Afterlogic.Works

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are an Israeli telecommunications company providing internet and TV. I am a systems administrator for the company.

What challenge were you trying to address with AfterLogic.Works?

We needed a client web interface for our email system. The project took place before I started working for the company, but I know that we were using Oracle’s email system at the time. It was outdated, and didn’t have all the options we needed, as well as some which we didn’t want to provide.

What was the scope of their involvement?

AfterLogic.Works built a new web platform for our email interface. All their work so far has been frontend.

One year ago, a new law in Israel required all service providers to provide accessibility options for the visually-impaired. We were using an accessibility platform built by another company, and asked AfterLogic to implement it into our website.

What is the team dynamic?

We provided access to a development server, on which they made modifications which we fixed and put into production.

We’ve mainly communicated via email, but my predecessor used Skype. I believe I’ve worked with 2 of their members.

How did you come to work with AfterLogic.Works?

As far as I know, my predecessor found them through an online search.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with AfterLogic around 2010, and have an ongoing collaboration.

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

We have around 1.5 million email accounts. I was still a support representative for the company when the change was made, and know that there was no negative feedback from customers, aside from the elderly ones, who were more used to the old interface and had problems making the transition.

The interface is intuitive, fast and stable. Our only issue has been with the Hebrew Unicode layout, in the beginning.

How did AfterLogic.Works perform from a project management standpoint?

They had a very fast response time; I’ve had to wait more for our QA team to check their work, than for AfterLogic to actually provide the development.

I wasn’t here when the major change was made, but their follow-ups and problem-handling on the support side have been very good. Anytime we had a bug, they offered a response and fix in the same day.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been happy with their service anytime I’ve had to make a new request and work with the team.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Not that I can see.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the senior project manager for Mavenir. When we used AfterLogic for the project in question, our company name was Acision. We are a telecommunications vendor that provides services and messaging systems to telco companies. I’m responsible for projects in western Europe, Russia, and CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] countries.

What challenge were you trying to address with AfterLogic.Works?

We provide system engines that aren’t customized. When we’ve needed customization, especially localization, we either do it in-house or use outsourced companies. In this case, we needed to develop WebGUI for a project with TeliaSonera Finland. This included web customization for 6 countries in 5–6 languages. We decided to hire AfterLogic to complete the project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They had to integrate WebGUI with 2 separate systems, including a MMS [Multimedia Messaging System], and a SMS system for voicemail. They had to develop all the webpages, APIs for the servers, as well as implement localisation for several languages. There was a centralized solution which was hosted in Finland, but it was serving 6 countries all over Europe.

This project occurred several years ago, but I mainly remember them using PHP in development. They also worked on some other web plugins as well.

What is the team dynamic?

We worked with about 3–4 people on their side, including 1 designer, 1 senior developer/team lead, and 1–2 developers.

How did you come to work with AfterLogic.Works?

This project was personally handed over to me after it had already started, so I’m unsure of the details of how they were chosen. I know they were already a partner of Acision at that time, and had done several similar customizations for projects in Australia and the States.

How much have you invested in them?

The cost was approximately U.S. $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in October 2009, and the relationship is ongoing in terms of support and maintenance.

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

The work and services were of good quality, and the company was quite flexible. The initial timeline was around 1–1.5 years, but due to our product issues and also a slow customer process, it was prolonged for 3 years. We delayed the payment, and had a lot of additional requests for changes.

Most of the time, they were quite flexible in handling these issues. The quality was also good, and if there was a detected problem, it was only a matter of hours or days before it was fixed. With some suppliers, customers have to wait weeks for a solution.

How did AfterLogic.Works perform from a project management standpoint?

We most often communicated via Skype and emails. I joined at the stage when their deployment was already going, and they already had a number of workshops onsite with face-to-face meetings. I only met 1 of their directors after the project was completed.

The project management was quite flexible and Agile-like, but I don’t recall if they actually used an Agile approach or not. Occasionally, we went on to prepare some deliverables which we had to provide, such as part of a statement of work. They were very involved with the technology, and made sure not to make any mistakes while helping prepare those deliverables. As their team was quite small, the pieces of work were not that complicated, and the management was basically straightforward.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their flexibility is one of the key advantages. They can work on the weekends if needed, and always work quickly while remaining ready to discuss other options. On the technical side, they are very professional, and I would recommend them for some bigger projects. They are very good in terms of territory coverage because they have a sales office in the U.S., as well as a team in Russia, which covers different time zones.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could grow a little bit in order to cover different technologies. I know they’ve already started to move in this direction, and are going to do some customizations and programming for other customers, which is one of the things we were interested in as well. It would be great if they opened some branches in different regions to meet other customers’ needs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m Chief Executive of Citybooq.com, a website which is a startup service for travelers.

