Alva Commerce

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a team lead at a business consulting and services company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alva Commerce?

We hired them to help us develop a complex e-commerce platform with functionalities such as loyalty payment, ERP integrations, and CRM.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Alva commerce helped us build a responsive web app. They started working after the design phase and supported us with e-commerce development. They worked with our company’s resources to build the app from scratch using Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. 

The app has a loyalty module, recommendations, promotions, and loyalty vouchers and points. Alva Commerce also helped us integrate the app with payment service providers and a CRM marketing cloud. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with three senior developers from Alva Commerce. 

How did you come to work with Alva Commerce?

I knew some of Alva Commerce’s team members from past work experiences. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around €100,000–€150,000 (approximately $100,000–$150,000 USD). 

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2021–June 2022.

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

Alva Commerce was really capable; they're one of the best commerce cloud B2C developers I've known. 

How did Alva Commerce perform from a project management standpoint?

They did an amazing job with project management. Moreover, the team delivered their work on time. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Alva Commerce's team had amazing developers. They knew their stuff and delivered it with precise quality. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could have improved their communication. However, since they worked more on the technology side, we didn't feel the impact of that area of improvement. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be specific about your requirements. Alva Commerce will provide technical advice, best practices, and performance-related advice. Listen to them and try to understand what they're telling you; if they're talking about certain considerations, it's because they know the platform very well.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at a commerce solutions company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alva Commerce?

We needed to augment our development teams with experienced developers in Salesforce.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Alva Commerce provides development services on top of Salesforce Commerce Cloud, currently known as B2C commerce. Overall, we needed a few people to quickly extend our senior development team to do coding in Salesforce Commerce Cloud using JavaScript.

What is the team composition?

We have a couple of their developers working with us.

How did you come to work with Alva Commerce?

Our former VP of projects, who had worked with them, referred them to us. We reached out to them, and they had the right people with the experience we needed.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2021, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

The feedback of our customers has always been great. Our customers have access to the developers and speak to them daily. Overall, we've always been happy with the quality of the code.

How did Alva Commerce perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re a responsive and transparent team that acknowledges when they make a mistake or go over budget — when they make a mistake, they take responsibility for it.

Also, we usually communicate through my managers, who then speak to the development team — the communication is good. They’re based in Ukraine and yet are still able to deliver. Regarding tools, we use Jira, Confluence, and Bitbucket.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need more experienced developers; we had some developers who aren’t as good as those we currently keep in our teams — they need to ensure all their developers are at a senior level. Also, they’re based in Ukraine, and English isn’t their native language, so I feel there’s a communication gap because of it.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do a proper interview, especially if it’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Also, make sure that they choose the right developer with the right knowledge of the platform when it’s specific.

In addition, ensure they create proactive behavior while working with the developers because they’re not always proactively communicating when they face issues. They try to resolve everything on their own, which is good but sometimes they’re stuck on a particular problem without telling anyone.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the Project Manager Officer at Forbytes and I am responsible for managing several e-commerce projects. Forbytes helps companies across the globe build new digital products, improve their business strategies, and bring innovation to their domain.

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

We were starting new Account for Magento-based projects with fixed time contract and limited budget and timeline. Our primary goal was to delivery projects within time and budget for client, and establish strong relations with client for further co-operation.

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

We knew AlvaCommerce from Magento community and we were aware of their expertise.

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

We had several meetings before any project started to provide accurate estimates and plan for client. Once the project was approved, we run detailed scope meeting where we agreed Scope Of work and detailed deliveryplan. Every two weeks, we had a sprint review and demos.

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

It depends on time, average number of team was 5-6 including QAs, Back-end and Front-end developers.

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

1. After launching e-commerce flow on one client's website, we have increased traffic and online sales.
2. We helped our client to update its Magento version to 2.4 and improve Web Core Vitals.

Now, client is on the first page for the main keyword on google search.

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

We had daily standups. Every meeting finishes with a written recap. We use Slack and Clickup for management and communication.

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

Their focus on results is the most impressive.

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

No

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a web strategist for SEOMO, a digital marketing company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alva Commerce?

