challenges of the week with some planning to improve the following week. Those meetings always brought the week together in a thoughtful, organized way, and we always felt prepared going into the next week as a result. What did you find most impressive about them? The standups and retro meetings were helpful because they provided an open forum for us to look critically at our performance. They also gave us the chance to make adjustments as needed, relative to our timeline and budget. Whenever we were falling short in an area, we were able to make the best decision to get us back on track. Working with thoughtbot was, overall, a wonderful experience. I can’t say enough great things about the entire team, their process, their workflow, and the quality of the code. They have an excellent team of developers working there. Are there any areas they could improve? There were a lot of unknowns coming into the project that ended up delaying our timeline. I don’t know if these could have been avoided; I think that’s just the nature of working with an existing codebase. They struggled to make accurate predictions at times, despite their best efforts to review and dissect the code at the beginning. In that regard, the timeline did slip, but it wasn't due to a lack of effort or a lack of programming knowledge. In general, they had a great sense of what could be accomplished in a given week. They were also very helpful in guiding us through pivots that we had to make because of new content or information that we encountered along the way. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Getting the most out of working with thoughtbot will come from having a tight feedback loop between your company and their team. That’s one of the things that we did well, and I’ve been told that it doesn’t always happen with their clients. Usually, clients take more of a hands-off approach, whereas we—my business partner and I—were working alongside them all day long. That created a strong working relationship and allowed us to maximize the output during the time we had with them. I would highly recommend maintaining that level of engagement when working with thoughtbot. --- #### UX/UI & Web Dev for Automotive Marketplace **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: July 2016 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot delivered a web-based platform that lets users browse, select, and purchase vehicles. They provide additional strategy, design, and consulting services. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 4.5 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Tech Team Leader, Automotive Marketplace - Industry: Automotive - Client size: 11-50 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Oct 25, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: The client is now positioned as a leader among online vehicle marketplaces. Collaborative and methodical, thoughtbot creates detailed plans, maintains open lines of communication, and leverages multiple workflow tools. Customers can expect an innovative partner that delivers on requirements. ""Project management was well structured yet flexible throughout the entire process." " **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. Joydrive is the first online marketplace where customers can buy both new and pre-owned vehicles without visiting a dealership. Customers can complete the entire car-buying process online, on their own time and at their own pace. Dealers interact with customers through a platform that provides the tools and features needed to complete the transaction, all the while being consistent, transparent, and fair to consumers. It's like Amazon, but for cars! My role is leading our technical team, including any thoughtbotters who are currently engaged with us. My responsibilities range from product design to project management. I have been involved with the project since the technical inception. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot? We went to thoughtbot to help build and provide a solid foundation for our website and marketplace platform. Being in the Automotive industry, there are quite a lot of challenges when it comes to interfacing with fragments vehicle data and descriptions, so ingesting and presenting all that information to consumers in an accurate, easy to understand way was difficult. There is also a need for consumers to have an easy and intuitive purchasing experience and a need for dealers to be able to interact and fulfill consumer's purchases. Car purchases are quite complicated and almost always situational, so our system needed to be flexible and adaptive. thoughtbot teamed up with Joydrive to help build a well-structured codebase and system using best practices and modern languages in order to scale as needed and be as performant as possible. Between design and development, there was a large opportunity to make a unique product that was special in the industry. What were your goals for this project? We needed a resilient and reliable website that used modern practices to provide a truly online ecommerce marketplace. This meant responsive & component-based design for optimum UI and UX that at all times considers accessibility. We needed a system that would scale as we grew and a codebase that was clean, well-tested, and maintainable. We were largely flexible on the technologies used and consulted extensively with thoughtbot to find the correct fit. We ultimately settled on Elixir and the Phoenix framework, which has served us extremely well. This project was our entire business, as this was the first technical step in our journey. The stakes were extremely high for us to create a dependable foundation and an actually viable first iteration. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor? We utilized a ton of research and referral reviews as we considered many companies. Over several months we revewied many different companies to find the right fit. Several factors were critical in this selection: the company must work as a partner in our journey, we wanted collaboration and growth-mindset we needed nimbleness and technical excellence we wanted consultative approach in addition to technical implementation we wanted a vendor that can help us grow our technical team as we grew. Our President and CEO, myself, and others were involved in the selection process. Describe the project and the services they provided in detail. thoughtbot started with a deep-dive design sprint to fully understand the business and to figure out the initial structure of the product itself. We started with no codebase, and they established not only the structure and a growing product, but also the approach and strategy to develop and design. The process, from inception, was very collaborative and the thoughtbot team was deeply involved to understand the core needs and next steps. Since this was a multi-sided marketplace platform, there were many needed features, not only in the base functionality but also in design and branding. Technical requirements were broad but necessary--a consumer would need to be able to browse, select, and actually purchase a vehicle, 100% online. At the same time, a dealer would need to be able to interact and complete the purchase. thoughtbot helped design and develop a product that would do all of this. What was the team composition? Our interaction with thoughtbot and their team members engaged with us have always been very lean and nimble. We started with a team of 2-3 and have ranged in size up to 6 members. Throughout the entire process, there has been flexibility to scale up or down depending on needed bandwidth, current backlog, time to market, etc. thoughtbot has been a valuable partner in their flexibility and expertise. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business? thoughtbot has not only helped build our initial project but aided in continued development throughout our multiple year engagement. They have hep improve and refactor features along that way that significantly help grow our results, not only in direct transactions but also in added efficiencies, new technologies, and even additional services offered to consumers via the marketplace. We are now the largest true marketplace in the industry and the only place where a consumer can buy, sell, trade, or lease New, Certified, and Pre-Owned vehicles, all 100% online. How was project management arranged and how effective was it? Project management was well structured yet flexible throughout the entire process. They helped introduce Agile processes and build out a management system that we still use today. For all work, they helped set expectations for timelines, were always responsive, and deeply involved. In the beginning, they led project management but helped to grow our team to lead the management of the product and project. Many tools were used on the project to assist in communication and management, including GitHub, Slack, Google Hangouts, and Trello. Over time, the technical team became 100% remote and thoughtbot's leadership in this area (along with the tools and practices they helped introduce) has led to a very successful team. What did you find most impressive about this company? thoughtbot is very innovative and knowledgable about not only the technologies that are widely adopted but also emerging or younger technologies. They quickly become experts in the tools and languages they use and have a network on employees they can rely upon to fill in any knowledge gaps. They constantly work to "level up" their knowledge and are big contributors to the design/development communities and to open source. They are very consultative and thorough with their approach, doing the appropriate amount of user research and due diligence in order to properly identify what is viable and actually worth implementing. They communicate extraodinarily well and continue to help improve our processes. Are there any areas for improvement? We have only had difficulty once when we had a thoughtbotter in a European timezone when that person was the only one who's schedule didn't really overlap with the rest of the team. While this usually was not a problem, occassionally the timezone difference did prove challenging. By the end of that person's engagement, we had discovered some additional strategies to deal with the time differences but unfortunately, it did take a bit of time to optimize. This is not thoughtbot's fault but just the circumstances. --- #### Prototype Design for Online Education Co **The Project** - Services: UX/UI Design - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: Sep. - Oct. 2019 **Project Summary**: Following research into company needs, thoughtbot designed a prototype of an online education platform using Sketch and InVision. The team developed a storyboard and facilitated tests to discern user needs. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Product Manager, Education Company - Industry: Education - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Oct 17, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot delivered satisfying designs to support a more efficient development process. The team listened actively and was receptive to feedback, fostering effective collaboration to support product improvements. They were committed to project goals, which ensured a successful engagement. ""thoughtbot were creative thinkers." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the product manager at an education company. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We needed a partner to design our online courses. We wanted a company to help us finder where to start and position us well for our development work. We needed help to focus our vision. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? thoughtbot facilitated a design sprint for us. We shared the feedback received during our previous two design sprints with thoughtbot. Then, they came into our office and worked to understand our company including processes, challenges, and previous research. Their team helped us define the assumptions we wanted to test and the results we wanted from the design sprint. We worked on a storyboard for the prototype and discussed various different solutions. Their team built a prototype product using Sketch and InVision, integrating the content I produced. After, their team managed user tests. What is the team composition? Two thoughtbot employees worked directly on the project. In the run-up to the project, we had meetings with their team when they tried to understand our business and needs. Through that process, I communicated with three or four additional staff members. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? Our colleague had met a thoughtbot employee at a conference. I spent a lot of time researching agencies to decide which would be the best partner. I looked at about 30 different companies and contractors both onshore and offshore. What made thoughtbot stand out was that they really took time to understand our needs. Their team asked good questions and challenged us, which is what we needed. We didn’t want a partner to only execute a provided brief. Rather, we wanted a collaborator to challenge us, question our assumptions, and maintain a rigorous focus on the user. Even though they weren’t the cheapest offering, we felt like thoughtbot would provide us with the most value. How much have you invested with them? The project cost about £16,000 (approximately $20,000 USD). What is the status of this engagement? We began the design work in September 2019. We began talking to them in May, but it was quite a long process because we weren’t sure when this project would start. Our work with them has concluded but it’s possible that we will work with them again. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? Their designs were impressive. They had listened to everything we discussed in the collaborative design sprint as well as any feedback we provided. Their team also facilitated the user test well. As a result, we have valuable feedback and constructive criticism that can guide our development efforts. That’s what we wanted: a clear picture of what we needed to build for users. Our work with thoughtbot will save us time during development as we won't be creating a platform that isn't focused on user needs. Their team has enabled us to be more efficient. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? We communicated well via Slack. I was impressed with how quickly they responded. We also did a lot of co-location work. What did you find most impressive about them? They’re relentless in their focus on user needs and outcomes. Their team's not afraid to ask challenging questions, making sure the project hones in on one question or outcome that will shape the product. They were more collaborative than any other provider, listening and acting on any feedback. thoughtbot were creative thinkers. Their team approaches challenges with creativity. Are there any areas they could improve? No, I don’t think so. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Have frank conversations and give thoughtbot a call. Before we started the work, they came to our office to understand the cultural fit and work styles. The experience was incredibly valuable. --- #### Web App Development for Digital Marketing Company **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: June - July 2019 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot used Ruby on Rails and JavaScript to develop a web app tool for a digital marketing firm. The product handles video submissions, as well as payments and donations.  **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Chief Product Officer, Digital Marketing Company - Industry: Advertising & marketing - Client size: 11-50 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Sep 27, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: External users are pleased with how easily they're able to use the product. Open and collaborative, thoughtbot remained accessible during each phase of the project. Their customer-centric approach, coupled with their wealth of experience, set them apart from other providers. ""I always felt comfortable talking with them because they held our needs in the highest regard." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I work for a product company that also delivers digital marketing services. We make tools that help nonprofits, political organizations, and other altruistic groups solve digital marketing problems. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We were hearing signals from the market about a need for a conversion tool, but we didn’t have the engineering resources to spin that out fast enough. Most of our engineering resources were tied up with our flagship platform. We hired thoughtbot to not only bring that product idea to fruition, but also to level up our own development practices and methodologies. Our goal was to build a more engaging and personalized form that could handle video and other rich forms of media. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? Thoughtbot developed a tool that can handle a variety of use cases. One of the early ones they implemented was collecting video stories for crowdsourcing campaigns. Another feature provides an easier method for accepting payments and donations. The product itself is a web app, which they built using Ruby on Rails and JavaScript. What is the team composition? We had two full-time engineers on the team from thoughtbot. One was a frontend guy who was also a designer. The other focused on backend development. Throughout the engagement, we had plenty of opportunities to work with other designers and developers as well. Also, during vacation times, they assigned one or two additional developers to the project. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? We’d borrowed some things from thoughtbot in our own development methodologies and practices. They’re not only consultants but also practitioners. This made thoughtbot stand out from other development teams. When it came to choosing a partner, we thought it would be useful to engage with a company that wrote the book on a lot of development best practices. We searched around for other development shops, but ultimately thoughtbot seemed to be the best fit, both in terms of culture and skillset. How much have you invested with them? The total cost of the engagement was between $90,000–$110,000. What is the status of this engagement? We started at the beginning of June 2019, and we were done by the end of July 2019. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?  We recently started launching the product, and people seem to be very impressed with it. It’s much easier to use than other leading forms tools, and that was one of our goals. We learned a lot from thoughtbot during the engagement, mainly because of their agile expertise. They also built an amazing product; something that few people have seen before. Overall, the experience was extremely positive. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? The project management was excellent. thoughtbot was very good at understanding our needs and goals, and they planned each week of work to meet those requirements. We were also embedded in their offices; they were very gracious to let our team members sit in with them. We were able to talk through processes, as well as our clients and users, which made for a very collaborative environment. We had a Slack channel that we used and a Trello board to track tasks. We also communicated through a DevOps platform. They guided us throughout the project, and they were always receptive to adjustments. Sometimes we would go to them with things that we learned during the week, and they would respond with ideas for how to make our new vision happen. It was a warm partnership. What did you find most impressive about them? Aside from their technical proficiency, they were able to listen well and understand our perspective. They were very customer-focused. I always felt comfortable talking with them because they held our needs in the highest regard. They didn’t push things on us, but they did offer suggestions based on their past experiences. I was impressed with how they were able to adhere to our needs and deliver an awesome product. Are there any areas they could improve? Maybe the handoff of the work at the end could have been smoother. Even so, I felt like that transition was pretty fluid. It was honestly more on us to be more receptive. It’s hard for me to come up with things that could’ve been improved. We gave them a two-month timeline, so we didn’t expect them to help us set long term goals or anything like that. There’s some room for improvement with the UI/UX of the tool, but we knew that would be the case with a quickly-launched web app. Overall, they did a great job. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Research what you want to build. thoughtbot can spend plenty of time problem solving, but if you don’t know what you want, you may not get the right product. We did tons of user research and planning, and I think that allowed us to maximize the time that we spent with them. --- #### Custom Software Dev & Training for Digital Advertising Firm **The Project** - Services: Custom Software Development - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: Nov. 2017 - Nov. 2018 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot provided software development and staff training. They coded mostly in Ruby on Rails and worked on experimental applications. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 4.5 - Cost: 4.5 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** VP Engineering, Digital Advertising Firm - Industry: Advertising & marketing - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Sep 25, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot provided tools and guides to improve development processes, and their work improved testing times. They offer experienced and capable developers. ""They’re great in leveling up an engineering team." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the VP of engineering for a digital advertising firm. We specialize in creating digital advertising for the real estate industry. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We were looking for expert developers who specialize in the same language that we used on our codebase which was Ruby on Rails. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? We originally intended to get some help on some really difficult software that we were writing. We found out that the best way to use thoughtbot at the time was to help level up our current development staff to make them better engineers and help them solve these problems. That went fantastically and really set the stage for all the other engagements that we’d have after that. In our first engagement, we used them primarily for teaching and pairing with our developers. After that experience, we used thoughtbot to augment our team. We were going through a transition in our organization; instead of immediately hiring the next engineer, we were able to be a bit pickier. We needed thoughtbot to give us the right amount of staffing to execute on our projects that we were looking for. We found that the best projects for them to be a part of were new ideas. For short-term engagements, because we have a pretty complex business model, and it didn’t make sense for them to get in the weeds on some challenging business logic. It takes our developers months to learn those things. They were exclusively on the development side, mostly Ruby on Rails but did some frontend work for us, too. They worked with our designers and product managers and they brought their backend skills. They were embedded alongside our team and worked on our whole platform. They didn’t work on any one big project on their own but worked alongside the existing set of product developers for our existing application. They were also working on some experimental applications that we were prototyping at the time. Their services included building custom software with us, providing in-depth training, and implementing developer best practices that we hadn’t been following yet on our team. They also did feature development and architectural review help. What is the team composition? We worked with four thoughtbot developers. I worked directly with their Raleigh managing partner. There were a couple of people who helped with weekly project status meetings as well. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? They’re a national company, but they also have a Raleigh/Durham office and that made them a really great potential partner to work closely with. Their engineers were well-known in our development community as very knowledgeable. We had a lot of trust in thoughtbot. How much have you invested with them? We’ve spent $250,000–$280,000. What is the status of this engagement? We worked together from November 2017–November 2018. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? thoughtbot gave us all the tools and guides to be able to overhaul our whole test suites. We had more accurate tests that ran less time and were more dependable. We found the evergreen projects and the new development that was outside of our core business regular path to be a really fantastic way to leverage thoughtbot's value. They could deliver on a lot of things in that regard. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? Their project management was highly effective. We had weekly retros to get us all on the same page. We’d talk about the progress we were making and they would talk about any tension that might have existed. There were times when we needed to pivot based on the level of difficulty on our end. We learned that we can’t just throw any developer, regardless of how much of an expert they are, at our hardest business problems and expect them to solve it in a few weeks. We also had video calls. Most of the time, everybody was remote with the exception of a few in-person arrangements. We communicated on Slack and Google Meet. What did you find most impressive about them? We already trusted them due to the fairly public persona of the standards and styles that their team works with. We already were getting inspiration from them. From the beginning, we were aligned from a philosophical perspective of how to build software. That gave them a level of sway that may have been more challenging for another agency. Are there any areas they could improve? We learned the best way they could help our team was providing assistance to our existing developers, who had a lot more knowledge than thoughtbot did on how the business works and the business use cases. Short term engagements on systems with complicated business logic wasn't as impactful. Do you have any advice for potential customers? thoughtbot does really well if you have a team of engineers who are transitioning away from that small, scrappy startup model and are starting to take on a more standard approach to engineering. They’re great in leveling up an engineering team. If that’s not a concern, thoughtbot can really own the whole development in building a new application. They have excellent strategies for how to start a project and deliver when something doesn’t exist. If some company is trying to use thoughtbot and has a very complex app, I’d advocate that you’d never want to do a short engagement for six weeks because it wouldn’t be helpful for anyone. The ramp-up time in a complex app is such that you can only deliver so much value in a short period of time, and thoughtbot needs a month or so to really start delivering. They’re really talented developers, but they’re not magicians and it’s easy to forget that sometimes. --- #### Development for Deal Sourcing Web Application **The Project** - Services: Custom Software Development - Project size: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 - Project length: Nov. 2015 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot designed and developed a deal sourcing application in Ruby on Rails. Features included data collection and internal processing based on an algorithm to output recommended deals. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 4.5 - Cost: 4.5 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** VP of Technology, Private Equity Firm - Industry: Financial services - Client size: 11-50 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Aug 27, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: The app has been highly successful following its implementation and has received praise from users. thoughtbot’s resources are easy to stay in touch with and they have the expertise to quickly adjust to project requirements and expectations. ""Their developers have been great across the board." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I am the VP of technology for a venture capital and private equity firm. I oversee anything technology-related, including IT management, custom software development, and company evaluation. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We wanted our own deal sourcing application to give us a competitive advantage in the VC market. We hoped such an app would incorporate different data sources and utilize internal algorithms to automate the process of finding the best companies to invest in. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? They created a deal sourcing application in Ruby on Rails and hosted on Heroku with some AWS-supported functionalities. They started with a design sprint to collaborate on ideas and created some wireframes before moving into development. What is the team composition? thoughtbot provided a project manager, but for the most part, I worked directly with their developers. Their resource commitment was anywhere from one to four people depending on our needs at the time. They provided a designer at times as well. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? I conducted online research and asked my peers about the best development shops in the Bay Area. I interviewed about 10 local firms, including phone calls and in-person visits. At the end of the day, thoughtbot impressed me the most. How much have you invested with them? We’ve spent $1,024,000. What is the status of this engagement? They developed the app from Nov. 2015–Feb. 2016 and they continue to provide ongoing support. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? The app has been adopted across our firm, and everyone uses it religiously. It’s been widely praised. I periodically send out user surveys looking for improvements, but the feedback I’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? I have no problem getting in touch with the developers or one of their managing directors, who has served as a project manager. We manage the project through Trello and communicated through Slack. What did you find most impressive about them? Their developers have been great across the board. We’ve worked with a lot of developers over the past few years, and in most situations, we’ve had to get people up to speed as they learned what was going on. However, all the developers from thoughtbot have been top-notch. They’ve picked things up easily and gotten the job done, which I think is a rare skill. Are there any areas they could improve? They could do a little better with estimates. I know that tough, but improving their estimates for cost and delivery schedule would make a difference. As long as they understand that, it’s not that big of a deal. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Make sure that you have someone dedicated to the project who can commit to daily stand-up meetings, weekly retro, and constant communication on Slack. Your dedicated resources need to be reliable communicators with thoughtbot’s team. --- #### Dev for Public Policy Professional Network App **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 - Project length: Jan. 2015 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot built a native iOS app for a public professional network. They organized data solutions, created a directory and social network, and provided consulting. The project is ongoing. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Head of Product, Professional Network Startup - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jun 25, 2019 **Feedback Summary**: The app has yet to launch, but it’s met praise from beta users so far. thoughtbot delivers top-notch development work as well as valuable insights to guide business decisions and build up a future internal team. They lead a smooth workflow thanks to their transparent communication and mindfulness. ""The way that thoughtbot treats each other and treats us is something I want to emulate in our organization." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I’m the head of product for a network for public policy professionals. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We needed a company to develop our iOS app. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? thoughtbot took the concept and idea of our product and guided it through the whole development process. We now have a working beta and are anticipating a native iOS app launch this fall. The app is built around a directory of congressional staffers and registered lobbyists in Washington D.C. over the past 10 years. thoughtbot took these data solutions and united them. They plugged legacy data into our live data streams that we update weekly. The database serves as a directory and a social networking site. Staffers can find and claim their profile and then participate in the network.   When the project started, I met thoughtbot in their office in New York. We ran a five-day design sprint to create a prototype that we began testing and building the product towards. We’ve just finished up another design sprint with them last week where we focused on the lead generation, getting users, and the initial marketing page and user onboarding flows. We went through the same type of sprint procedure and ended up with a clickable design prototype.  thoughtbot has become a part of our team in their way of thinking and advising. They took our concepts and helped shape them into actual prototypes and products. They’ve also helped to change the way that we think about our business plan and how to build out the product in a way that mitigates risk, challenges, or assumptions, and helps us go forward. They really forced us to examine our value proposition and our business goals. Product owners and clients like us can often have very strong biases towards features, objectives, or items that they think are going to work. thoughbot has helped us to label them as assumptions and challenge them in a very healthy way. We’ve reconceptualized the way we look at our product priorities and opportunities. They have had a monumental impact on how our business functions. What is the team composition? There are two full-time people and a project advisor who runs retrospectives every week and works with the managing director there. We’re soon going to be bringing on a fourth person.   How did you come to work with thoughtbot? They were working for the company before I started working here. One of the original partners with the firm had worked with them previously, and he recommended that we use them. How much have you invested with them? We’ve spent $1 million–$5 million. What is the status of this engagement? We started working together in 2015, and the work is ongoing. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? We have great feedback from our beta users. Several power users have really taken to it and use it for their jobs every day, finding the right people in Congress to talk to in order to move their legislation or gain support for their offices’ initiatives. We haven’t done much marketing at all other than in-person, grassroots-style outreach to individual offices. We’re focusing now on testing the user onboarding and marketing page experience and validating our work based on past user interviews. We’re very excited about how this polished experience will essentially sell itself. We’re scaling up our thoughtbot team to launch our iOS app in the next few months, and then we will lean on thoughtbot to help us build our internal team. They allow me to focus on hiring people into an existing system, with an existing culture and robust practices and workflows. They way they built the app and maintained the code makes everything very transferrable to the next person who will work on the project. thoughtbot is increasing the breadth of knowledge across our organization about our project. They’re doing internal code reviews with the rest of their team before they deploy it to our QA site. Whenever we shift or move to a new developer or designer, it’s a seamless transition. Everything is done in a way that makes me feel very confident in the way they’re building the application and preparing for an internal tech team in the future. The last person we’ll need to hire is a CTO. thoughtbot plays the part of a really experienced, seasoned CTO and an entire technology team. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? Communication is excellent and highly constructive. We have daily morning standups and retrospectives at the end of every week with thoughtbot. Even when there are tough decisions we have to talk about, we’re able to have those conversations with them in a very structured and beneficial. It’s never a drag to have to speak to them. thoughtbot uses Trello and GitHub for project management and code management. We use monday.com internally, and the team joined our tool and could integrate nicely. They can view things that we’re working on and contribute when needed. The way they have set up their Trello boards is amazing. I’ve never seen a system so meticulously created and maintained. It’s extremely simple but incredibly developed. It’s seamless to use the tools they’ve set up.  What did you find most impressive about them? The way that thoughtbot treats each other and treats us is something I want to emulate in our organization. The way they hire and develop their talent also stands out to me. For their typical hiring phase, they bring a new developer and a new designer onto their team and put them through an apprenticeship phase. I’m very impressed with the high level at which they are thinking about and producing their work. Everything—from the way they run their company to the way they organize their office—is set up in such a mindful, intentional way.  Are there any areas they could improve? It would be fantastic if they had an office in Washington D.C. Working remotely with them has been seamless though. I don’t have any complaints. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Evaluate your project idea by doing a product design sprint with them. It’s a five-day process where you are in a room together and go through the process of structured brainstorming, assumption listing, mind mapping, and storyboarding. You start with these relatively amorphous ideas and assumptions, but those first 3–4 days are truly paradigm-shifting. thoughtbot then builds an actual design prototype that you can test with users during that week.   --- #### Web Development for Health Care Nonprofit **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: Mar. - Aug. 2018 **Project Summary**: Thoughtbot designed and developed a website from scratch, using technologies such as Ruby on Rails. They also conducted user testing and research in the process, and continue to maintain the site. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Manager of Parent Education, Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Oct 25, 2018 **Feedback Summary**: Thoutbot delivered a high-quality website that's exceeded expectations and generated a lot of excitement from targeted users. Their thorough approach to user research and testing sets them apart. They're also a very collaborative and responsive group of people to work with overall. "“...users are already very excited about the site and we've received a lot of positive feedback.” " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I support our parent education and support program at the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We engaged thoughtbot to help us develop a website for our educational program that parents could easily access on their phones. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? Thoughtbot walked us through a design sprint process and helped us hone in on what our goals were for the website before going into development. In the process, they helped us conduct user testing, interviews, and hosted a parent education workshop, so we could incorporate additional feedback into the build. They then developed the site from scratch, using Ruby on Rails and other technologies, and helped us develop some of the interactive scripts and content we wanted to include. What is the team composition? We work with the owner, as well as a designer, developer, and a couple people managing the sprint process and project as a whole. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? They responded to our RFP and were also highly recommended by someone within the Planned Parenthood network. Their vision aligned with ours and we also liked that they were local, so we could spend a decent amount of time with them in person. How much have you invested with them? We've invested around $85,000. What is the status of this engagement? We engaged them in March 2018 and conducted a design sprint week in June. The site launched in September, but we continue to work with them to make updates and small changes as needed. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? Even though we just recently launched, users are already very excited about the site and we've received a lot of positive feedback. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They're very accessible and responsive by phone or email. We also track projects and make requests through Trello, which has made the whole process rather seamless. What did you find most impressive about them? They ask good questions and have a strong initial process to help clients hone in on goals before going into development. They've been patient with our lack of technical knowledge and are very accommodating overall. Are there any areas they could improve? I don't think so. Any issues we had initially were resolved very quickly. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Keep an open mind to their processes. We found their approach to be very valuable in the long run, despite some initially challenging tasks we had to walk through to figure out the best approach to designing our product. --- #### Legacy Code Update for Internet Marketplace **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: Mar. 2018 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: Thoughtbot provides additional development support that involves cleaning up and updating code for iOS and Android consumer-facing products. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Senior Engineering Manager, Internet Platform - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 501-1,000 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Oct 23, 2018 **Feedback Summary**: Thoughtbot's expertise in coding languages for iOS and Android is second to none. Their proactive, thorough approach to projects has not only improved products, but also improved internal morale of engineers. Driven and highly communicative, their work ethic sets them apart. "“The quality of their work has even helped boost the morale of our own engineers...” " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I'm the senior engineering manager for an online platform. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We needed to hire more senior staff with skill sets beyond a standard background in iOS and Android technology. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? Most of the work we've given thoughtbot has involved cleaning up our existing code for both iOS and Android consumer-facing products. They've rewritten and updated much of the code in Android's Kotlin language. What is the team composition? We work with a project manager and about four developers on their team. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? I wanted to work with them at a previous company I worked for, because I was so impressed by their work. I had also been interested in working for their company in the past, because I really liked their business model and how they continue to develop their employees. How much have you invested with them? We've invested about $100,000 thus far. What is the status of this engagement? We've been working with them for over six months and the relationship is ongoing. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? We're 100% confident in the coding work thoughtbot has done thus far. The quality of their work has even helped boost the morale of our own engineers, who now feel more empowered to take ownership of their work and learn from thoughtbot's team. We've very much enjoyed having them work with us on site. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They've been flexible and responsive throughout the engagement thus far. Despite the fact that many of them work remotely most of the time as consultants, we haven't had any communications issues. What did you find most impressive about them? Their engineers are very enthusiastic and proactive when taking on new projects. They're also very autonomous; I don't have to micromanage anyone on their team. They even come up with lists of recommendations, which has been very helpful. Are there any areas they could improve? No, but I'd like to see them expand their staff so we could work with them even more. Do you have any advice for potential customers? Trust their team from the start of the relationship, because they truly know what they're doing and will work hard to meet business goals. --- #### Mobile App Development for Personal Training Startup **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: Sep. 2016 - Mar. 2017 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot developed and designed a mobile app to better serve a specific user base. thoughtbot coordinated all wireframing and user interface design and continues to provide maintenance services. **Review Rating**: 4.5 - Quality: 4.5 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 4.5 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** COO, Personal Training Startup - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jul 23, 2018 **Feedback Summary**: The app has proven to be reliable since its launch, a product of thoughtbot’s passion for the project and desire for its success. They were organized and transparent as to all stages of development. Their creativity and vision has led to a strong product and a healthy ongoing engagement. ""They were committed to understanding what we were trying to do and helping us be successful at all levels." " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I am the COO of a Boston-based startup. We're making personal training more accessible and more affordable to people by splitting the cost of personal training. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We wanted to develop a tool that allowed gyms to post their personal training availability and gave users the ability to book sessions with those personal trainers. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? We approached them only with an idea and some research that showed there would be a market and interest for this app. They helped us translate what were simply ideas into an MVP. Once we had the basics of a product, we collaborated to get that into the hands of users to get feedback. Our app used Ruby on Rails, and we worked with UserTesting for the user acceptance testing and Marvel to manage mockups and wireframes. What is the team composition? We had one designer and anywhere from two to three developers. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? We sent out an initial RFP, and taking direction from our initial investors, we decided to search for firms that had a presence in Boston. We wanted to work with people we could sit across the table from. We put out our proposal and ultimately selected thoughtbot through that process. How much have you invested with them? We’ve spent about $500,000. What is the status of this engagement? We reached an agreement in August 2016, and we did our first design sprint in September 2016. Our MVP was available in the marketplace and in the hands of users in December 2016. We’ve made several rounds of changes over time. We still continue to use thoughtbot for maintenance and support, and they occasionally do some development work for us. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? I don’t have exact metrics, but the product has been very reliable since its launch. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They were organized and easy to work with. I found all the members of their team to be personable and knowledgeable. We weren’t tech people so it was important to have guidance, and they were generally capable of explaining every step to us. What did you find most impressive about them? The aspect of partnership with them was important to us. They were committed to understanding what we were trying to do and helping us be successful at all levels. Are there any areas they could improve? They prove their value by virtue of what they develop, but they’re a high-end firm. We knew it would be expensive to use them going into the project, so I can’t criticize them for that, but they’re a high-end firm. Any advice for potential customers? I should have spent a lot more time thinking about what I wanted. Considering those initial user requirements and specifications would have saved a lot of time and money. They were useful in getting us from a blank piece of paper to an MVP, but it would have been better to have that figured out internally. --- #### Web and Mobile Development for Fantasy Sports Company **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: May 2017 - Jan. 2018 **Project Summary**: Using Ember.js, thoughtbot built custom features for a fantasy sports website and mobile app. Deliverables include writing code and managing the backend development. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 4.5 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Director of Product, DRAFT - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 11-50 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Jan 19, 2018 **Feedback Summary**: Thanks to the improved functionality, there was an 8% increase in users depositing money on the site. The developers' ability to deliver high-quality work and complete major updates before the deadline was crucial to the success of the engagement. "“I was very impressed how safe we felt with our decision to hire thoughtbot from day one.” " **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. My names is Justin Seeley and I'm the director of product at Draft. We're a fantasy sports company, with a website and a mobile application for both iOS and Android. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? We needed to get our website up to date before September 1st, which is the beginning of the NFL season. Our website was lagging behind the app to the point where we had to ship twice as many features on the web just to catch up. We needed a developer who works in Ember [an open-source JavaScript web framework]. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? The thoughtbot developer is running the entire backend development of our Ember application, as well as owning basically all of the Ember codebase. He built 4-5 big features on the app. This required ingesting a lot of the API in order to allow users to add players to different lists and other features. In addition, the developer helped us interview candidates when we were trying to hire a full-time web developer. He also taught one of our other web developers a little bit of Ember. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? A friend recommended them, so they were one of several companies up for consideration. Our CEO made the final call to hire thoughtbot. How much have you invested with them? We spent between $100,000-$150,000. What is the status of this engagement? Work began around 8 months ago, and is finishing up this month [January 2018]. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? The biggest metric of success was that we were able to ship 5-6 major features before the September 1st deadline. Since launch, we’ve seen a 10x jump in traffic on the website. Some of the credit for that goes to marketing, but the site and the new code performed well. A metric that's important to us is the deposit rate, which is basically the percentage that people deposit on our site. That rate increased from 22% to 30%. Some of that growth is due to the features that thoughtbot implemented around allowing users to play with the site before depositing. How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? They're great at communication, checking in frequently even when the developer was working remotely. He was always communicating what he's working on, and asking intelligent questions about how things should work. The developer’s ability to act like a product manager for our other web developers saved me time as well. His ability to grasp what tasks needed to be done without a lot of direction was very helpful. What did you find most impressive about them? Definitely their professionalism, and the quality of their work. I was very impressed how safe we felt with our decision to hire thoughtbot from day one. We knew we were in good hands because their developers are extremely talented. It took a lot of the pressure of hitting the deadline off because we had confidence that the work would get done. Are there any areas they could improve? They don't work on Fridays, and it would be nice if we could get that extra day. --- #### Custom RAILS Development Data Analytics Firm **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: Apr. 2013 - Sep. 2014 **Project Summary**: Using Ruby on Rails, Thoughtbot built an interactive web platform for 140 partners to share healthcare data. They provided visual and feature design, data processing, and back-end development.  **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 4.0 - Cost: 4.