What challenge were you trying to address with AfterLogic?

We needed development help with our website and mobile application.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They delivered backend and frontend for our website and also part of the backend for our mobile application.

We have a quite complicated backend, including a warehouse based on MongoDB that was built by our in-house team. All the rest was made by AfterLogic on PHP and the database was MySQL. In addition, they made the complete frontend for our website using AJAX. AfterLogic made the portal as a turnkey solution excluding some backend data warehouse features. They did everything except for the user interface design. 

The app was for iPhone, but only part of the backend for the application was made by Afterlogic.

What is the team dynamic?

At its peak, there were 7-8 people. Now, there are 2-3 people.

How did you come to work with AfterLogic?

I knew one of the founders. We started working on another project not related to Citybooq. It was a collaboration between one of my businesses related to internet service providers. We needed the technological platform to build the web email services. They have the proprietary solution for our webmail called AfterLogic Webmail. They also have Aurora communication platform and we use this technology as a basis for our services. In the process of developing this platform, they accumulated a lot of experience. That’s why when we started Citybooq, I chose to contract with them.

How much have you invested with them?

About $150,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2014 and the work is ongoing.

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

People are satisfied with the portal. There are some problems with the productivity and the speed, they’re working on that. In the near months, we will correct this problem. It isn’t AfterLogic’s fault, but it’s just a matter of product development and the time.

How did AfterLogic perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management is one of their strongest skills. That is why I’m planning to work with them in the future even when we have an in-house team. They have a very strong, trusted team lead who is almost always giving us more than what we pay for. We communicate mainly in HipChat, Jira, and Confluence. They work inside of our collaboration system. We also speak through Skype. 80% of communication is in the form of chats and sometimes email.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They should improve their experience related to application development and user interface development. As far as backend and web frontend, they are very strong.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the founder of a digital marketing startup looking to build a platform for our customers.

For what projects/services did your company hire Afterlogic.Works, and what were your goals?

We hired Afterlogic to assist us with developing the software we need to track the ROI of each campaign. Afterlogic was responsible for implementing designs, setting up the data infrastructure and trouble shooting and testing each version of the app. Our goal is create a MVP ready for our customers to use.

How did you select Afterlogic.Works and what were the deciding factors?

We found them through Clutch actually! As a startup, budgeting is always something to consider. We read a few reviews and visited their site, and reached out to them. After talking with them, we found that their work ethics really resonated with us and that they had reasonable pricing. Meanwhile, they are very responsive and effective in coming up with solutions, so the price to performance ratio is very good.

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

The project is very robust with a variety of features. The team works on IOS/Android and a responsive desktop versions. The team was able to contribute to many challenges that we faced. Primarily the team uses JavaScript, GoogleCloud, relational database to list a few. Afterlogic works on the project in two-week sprints. We find this format very effective, as we are able to consistently see where the project is at and what needs to be done differently. There is the bad surprise that comes with a project "blackhole," where you are presented with the final outcome with no room for inputs leading up to it. We find this often the source of client disappointment, and that is exactly what Afterlogic does not do. They keep us in the loop, so we always know what's going on.

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

We mainly worked with one project manager from Afterlogic, and he would coordinate with the rest of their team while we coordinated with ours. At the end of every sprint (every 2 weeks), our PM would show a demo of what they've accomplished during that sprint to our team, and from there we will plan out together what to work on during the next sprint. We find this channel of communicating quite effective and organized. Meanwhile, our PM would send us an update everyday and we message each other all the time if anything changes. We are constantly bouncing ideas off our PM and he is effective in helping us evaluate those ideas and implementing the ones that work.

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

At this stage the project is still ongoing, so the product itself is not ready for launch yet. That being said, we've been seeing results during every demo, and Afterlogic was a big help in connecting our app to various external APIs we needed to work with, so that would be a measurable deliverable that was very helpful for us. We are confident about the current work schedule and that before long, we will have a product that our customers will be satisfied with.

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

Our PM always records everything that we need him to do on Trello, and we use Slack to communicate daily, and Google Hangout/Zoom to do our demo meetings (or any other meetings that comes up along the way). The team on our end would summarize minutes at the end of each demo meeting (usually at the end of every Sprint, so every two weeks), so we are all on the same page as to what we should be tackling next. On Afterlogic's end, we really like the daily updates, it keeps us in the loop and gives us the chance to inform them early on if anything is off track.

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

What's unique about Afterlogic is that they are constantly looking for solutions. When we throw them a problem we want to solve, the response we get is never "oh that's not possible". They are constantly researching and improving themselves, so that they can find the solutions we need. We think this is a win-win situation – by working with us, Afterlogic becomes more skilled technically, and for us, we get to do things we previously thought were not possible.

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

I think it's always that balance between speed and quality – it's something that we as a startup also struggle with, so it's a learning process for both. In general, we find Afterlogic very responsive and open to suggestions. They are a humble firm that's always looking to improve and get better at what they do.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder of Deal Spotted. We created a consumers services app.

What challenge were you trying to address with Afterlogic.Works?

After I established my vision for the project, I hired Afterlogic.Works as a third-party company to implement it.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The product we worked on together is a web-based application. After I provided the requirements on paper, Afterlogic.Work took care of everything else. They offered several useful suggestions I approved of, because I know they have more of a technical background than me. 

Afterlogic.Works helped me figure out how to structure the project. Together, we determined what we needed to accomplish and defined all the steps to take.  I implemented multiple APIs, and Afterlogic.Works provided all the coding and design work. They functioned like a consultant. 

What is the team composition? 

I worked with 4–5 people from Afterlogic.Works. There assigned us one person for design, a programmer, an API specialist, and a project manager for the team.

How did you come to work with Afterlogic.Works?

I found them through an online search.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $10,000 on their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2016–September 2018.

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

Afterlogic.Works performed very well. I increased the price of our product and just sold it recently. Everything about their deliverable works perfectly. If we ever experienced a problem, they took less than 24 hours to fix it. 

How did Afterlogic.Works perform from a project management standpoint?

Project management was very good. We communicated via email. Afterlogic.Works always responded quickly.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Afterlogic.Works works fast and always delivers on time, which is very rare in the industry.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there are none. Afterlogic.Works knows what they’re doing. The way they work is perfect as-is. I really enjoyed the experience we had together.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the co-founder and chief technical director of D/Workz Interactive. We are a small services company providing full-cycle design and development for web and mobile applications.

What challenge were you trying to address with Afterlogic.Works?

While our in-house design team focuses on UX and design-related work, like wireframes and graphics, we needed to outsource development work. We hired Afterlogic.Works to develop web and mobile apps.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Afterlogic.Works’s team develops mobile and web products for our clients. They have worked on both iOS and Android apps. Recently, they have mostly done web work for us.

What is the team composition?

My team works with 5–10 people from their side, including project managers and developers. Other managers occasionally check-in.

How did you come to work with Afterlogic.Works?

I can’t recall how we met, but it was likely through a referral. It's also possible that they found us, as I do webinars targeted at Eastern European developers.

How much have you invested in them?

We have spent $50,000–$100,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with them in March 2017, and the work is ongoing.

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

One of our clients is particularly pleased with the work that Afterlogic.Works provided. Overall, we haven’t had any negative experiences with them.

How did Afterlogic.Works perform from a project management standpoint?

My company has a very distributed team model, with resources all over the world; Afterlogic.Works has become one such resource. We enjoy working with their project managers, who are always up to speed. The team maintains a deep understanding of technical issues. We communicate via Skype or other conference systems. We also use email, Trello, Jira, and Basecamp. They always adhere to deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Afterlogic.Works’s team is proficient in many different platforms and development stacks. We don’t experience delays, bugs, or issues with their development services because they are so detail-oriented and organized. They efficiently deliver quality work and revisions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

My company is very satisfied with their work, so it’s hard to think of anything. Some of their team members are not entirely fluent in English, which is not an issue for us but could be for others.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Anyone who wants to engage a remote vendor such as Afterlogic.Works should clearly document their business requirements. If you’re trying to create something but you don’t know what you want to do, hire a business analyst.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of an IT solutions firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Afterlogic.Works?