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Managing Director, IT Firm - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 11-50 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Oct 29, 2014 **Feedback Summary**: End users praised the platform's fluid, accessible structure, and the internal team was impressed with its solid code. It generates few support requests. Thoughtbot excels at providing custom, high-quality solutions that meet exacting requirements. Their transparent communication is a key asset.  ""Their ability to understand our core technical and business requirements is bar none."" **BACKGROUND** Could you briefly describe your organization? I work for a specialist data analysis company, focused at the moment on health care in the U.K. We work with national and local organizations, including government agencies, to help them use data and information to guide their decisions, whatever those decisions might be. What is your position? I’m the managing director. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What business challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot [formerly New Bamboo]? We had an intelligent product, which we had created and shared with 140 organizations plus the NHS [National Health Service] every quarter, and we wanted to turn this into an interactive online platform. We had the data knowledge and the vision, but we were not Web developers. We had the technical knowledge to undertake the data analysis, and we knew what we wanted to do with the data. We had an idea of how we wanted it all to look and feel, but because we weren’t trained as developers, we simply couldn’t build the platform ourselves. For that reason, we went in search of outside expertise. **SOLUTION** Could you describe the scope of their involvement? We initially approached thoughtbot in April of 2013, and shaped the project, the requirements, with some initial work on visuals and functionality. We started the website build probably in July of 2013, and the initial, minimum viable product went to market in November of 2013. We then disengaged from thoughtbot for a short time, but went back to them in the spring of 2014 to make some changes and upgrades to the platform’s core functionality. Then we went back to them again in August and September of this year [2014] to make some additional improvements to the functionality. In all of these cases, they’ve been serving as our core development team. How did you come to work with thoughtbot? We looked at firms in the London area that had significant technical development expertise and had a track record of building interactive, data-driven websites. I suppose it was more of a gut-feeling approach because any decent vendor could have developed what we wanted, but we wanted a partner that could offer more than that. We wanted a company that would not only be able to build our platform to our unique specifications. We wanted a company that would be in a position to provide additional strategic insight. We wanted them to be able to provide key recommendations in areas in which we have little knowledge. We knew that we needed to go through a fairly intensive iterative design process, with people that would understand what we were trying to do and, quite frankly, were perfectionists like we are. Unless it was exactly our vision, it wouldn’t be good enough. The reason we chose thoughtbot is because they demonstrated that they could do what we wanted, technically, but much more to the point, they demonstrated that they had a passion for what they did. Could you provide a general cost estimate for this engagement? Total spending for the project was probably half a million dollars. When was this project complete? The relationship is still ongoing. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance? There isn’t any real way to track metrics and isolate their own individual contribution. Because they’ve worked alongside us as more of a collaborator, it isn’t all that effective to monitor metrics in that way. However, anecdotally, our end-users have been very impressed with the functionality and accessibility of the platform. Rarely do we come across defects or malfunctions. We’ve been very impressed with the overall quality of the code they deliver to us; it’s always viable and in accordance with our specifications. When working with thoughtbot, is there anything you’d consider unique about their strategic approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors? Their internal drive for delivering high-quality, viable solutions is a key differentiator. Their ability to understand our core technical and business requirements is bar none. Those two characteristics combined with their transparency and responsiveness make them one of the best vendors out there. It’s extremely difficult to come across that mix. In retrospect, are there areas in which you think thoughtbot could improve as a service provider? As with any relatively small business, continuity of staff is always a problem, and they have sometimes had to change members of their team. It hasn’t occurred during a piece of work, but between finishing one element and starting the next. That’s not always worked out so well. They haven’t put as much thought as they could have into the fit of a particular developer on our team. Certain temperaments and personality types are better suited to our corporate culture than others. On a high level, I know they understand this, so I would have expected more thought put into which developers are newly incorporated into our team. --- #### Custom RAILS Development For Consumer Interests Nonprofit **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $200,000 to $999,999 - Project length: **Project Summary**: A scrum master and development team from Thoughtbot augmented a team that develops consumer advocacy programs. Most of their work involved information architecture and functional back-end development.  **Review Rating**: 4.5 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 4.0 - Cost: 4.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Head of Product, Which? - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 501-1,000 Employees - Review Type: Phone Interview - Verified **The Review** — Oct 27, 2014 **Feedback Summary**: In less than a year, the sites have begun to generate considerable traffic. All of Thoughtbot's developers are uniformly talented, meticulous, and collaborative. The team's agile methods enabled them to turn projects around promptly while brainstorming ways to make the process more productive.  ""The end quality of the product was as solid as we could have hoped for."" **BACKGROUND** Could you briefly describe your organization? I work for the consumers association of the U.K., and our mission is to make consumers as powerful as the organizations with which they interact. This is a nonprofit organization. We generate revenue through our members’ subscriptions, which give people access to product reviews and content that we create, for specific advice around best products to buy in the market, or how to manage your finances, or any consumer-related issues. The revenue from those subscriptions is funneled into our campaigning efforts on behalf of consumers, such as having more transparent ticket pricing, energy prices and so on. What is your position? I’m the head of products on the digital team. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** Could you describe the business challenges that you were attempting to address when you first approached thoughtbot [formerly New Bamboo]? For us, it was getting a team that could come in and do some custom development work on the specific verticals we wanted to launch. We have our own in-house development team, but these were areas where we wanted to try new products and services. We weren’t really sure if we wanted to invest in a permanent head count to build out a team and work on these projects. Working with an agency gave us the flexibility to allocate resources with an agency to build something. If the product didn’t work, we could choose to kill it off without having committed in long-term overhead costs. We’ve worked with other digital development agencies before. Thoughtbot has great reputation among them, and our in-house development stack is unrivaled. We really only wanted to work with firms that had an established reputation with our technologies. **SOLUTION** Could you describe the scope of their involvement? They worked primarily as an extension of our development team. In-house, we had a product manager and business analysts, so we wrote all the stories in the backlog, and then thoughtbot provided a scrum master and the developers. They performed all the custom development work, and it was a kind of team effort. Our people were signing off on the user stories during phase, and the iterations were only one week apiece. The process was very agile. They also contributed some thoughts around our information architecture, but it was pretty much performing the customizations. We had several in-house user experience, interactive, and visual designers. As a result, we provided them with the design assets they’d need, and they built it accordingly. They had some valuable ideas around the visual design, some of which we took into account, and some that we chose to disregard. I’d say the majority of their work was relegated to technical responsibilities, rather than visual design. How did you select thoughtbot as your solution partner? We knew of them in terms of the [Ruby on] Rails community. One of our architects had done a bit of Web research, and suggested that we speak with them. We spoke to a couple of other agencies and, from our perspective, we decided to give it a go and see how we worked together. We’ve now worked through four different projects with them because the first project went really well, and we continued from there. That first project was basically a trial run with them, and its success inspired us to continue using them. Could you provide a general cost estimate for this particular engagement? £115,000 [approximately $181,000]. When was this completed? This is still ongoing. We’re always making adjustments and enhancements. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, and user feedback that would demonstrate the quality of their performance? I don’t know the stats off the top of my head. The first site we launched has done very well. That one launched less than a year ago, and it’s doing well from a traffic perspective. It’s definitely meeting our expectations. I think that’s mostly due to the design and marketing of the product, not the development itself, its functionality certainly plays a role. We wrote the technical requirements, and they custom built the functionalities in accordance with them. The advantage of using them is that they work in a very agile fashion. If we built something and it wasn’t quite right, we could change it quickly in the next sprint and test it again only a week or two later. The fact that they’re so proficient at working in an agile fashion meant that, as a whole team, we were able to get things delivered quite rapidly, and iterate on them, rather than waiting three months for something that didn’t match our requirements. We were able to look at each prototype after one iteration and see what was working and not working. The end quality of the product was as solid as we could have hoped for because of the process we used as a team. They followed through on all of their commitments. They were excellent at retrospectively looking back at the work and determining how we could improve the process. Overall, that resulted in a higher quality product, but it was a combination of them working really closely with us to do that. When working with thoughtbot, is there anything that you’d consider unique about their approach or development methodology that distinguish them from other vendors? I’ve worked with six or seven developers from thoughtbot because they have a habit of rotating developers every six to eight weeks on a project. To me, the rotations have been seamless. They have very competent developers. They do loads of pairing and code reviews. It seems to me that the quality of their developers is equal. They’re all really quite good. As a client, I don’t see a drop in velocity when they take one developer off and bring another in. They provide a consistent level of service that I haven’t seen in from agencies, or even our in-house team. Their engineering standards, development standards, and the way that they have that consistently through their team is very impressive. I’ve yet to be disappointed in one of their developers. In retrospect, are there areas in which you think thoughtbot could improve as a service provider? Their developers are so adept at self-managing, I’m not really clear on the value I get from their scrum master. Perhaps because we’re a digital development team anyway, we’re not like some of their clients that completely outsource their development responsibilities. We work with them very closely, so I feel like the scrum master is almost not doing anything because our product managers or business analysts will make sure that the user stories are there, and groomed in the backlog, and the team is ready and set up to go. I’ve just not really seen a return on investment from the scrum master, but that said, I’m really happy with the package we get from them. That’s the one area that I have some skepticism about, and it’s more because that particular resource seems unnecessary for us. --- #### AI Solution Prototype Development for Software Company **The Project** - Services: AI Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: Sep. - Oct. 2025 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot completed a two-week discovery sprint for a software company's program. The team delivered a working prototype of an AI software program that interviews authors to gather content for their books. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** CEO, TellaDraft - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Oct 13, 2025 **Feedback Summary**: The prototype delivered by thoughtbot is currently being tested by 12 entrepreneurs, and the client is confident in its success. The team went above and beyond, was extremely cost-effective, and delivered on time. They were genuinely interested in the project and invested in its success. ""They're incredibly skilled, creative, and kind."" **BACKGROUND** Introduce your business and what you do there. I'm the CEO of a company that helps entrepreneurs turn their stories into books that grow their businesses and brands. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What challenge were you trying to address with thoughtbot? I'm creating an AI software program that interviews authors like a podcast to gather content for their books. My original design was a very low-tech tech stack, and I wanted something sophisticated to scale. **SOLUTION** What was the scope of their involvement? thoughtbot completed a two-week discovery sprint. They delivered a working prototype. I thought we might have a deep understanding of what to expect in the future, but I can actually use this product for initial testing. My questions were uploaded, and OpenAI can personalize them as needed. We also used 11eleven labs to voice the questions, and it sounds amazing. The user can speak their answers, which are recorded for content.What is the team composition? We worked with three teammates from thoughtbot.How did you come to work with thoughtbot? I found thoughtbot as a recommendation from ChatGPT. I wanted to work with a software company for my MVP. thoughtbot offers a unique dynamic I couldn't find anywhere else. They're incredibly skilled, creative, and kind. It's a unique combination, and as a non-technical founder, it was exactly what I was looking for.What is the status of this engagement? We started working with thoughtbot in September 2025, and the first sprint ended in October 2025. However, I plan to work with them in the near future. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? thoughtbot delivered a working prototype. I have 12 entrepreneurs testing it now for feedback. The first survey was emailed out today, so we don't have any quantitative feedback yet. However, I already know the prototype is successful.How did thoughtbot perform from a project management standpoint? thoughtbot delivered on time, went above and beyond, and was extremely cost-effective. They collapsed time for me by making my product in a sprint setting so I could see the next steps. I was able to pivot and simplify thanks to this sprint. We communicated via Slack.What did you find most impressive about them? I was impressed by how interested the developer and designer were in my project. I could tell they spent hours thinking about it and discovering ways to make it work well and better than I planned.Are there any areas they could improve? No, I'm highly satisfied. --- #### Staff Aug & Ruby on Rails Mgmt & Support for Advertising Co **The Project** - Services: Application Management & Support, IT Staff Augmentation, Web Development - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: Jan. - July 2024 **Project Summary**: An advertising company hired thoughtbot to provide staff augmentation services. The team was responsible for maintaining and supporting the client's web app using the Ruby on Rails framework. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Co-Owner, GigWolf LLC - Industry: Advertising & marketing - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Jul 26, 2024 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot landed more than a dozen pull requests during the engagement. The team was communicative and regularly checked in to ensure they prioritized the right things. thoughtbot adopted the client's async style and limited meetings culture. Their deep expertise in Ruby on Rails was impressive. ""thoughtbot's profound expertise in all things Rails was amazing."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and position.I am the Co-Owner of GigWolf LLCDescribe what your company does in a single sentence.We manage programmatic ads spend for companies engaged in recruitment marketing. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What specific goals or objectives did you hire thoughtbot to accomplish?Weekly feature work to our Rails web appMaintenance / bug squashing work on our Rails web app **SOLUTION** How did you find thoughtbot?Open SourceContent MarketingWhy did you select thoughtbot over others?Referred to meHow many teammates from thoughtbot were assigned to this project?2-5 EmployeesDescribe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.We engaged Thoughtbot to be extra hands on deck for our working on our Rails app as a young company. We are a bootstrapped company run by two technical individuals with limited Rails experience, so it was extremely helpful having Rails experts collaborating with us and guiding us in the right direction as we got things off the ground. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?Dozens of pull requests landed.Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?Very communicative, regularly checked in to make sure they were prioritizing the right things. Adopted our async style and limited meetings culture very well.What was your primary form of communication with thoughtbot?Email or Messaging AppWhat did you find most impressive or unique about this company?thoughtbot's profound expertise in all things Rails was amazingAre there any areas for improvement or something thoughtbot could have done differently?They were excellent - I wish we continued to have the budget to engage them further (we'll be back!). --- #### Mobile App Development for Food Waste Software Company **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: Confidential - Project length: Jan. - May 2024 **Project Summary**: A food waste software company hired thoughtbot to build software solutions on new device forms. The team developed new features for the React Native-based app for barcode scanning devices. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Software Engineering Manager, Food Waste Software Company - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 51-200 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Jun 5, 2024 **Feedback Summary**: Thanks to thoughtbot’s efforts, the company was able to hit their internal timeline targets and deliver the product to customers on time. The team was communicative throughout the process; they kept in touch via biweekly meetings. Overall, they integrated seamlessly with the client's team. ""thoughtbot delivered exceptionally high-quality work and was an absolute pleasure to work with."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and position.I am the Software Engineering Manager of the companyDescribe what your company does in a single sentence.We build software solutions to eliminate food waste and make fresh food accessible to all. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** What specific goals or objectives did you hire thoughtbot to accomplish?Build software solutions on new device form factorsExpand on existing solutions by building new functionality for our users **SOLUTION** How did you find thoughtbot?ReferralWhy did you select thoughtbot over others?Great culture fitReferred to meHow many teammates from thoughtbot were assigned to this project?2-5 EmployeesDescribe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.The thoughtbot team helped us develop new features in our React Native based app for barcode scanning devices. They helped deliver new functionality that will improve the efficiency of our customers' workflows. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?We were able to hit our internal timeline targets with the help of the thoughtbot team, which were imperative in order to deliver the product to our customers on time.Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?The thoughtbot team was exceptional in their ability to deliver on time and communicate with us during the process. We had biweekly retros to improve our working relationship which was extremely helpful.What was your primary form of communication with thoughtbot?Virtual MeetingEmail or Messaging AppWhat did you find most impressive or unique about this company?thoughtbot delivered exceptionally high-quality work and was an absolute pleasure to work with. They were very communicative and integrated with our team seamlessly.Are there any areas for improvement or something thoughtbot could have done differently?None that we could think of! --- #### Mobile App Development for Healthcare Company **The Project** - Services: Mobile App Development - Project size: $1,000,000 to $9,999,999 - Project length: Jan. 2022 - Ongoing **Project Summary**: thoughtbot has developed a mobile application for a healthcare company. After discussing the project details and goals, the team has created a roadmap, designs, and solutions to issues.  **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** VP, Healthcare Company - Industry: Other industries - Client size: 501-1,000 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Sep 13, 2022 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot's final mobile application has thrilled the client and received positive user feedback because of its experience. The team maintains excellent communication, tracking, and planning of the project on Slack and Trello while continuously enhancing the platform. Their hard skills stand out. ""The most impactful is thoughtbot's processes, collaboration, and guidance around product development."" **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. I am a vice president focused on product development and project management for a mission-driven healthcare company. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot, and what were your goals? Developing a mobile app to deliver virtual care and enhance the patient experience to support our excellent outcomes. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors? Healthcare experience, collaborative team environment, proven processes. Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used. Early discussions of product and goals, patient experience, and ongoing roadmapping, design, problem solving, and more. How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions? A project manager, designers, and front and back end developers. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables? We have been thrilled with the delivered app and users have provided great feedback about their experience. thoughtbot has continued to enhance our product throughout the process. Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness. Fantastic communication, tracking, and planning through regularly scheduled calls, meetings, and tools (like Slack and Trello). What did you find most impressive or unique about this company? The hard skills have obviously been impressive and very helpful. The most impactful is thoughtbot's processes, collaboration, and guidance around product development. Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently? no --- #### Web Development for Funding Company **The Project** - Services: Web Development - Project size: $10,000 to $49,999 - Project length: June 2021 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot was hired by a funding company to develop a prototype for their platform. The team provided two developers to design and build the prototype. **Review Rating**: 5.0 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 5.0 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** COO, Funding Platform - Industry: Financial services - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review - Verified **The Review** — Jun 30, 2021 **Feedback Summary**: thoughtbot successfully delivered a product that met the project's requirements. The team exhibited timeliness and strong communication throughout the project. Their strong grasp of the project's concept and its scope allowed them to accurately implement the client's vision despite its complexity. ""They took a complex concept, learned about it very quickly, and implemented the vision perfectly." " **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. I am the COO of a funding platform for drug R&D **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot, and what were your goals? We hired thoughtbot to build a prototype of our platform. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors? We were introduced to thoughtbot through a mutual friend. Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used. We worked with 2 thoughtbot developers to design and build the prototype. How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions? 2 developers. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables? There are no measurable outcomes but I give them 5 stars. Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness. Super communicative and timely. What did you find most impressive or unique about this company? They took a complex concept, learned about it very quickly, and implemented the vision perfectly. Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently? No --- #### Cryptocurrency Exchange Prototype for Single-Founder Startup **The Project** - Services: Custom Software Development - Project size: $50,000 to $199,999 - Project length: Feb. - Mar. 2018 **Project Summary**: thoughtbot refined a bitcoin exchange concept for a cryptocurrency startup. They then built a prototype using Elixir. **Review Rating**: 4.5 - Quality: 5.0 - Schedule: 5.0 - Cost: 3.5 - Willing to Refer: 5.0 **The Reviewer** Founder, Cryptocurrency Exchange Startup - Industry: Financial services - Client size: 1-10 Employees - Review Type: Online Review **The Review** — Oct 24, 2018 **Feedback Summary**: The team at thoughtbot handled concerns well and managed their work efficiently. Though the concept never moved past the prototype stage, their work was critical to testing the viability of the product. "“I liked how they used job stories to focus on the most important elements of the product.” " **BACKGROUND** Please describe your company and your position there. I run a single-founder startup in the cryptocurrency field. **OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE** For what projects/services did your company hire thoughtbot? I had an idea for a currency exchange and I reached out to them to help refine the concept and build a prototype. What were your goals for this project? I wanted to create a prototype that I could market to users and potential investors. **SOLUTION** How did you select this vendor? I evaluated multiple vendors online, looking at reputation and other projects on their websites. After that, I met with my top three choices to evaluate their approaches and ultimately chose thoughtbot. Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project? They used a programming language called Elixir to build a prototype for a bitcoin exchange system. What was the team composition? There were two developers and one project manager. **RESULTS & FEEDBACK** Can you share any information that demonstrates the impact that this project has had on your business? Thanks to this project and thoughtbot’s hard work, I was able to fully explore my business concept. The effort was ultimately abandoned but the experience was useful to me nonetheless. How was project management arranged and how effective was it? The project manager oversaw the developers. They had a separate manager who handled all of my concerns, which was very useful. What did you find most impressive about this company? I appreciated how well they kept their work on track. I also liked how they used job stories to focus on the most important elements of the product. Are there any areas where they can improve? Not really. I enjoyed working with them and would do so again if the opportunity arose. --- ## Portfolio & Awards ### Rapid validation of a therapist matching web app Health Match 360 approached thoughtbot with an app that helps people find therapists. Health Match 360 is a service for matching prospective patients with licensed mental health therapists in the Greater Cincinnati Area. Clients seeking therapy create a secure account, complete a questionnaire about their needs and preferences, and receive a connection to a therapist through Health Match 360’s proprietary matching algorithm. Challenge Health Match 360 had a pre-revenue and bootstrapped first-iteration MVP and needed guidance in design and product direction. Solution thoughtbot ran a design sprint for Health Match 360 in order to test the assumptions that were made for their first MVP iteration. thoughtbot Designers worked with Bailey and Jeremiah to isolate the problem statement, a user journey, and assumptions within the first day of the sprint. By the end of day two, the team had a full storyboard of the user journey to be tested. The interactive prototype was built off of the storyboard over the following two days. Assumptions were organized into a table with validation criteria and testing methods which both informed the prototype and the interview script. Outcome Immediately following the PDS, the Health Match 360 founders applied for a Grant using the output of the PDS to build their case. A few weeks later, they were thrilled to learn their proposal had been accepted. Bailey and Jeremiah confidently pitched that they had a validated business need to build out a patient-tested prototype which would bring their company to the next level. Congrats to the whole team! ### Joydrive: Going from concept to Super Bowl Sunday Joydrive reduces the stress of purchasing a car Joydrive's hassle-free online storefront lets customers browse multiple dealers for new and used cars, get immediate Kelly Blue Book trade-in value, and have cars picked up and delivered right to their front door all in a single app. Joydrive came to thoughtbot looking for a strategic technical partner to help them bring their product idea to life. After successfully beta testing with thoughtbot, Joydrive was ready to launch their product with a Super Bowl Commercial that announced this new service to the world. Finding the right technology partner CEO/Founder Hunter Gorham needed help finding the right technical partner to help him bring his business idea to life. Hunter first learned about thoughtbot from a trusted friend, Matt Marino, Vice President at Eastdil Secured, who worked with thoughtbot on a similar project. Matt highly recommended thoughtbot’s expertise as a group that can solve difficult problems Eastdil Secured could not solve on its own. De-risking high risk factors first thoughtbot reviewed piles of research, interviewed experts, whiteboarded data-models, and learned about everything from insurance practices to warehouse costs to financing. We pared down all of the pie-in-the-sky ideas to figure out how we could deliver value as quickly as possible and had an MVP online within 6 weeks. That allowed us to gain some clarity in our roadmap, building out based on real needs to minimize risk and assumptions. Ongoing Iterative design and thoughtbot as acting CTO thoughtbot’s development expertise allowed us to become Joydrive’s CTO partner, helping them make decisions about technology stack, hosting, and deployment. After a series of iterations, the MVP had proven successful and customers were actively purchasing cars through the application. Joydrive was now ready to scale and bring on more dealers. ### Transforming algorithms & a vision into a product Real Simple Energy is an early stage startup making consumer energy selection an easy to understand and manage process that results in cost savings for the end user. Co-founders Trent Crow and Matt Herpich, both from the power and energy sectors themselves, reached out to thoughtbot to design, build, and launch their Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Challenge While Matt was adept at data science and coding, neither Matt nor Trent had experience building web apps. They had a database against which they were applying some algorithms and Python scripts that could derive energy costs, but they needed to build this intelligence into a fully-functional front-end and back-end that could be put in the hands of real customers. Solution To begin the engagement, thoughtbot ran a design kickoff with Real Simple Energy to test assumptions and prioritize a lengthy list of potential feature directions. In addition to bringing user-centered design expertise to the product development, the thoughtbot team worked with Real Simple Energy to build the first version of their product as a Django application, complete with an administrator interface and user portal. As the application grows it will need to handle more and more data, and is likely to start making use of machine learning—this made Python the perfect fit. Outcome Their new SaaS solution was successfully activated with a select beta group of 15 paying customers. Matt and Trent were pleasantly surprised that the project stayed on budget and the only unexpected outcome was that the final product had more functionality than originally planned. The co-founders also learned a lot about product design and development that they will carry on as Real Simple Energy continues to grow. ### Integrating a Content Management System DigitalOcean hired thoughtbot in a period of rapid expansion. The company website needed fast updates, but the marketing team was feeling blocked. thoughtbot suggested integrating a Content Management System (CMS) with the DigitalOcean website so that they could begin publishing content and making changes to the website without the help of developers. thoughtbot understood the core objective to increase efficiency for the marketing team. Once the two teams selected the right CMS solution, thoughtbot began handling the technical side of the integration.  The teams worked together to create an extensive library of reusable components and page templates that was in line with the updated DigitalOcean brand voice. With the integration of the Content Management System (CMS) with DigitalOcean’s website, the marketing team quickly began to pick up speed. In the past, it might have taken the marketing team up to 15 days to publish a page, moving back and forth making requests from their development team. With the newly integrated CMS, the marketing team started launching pages within 3 or 4 days. thoughtbot installed the new Design System guidelines into the system. Publishing new content within the guidelines became a seamless experience. ### Exploring and developing a new SaaS platform Aatish Salvi joined Teikametrics as CTO to take on an ambitious plan he had formulated with CEO Alasdair McLean-Foreman: explore an entirely new product direction that uses Machine Learning to help small to medium-sized online sellers compete in the market. In addition to the technical challenges, Aatish needed to develop his engineering team and hire principal engineers at the same time. When Teikametrics reached out for help with their platform, thoughtbot initially built out a rapid MVP using Ruby on Rails. In order to keep up, thoughtbot built a separate service to process data from Amazon. For this service, Scala, Akka, RabbitMQ, and Postgres were used to build a lightweight but scalable data platform for Teikametrics. By utilizing distributed data streams, the platform can break down a company's entire advertising history in minutes, providing continuous recommendations to sellers. Because the stream processes data in constant memory and applies backpressure, massive influxes of data won't overwhelm the system, and additional data can be processed faster by adding new workers to the cluster. In the video below, Aatish talks about why he reached out to thoughtbot Boston to help him explore the concept with design thinking, architect their data pipeline, and ship an MVP. In the end, thoughtbot not only gave him the bandwidth to focus on hiring but developed his existing team's capabilities and culture for future success. Watch the full video: https://thoughtbot.com/work/teikametrics ### Project with Pittsburgh Cultural Trust A key feature of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust website is the ability for theatergoers to book their own tickets, a feature referred to on the team as Select Your Own Seat.  Challenge Their original web app handling bookings in the theater district had been around for about 10 years, and the Select Your Own Seat technology was starting to fall behind. The experience of choosing your own seat was becoming cumbersome on mobile devices, and the team was ready to make a big jump to reach parity between the site’s desktop and mobile experience. Solution thoughtbot and PCT kicked off the project with a design-oriented week of understanding the existing systems and technologies connecting the Select Your Own Seat web app. As the new web app was developed, thoughtbot and the PCT team conducted usability testing with someone with visual impairment who was using a screen reader in order to increase learnings. Through this testing, the team was able to identify and begin to resolve issues for people using screen readers. Outcome The project between PCT and thoughtbot met the project goals and provided enormous benefits for the PCT team going forward. At the end of thoughtbot’s engagement, they worked with PCT on a phased rollout for the new build. In future iterations of the app, not only will the mobile experience for users will be improved, but tickets sold by PCT will be able to be browsed by people using assistive technologies in order to better accommodate visually impaired theatergoers.  ### Bark: Developing a full-stack team while launching a new product Bark & Co. is a venture-backed consumer product and services company out of NYC. Their popular flagship product, BarkBox, provides a monthly delivery of innovative treats and toys for your dog. Challenge VP of Engineering, Becky Segal, realized she needed to add capacity in order to launch a business-critical gift subscription product in time for the holidays. Her team was thin on senior developers though, especially on the Rails side. In addition, she recognized the importance of investing in her team’s development so that they could seamlessly take over and handle this work in the future. Solution thoughtbot and Bark got to work rewriting the checkout flow to handle gift subscriptions. Once the gift subscription flow was finished, the team expanded the same treatment to the overall shopping cart and checkout flow, with an eye towards extensibility and maintenance. thoughtbot worked with Bark to introduce larger design patterns to unify the frontend codebase and test-driven development was introduced to the JavaScript frontend. Through pairing, thoughtbot demonstrated how to navigate the full stack, from the JavaScript frontend to the Rails server and back.  Outcome After teaming with thoughtbot, the Bark engineering team successfully pushed the new product in time for the holiday. The new architecture performed so well that the team proceeded to work on integrating other product areas beyond gift subscriptions.  ### Improving conversion and code for NYC startup LOLA LOLA is a startup that offers subscription services and delivers 100% organic period products to your door. They launched in 2015 and have had great growth and early traction. LOLA came to thoughtbot to support new product launches, improve customer conversion, and stabilize their codebase. The LOLA website facilitated hundreds of thousands of checkouts, and we used that data to identify which areas of the funnel could be improved. Our immediate goal was to identify why people were dropping off at certain parts of the funnel. The LOLA website facilitated hundreds of thousands of checkouts, and we used that data to identify which areas of the funnel could be improved. Equipped with user feedback and metrics, we moved forward with a design sprint to test our assumptions and new solutions. After a few rounds of design sprint activities and ideations, we came up with a prototype that addressed many of the questions and concerns that were brought up in the user interviews. The new solution was a simpler, more streamlined version of mylola.com. The team felt confident in it, and it performed well in the usability testing sessions at the end of the sprint. Initially, the LOLA homepage had many competing calls-to-action, and the product pages featured a complicated and personalized checkout flow. We tested the original multi-step configuration flow against a simplified one-step process that featured clearer and more concise product details. Again, we split traffic 50/50 and ran the A/B test for 3+ weeks. People made it through this step of the funnel at a rate 19.5% higher than the control.   ### GasBuddy: modernizing mobile app GasBuddy was ready to move toward a future beyond just fuel prices, allowing users to find reliable reviews of gas station amenities and services, get special discounts, learn more about retailers and services, make ratings and recommendations, connect with other users, complete purchases, and much more. Stakeholders from the GasBuddy team met with us to start the project off with a Product Design Sprint.  We interviewed GasBuddy “Power Users” to learn how the app was being used already. With the help of these interviews and insight from the GasBuddy team, we determined that moving the app’s architecture away from a bloated and cluttered home screen would improve the overall user experience and alleviate some of the product development struggles. Getting the prototype in front of users We tested our prototype with both current and new GasBuddy users. We went through scenarios and tasks with each participant and interviewed them about their current driving and gas purchasing habits. Through prototyping and testing, we were able to rapidly validate and invalidate our assumptions, and confidently move forward with the rest of the design. The results of the sprint gave us a clear path forward through the rest of the project We continued to work iteratively and collaboratively with the GasBuddy team, holding daily standups and sharing in progress work in Marvel to collect feedback and improve designs. Once we felt a design was ready, we used UserTesting.com to put it in front of people and continue to improve our designs. We worked with their team’s designers to bring together their new brand while establishing design patterns that allow for easier future development and design. The user experience overhaul and new design system set Gasbuddy up for both a successful redesign launch and for continued product improvements as their internal design team grows. ### Using design to fight knife crime Steel Warriors is a London-based charity that melts down knives taken off the streets and recycles the steel into free outdoor community gyms. Challenge At the outset, thoughtbot product designers and the Steel Warriors team discussed a series of broad features: Activity Tracking Workout Instruction Community Building Once there was an understanding of the business goals and needs, the team set to work with a research phase to better understand their current community and what some of their potential competitors are already doing. Research Four applications that offered similar services to the Steel Warriors' vision were identified. thoughtbot designers tested them and read online reviews to see what features users loved and what features they were not so fond of. A Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis was then conducted to get a picture of each of the products as a whole in the market.  Design workshop The goal of this workshop was to align on one idea to prototype and test. With limited availability from key stakeholders, a 1-day workshop was organized to complete the following exercises: Goal Statement Year Plan What does success/failure look like Storyboarding Critical Path Planning Outcome With the workshop wrapped up, work on a prototype began. In parallel, thoughtbot worked to determine what technology stack to use. The team set up weekly planning meetings, asynchronous stand-ups, and retrospectives to remain in contact.  Since that time, design and development of the booking system has kicked off. From focusing on micro-interactions such as form fields to helping translate the Steel Warriors brand to the web, everyone involved has been especially driven by the amazing mission of Steel Warriors. ### Improving MBTA internal communications The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), known locally as simply "the T," is the public agency responsible for operating most public transportation services in the metro- Boston area. Challenge When the MBTA came to thoughtbot, they wanted to improve communication between officials on the Green Line. In 2018, the MBTA's Customer Technology Department believed that they could use technology to surface real-time train data for operations to better ensure evenly spaced trains. Discovery thoughtbot interviewed 21 MBTA officials, operators, and supervisors to get a better understanding of how the Green Line operates as a whole, across all the different positions.  After interviews were over, the team gathered to synthesize the new understanding from those interviews. thoughtbot and the MBTA team captured observations on sticky notes, then organized similar observations together to form over 30 different overarching insights. Prototype During a design workshop, thoughtbot and the MBTA sat down and did a series of design exercises to help us generate as many solutions as possible to solve our objective. After multiple rounds of showing and iterating on our prototype, the team had a clear idea of what they wanted to build for the first version of the product, an MVP.  Outcome   In the first few weeks of widespread use, the app provided a more equitable, reliable source of information for inspectors and dispatchers. ### From idea to 1,000 paying users in 6 months SplitFit was founded by three childhood friends who saw an opportunity to revolutionize personal training. Having been in the fitness industry for years they realized that between noon and 5pm gyms typically have unbooked trainers on staff who are being paid to wait until their next session. By building an easy way for people to find and book these trainers people would be able to access training at a lower price point while still generating additional revenue for the gym. SplitFit came to us with only an idea. We started day one with a design sprint to validate their idea. By the end of week one we conducted our first round of user testing and interviews. We created a prototype that was built in Xcode. This let users run the prototype on their iPhone. They were able to set preferences, build profiles and use the keyboard as they would normally with any other app. We caught issues much earlier and more accurately than we would have with a traditional prototyping approach (creating a prototype with hotspots and images). The outcome of the first week was incredibly successful. The prototype and business idea was well received. We confidently moved forward knowing that we conducted an initial round of user testing. We started to build out and refine wireframes for each of the designed user flows. The first version of the product was shipped and in the hands of users just two months from the start date of our engagement. This included the ability for a user to join a pool (the buyouts feature came later). The initial release was piloted with the CIC (Cambridge Innovation Center, a large office space just blocks from the pilot gym). This allowed us to have real testers in a controlled environment. We were able to gather feedback from customers as well as trainers. ### Helping companies get a quick and simple overview Quicky Forecast came to thoughtbot with a lot of experience in sales. Many forecasting tools focus on measurement rather than progress and quality, making it hard for users to get a true overview of opportunities. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools are overpriced and unnecessarily complex. In a worst case scenario, they give salespeople the means to disguise their actual progress. Quicky Forecast removes this illusion of activity, by offering a UI that promotes simplicity and transparency. In just a glance, the entire team can understand the sales forecast situation, see what's closed, what's forecasted, and when. Rather than just generating sales forecasts weekly or monthly, Quicky Forecast is always available and ready. thoughtbot built a lightweight tool, carefully prioritizing inter-related features and providing auxiliary benefits. The primarily focus was on streamlining the critical path, designing a rich interactive interface for different ways of viewing data, and making sure the chart really provided the right information. At the heart of the app, the featured five-quarter rolling forecast chart is always up to date, letting users quickly know the team's progress.   The app was launched and through usage studies and user feedback both thoughtbot and Quicky Forecast now have the context to determine which additional features are most critical to long-term success. ### Engaging the next generation of business leaders How does a publishing company with a 100-year pedigree engage an increasingly global and youthful audience with a brand-worthy mobile experience? Research on growing Harvard Business Review's subscription base indicated that its younger audience is increasingly mobile-focused. These aspiring leaders expect a premium mobile app, fully integrated with the HBR experience. But HBR's existing app was disconnected from the rest of the brand's architecture. The globally trusted management publisher recognized how thoughtbot emphasized working collaboratively and quickly. As an added bonus, both teams value smart design. What We Did We led a Discovery Sprint, testing, and user feedback, all of which pointed the way to bringing HBR's mobile app in-house. Our team could see that building a new React Native mobile app would create a more coherent user experience while doing justice to HBR's world-class content. The Result thoughbot team members love to build beautiful products, of course. But we're even happier when clients tell us that they learned and grew through the course of the project. Having worked closely with the HBR team, we know they will truly own the product moving forward, and they know that they have the tools to make it succeed. "thoughtbot was much more than a great development team. They helped us coach each other to do our best work. This is how I want to coach my teams going forward," says Anne Bartholomew, HBR's director of product management. "We ended up with a product that is better than I thought we would be able to deliver in this amount of time. When I look at the product now, I see how we made things happen," says Marta Kusztra, UX & product design director at HBR. "Our final product is so much more polished and complete than I had imagined." ### Clutch Awards - [Clutch Award Badge](https://shareables-prod-static.clutch.co/badges/top_clutch.co_app_development_company_startup_united_kingdom.svg) ### Industry Recognitions - thoughtbot open source on GitHub - GOV.UK Digital Marketplace - AWS Marketplace - Dime Medicine Society Contribution - Crain's 100 Best Places to Work in NYC in 2019 - Crain's 100 Best Places to Work in NYC in 2020 ## Key Clients - Health Match 360 ## Packages ## Verification Clutch verification provides an additional layer of data to help you make the right purchasing decision of business services. - Verified Client Reviews: 38 - Overall Review Rating: 4.9 Last Updated: 2026-06-05T08:32:35Z ### Business Entity - Business Entity Name: THOUGHTBOT, INC. - Source: Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts - Jurisdiction of Formation: Massachusetts - Date of Formation: September 9, 2005 - Status: Active - Last Updated: February 1, 2019 - ID: 203438204 ### Credit Report Results - International Credit Risk Assessment: Low Risk - Source: Creditsafe - Last Updated: September 30, 2020 ## Locations (2) ### New York, NY (Headquarters) - 228 Park Ave S. PMB 19298 - New York, NY 10003 - United States - 50 - 75 employees - Phone: 8779762687 ### London, England - 128 City Road - London EC1V 2NJ - England - 21 - 30 employees ## Connections - Shalaka Teli (Gadre Infotech Pvt. Ltd.) ## Contact thoughtbot [Send a message](https://clutch.co/profile/thoughtbot) ### Connect on Social - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/thoughtbot-inc-/) - [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/thoughtbotinc/) - [X](https://twitter.com/thoughtbot) - [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/thoughtbot/)