I needed someone that had experience with programming as well as someone who could make suggestions. I was looking to work with a team who had worked on a similar project before.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We work as a team. I set up the task, including what I want to see, then they follow my main ideas. It’s web-based development, which is built PHP 7 and Laravel 5. We use Twitter Bootstrap for the frontend. They’ve created a messaging system, a geo system, address integration with Google, an SMS text message gateway, as well as multi-language support.

It’s a pretty serious project, so we also consult on what we can add or delete. They take the initiative to create a task and then do it.

What is the team composition?

I work with two full-time developers from their team at the moment.

How did you come to work with Afterlogic.Works?

I found them through Upwork.

How much have you invested in them?

We will be investing over $100,000 across the engagement.  

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January 2018 and the work is ongoing.

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

For now, I am satisfied. To prevent any problems, we do testing of the full system. I am able to contact them at any time, and I feel they are genuinely interested in the project rather than just working to make money, which is something I like.

How did Afterlogic.Works perform from a project management standpoint?

We use Trello and work together through there. We divided the work into three stages, then established times and deadlines for each stage. I know what we will do during each stage, so it has been working well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’ve been satisfied. They speak both English and Russian, which has been working out well as some of my team only speak English.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m not sure where they can improve at this point.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about what you want and write everything down in detail.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and founder of a startup that’s creating a platform that combines email, cloud storage, note, and chat functions.

What challenge were you trying to address with Afterlogic.Works?

We were looking for developers who could provide email services. We’d had some bad experiences with developers who were lacking the right skills.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We came up with the functions and gave them a presentation of what we wanted. They did all front- and backend development for SaaS. Our in-house developers are working on mobile apps and apps for Windows. Afterlogic is doing all the backend work on the server and the database.

We wanted to integrate all of our cloud services in their product, but there were problems. We use a different encryption method and our database is very different. We ultimately decided to use their product as a baseline and make changes. In terms of design, we added many new features that we can monetize and offer customization options to our clients. We’re also working on more monetization plans, such as payment system integration and subscriptions.

What is the team composition?

We have one main contact person, and we’re working with 8–10 people in total.

How did you come to work with Afterlogic.Works?

We found Afterlogic after weeks of research. We saw examples of their work and knew they had the skills to develop the custom features we wanted. We started with a trial period of 10 days. They delivered everything we wanted in less than five days, so we decided to go with them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $35,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in August 2017 and the work is ongoing.

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

We opened the beta for everyone in January 2018. We have about 1,000 customers and more than 20 signups every day. Our users are really happy overall, but they want more freedom in terms of design and settings. They created a setting where customers can choose their own profile picture or their own icon for the cloud, where previously Afterlogic only had one icon for all folders. We’re really pleased with Afterlogic’s work, the timeframe, and the budget. We decided to let them develop everything and we currently have a lot of tasks open with them.

How did Afterlogic.Works perform from a project management standpoint?

The team is outstanding. They’re very responsive to all of our problems, questions, and bug fixes. We go to Slava (co-founder, Afterlogic.Works) for any clarification, milestone planning, and deadlines. We use Skype and Asana to talk directly to the developers about bugs and custom features. As we get more customers, we’ve had some really tight timeframes. They’ve performed really well in meeting those deadlines.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They really know what they’re doing. We’ve had a lot of developers who claimed expertise but couldn’t deliver. When we have a bug or an issue with a server or database, they know exactly what has to be fixed. The price-to-performance point is really good. They do a really great job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

We had some trouble when they were pushing bug fixes and features to our server without doing QA first. They fixed the bug and pushed it to the server and two new bugs would appear. This problem was sorted out last year.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Clarify what you need. Tell your developer exactly what needs to be done, what the deadlines are, and what the priorities are.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO in a custom web development agency.

For what projects/services did your company hire Afterlogic.Works, and what were your goals?

The first user’s impression of a website is very important because it creates a brand image almost instantly. We needed a comprehensive software agency that understood the needs of a client and could handle various tasks, namely with Complex animations for a website. The time was limited, and we needed a partner for some segments of this project. We opted for Afterlogic.Works.

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

They were recommended to us by another company. We found they had great reviews and after an interview process we felt like we could trust them to continue the project. They presented accurate estimates and are reasonably priced. We value Afterlogic.Works’s professionalism, technical expertise, and the quality of their work.

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

On our end, we provided a detailed description of the services we wanted, followed up by a few discovery meetings where we discussed the technicalities, deadlines, and methodology. From then on we got daily status reports.

Afterlogic.Works has worked on a few projects with us. In one project, they developed a custom software system. The deliverable was a fully functioning complex animations for a website. The main technologies were Node.js and Vue.js.

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

One project manager, a front-end team and, later on, 2 backed developers worked with us.

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

For us, the main result is that neither our customers nor we managed to find any issues whatsoever. Not for the lack of trying. This outcome lays the foundation for our future work together.

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

Our communication was very intelligent. His project manager always records everything that we need him to do on Trello, and we use Slack to communicate daily. We really like the daily updates, it keeps us in the loop and gives us the chance to inform them early on if anything is off track. They are proactive in thinking about our equipment needs. When questions or concerns come up, we reach out to them as needed and they’re extremely quick to respond.

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

They were knowledgeable and experienced. They’re also honest and stay level-headed throughout projects or IT issues. Their responsiveness to all of our needs stood out. Quite frankly, they respond even more quickly than I could have dreamed, so we’ve been very pleased. Even when we had to go back and forth at the beginning with our potential transition dates, they were really flexible with us and helpful in making sure we had contingency plans.

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

I think it's always important to strike a balance between speed and quality work – this is what makes cooperation more productive. Our experience with Afterlogic.Works were and still are great. It's good cooperation because they are very responsive and open to any ideas and that's always looking to improve and get better at what they do.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the executive director of the Stuttgart Wine Competition. Wine and spirits are sent to us to be tasted and evaluated by sommeliers and mixologists that we hire to review and rate the wine.

What challenge were you trying to address with Afterlogic.Works?

We wanted to make things easier as we dealt with a lot of paperwork and a process with a lot of steps. We were looking for someone to help us with an iPad app and WordPress development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed a Cloud database which stores all the entries to our competition. We used WordPress, as well as a lot of custom Plug-ins in order to create a connection to the database. There are so many criteria that needed classification codes. They coded everything so that every time something new comes in, it is sent directly to the database where it is stored along with the product names, listing names, and classification codes. They created an internal application that we can use on an iPad throughout the competition. The application was developed for both iOS and Android.

As an administrator, I can select wine for example, for each classification code, and I set up a tasting flag for a group of judges which is now automatic. It is really impressive, and no one has done this in wine competitions; we are the first company to do it.

What is the team composition?

We worked with at least three people from their team. Slava Kutenkov [Project Manager, Afterlogic Works] is my main point of contact and the person I reach out to for any changes. He’s amazing; I praise him so much because he made my life easier and is really good at what he does.

How did you come to work with Afterlogic.Works?

I went on Upwork and posted the job. Afterlogic was one of the companies that responded. We had a Skype call right away. Back then, I didn’t even know what I needed from a technical perspective but I really liked their approach. They’re very professional and they did an amazing job.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around $30,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together on this project in July 2017. The relationship is ongoing in terms of maintenance and support, as well as testing.

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

By making everything digital, we’ve saved a lot of time and money. Everything is now done automatically and we don’t have to do anything except go into the database to check everything it’s verified.

Our users are really grateful that all the information is sent to them as soon as they have paid. They receive all the instructions right away. Everyone was really impressed because this has not been done in any wine competition. The process is smooth and works the way we wanted it to.

They're really good in the backend, frontend development design, and basically everything about the design. Anything I asked them to do, they took care of.

How did Afterlogic. Works perform from a project management standpoint?

They reach out and make sure that everything is fine. When it comes to management, they manage me more than I manage them. It is really impressive to see that. They are always testing to ensure everything is working correctly. They’re really on top of things and there are no issues with communication—they follow up right away. If I have an issue, they get back to me within a couple of hours no matter what time it is where he is.

We mostly communicate through email, and I have their phone number in case something urgent comes up. Occasionally we have a Skype call to connect and to discuss next steps. They will be invited to the competition because they have been part of the team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're very adaptable. They figure out what needs to be done and make it happen. If they can’t, they will come back later with a solution that is even better. They’re always available and respond right away, plus their English skills are very good. I always recommend them to others.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not at all. I really have nothing remotely negative to say because they have really made my life so much easier.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you tell them your issues and goal and what needs to be done, they will figure it out and might even have a better solution to make things more productive. They’re really good at what they do. They try to save me money by giving me options that will cost less, which has been really helpful.