We needed a company that could help us migrate our site from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We hired Alva Commerce to help us migrate our existing e-commerce site from Magento 1 to Magento 2. This involved making some minor changes to the site, such as stretching the screen and some minor modifications to its theme. Aside from that, they’re tasked with doing some ad hoc customizations and maintaining the platform.

What is the team composition?

I work directly with an account manager from Alva Commerce.

How did you come to work with Alva Commerce?

We found Alva Commerce through a referral. We chose them because they specialize in Magento.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $20,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2020, and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We experienced no downtime at all — everything was instantly online from one version of Magento to another. Above all, there were no bugs, which was a success for me.

How did Alva Commerce perform from a project management standpoint?

Alva Commerce has performed really well in terms of project management. We typically communicate through Skype.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I’m most impressed with Alva Commerce’s superb communication and ability to understand our requirements and needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don’t have any complaints. I’ve never had an issue with them or their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure that you know exactly what you want before engaging with them. It’s also important to be clear about your requirements and expectations.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the president of a company that creates 3D laser-etched images inside of crystals.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alva Commerce?

We needed a custom B2B order system to service our retail partners who were selling our product. The solution involves a web portion.

What was the scope of their involvement? 

Alba Commerce developed a crystal ordering system that would allow our retailers to do a few things. First, it would take orders through a web-based real-time payment (RTP) function to produce a receipt. At the same time, it would also use that information to submit an order directly to our production room. 

One of the main challenges we needed to overcome was creating a seamless user experience so that people could customize their orders efficiently. For example, if a user uploads a photo for us to etch into a crystal, how can they communicate if they want to remove the background or zoom in without writing all of their instructions out?

Alba Commerce came up with an upload feature that’s entirely visual. Customers can see how their photo will appear within a crystal and edit it exactly how they want it. It’s an intuitive process since people are already used to photo editing tools similar to Instagram and Facebook.

Beyond that, they developed a standard consumer-facing website, using Magento with additional customizations.

What is the team composition? 

I’d consider their team to be one of their main strengths — it’s why I’ve stayed with them for so long. They structure their team by assigning an account manager who acts as my main point of contact. That person is there to take care of any request I might have, from small details to larger project vision updates.

How did you come to work with Alva Commerce?

I originally hired another programmer to take on my project, but it was a lot of work for one person. He later became employed by Alva Commerce and brought my project to their team. 

I can confirm that they’re the real deal. I actually flew over to their offices to spend a few days meeting them and seeing how they operate. They were working on other client projects, which was comforting. I felt like I could rely on them in the long term as a full-time partner.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent somewhere around $60,000–$70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

I’ve worked with them since August 2018. Over time, our project has grown organically into a solid B2B relationship as our needs and business vision have changed.

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

The best feedback would be that they’ve managed to achieve what everyone’s been scrambling to do during COVID-19: pivot to e-commerce. Thanks to them, we’ve seen a surge in traffic on our website. That’s a big deal when all of our physical stores are closed because our site is our main revenue generator.

Anecdotally, I appreciate their ability to quickly upgrade our site and servers so that we can better meet the incoming volume of demands.

For example, we realized that customers were interested in purchasing our crystals in bundles of three, which required us to figure out how to create a SKU for three separate products. Alva Commerce found a way to tie three photo uploads with three different crystal types under a single SKU and then send it correctly to our production team. 

They handle our challenges without blinking and deliver results.

How did Alva Commerce perform from a project management standpoint?

There are always delays in development projects, but the important thing is that they tell us if there’s going to be a hiccup and why. That lets us set the priority so that we can both manage the project. I’d much rather launch a feature later than expected than release a buggy product that causes the customer issues.

In addition, if they do have any recurring internal issues, they’re quick to get their management involved to resolve it. That might involve replacing a team member or changing a process. 

For example, I first asked them to update me via Skype because that was the most convenient for me. However, they realized that things were getting missed because they were buried in messages. Their team recommended that I use Jira so that I could see how many tasks were outstanding and what they were working on. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

You really get what you pay for. I’m paying a healthy amount per month, which has increased since the start of the project. As my need for a full-time account manager grew, I brought them further into my projects. Of course, I could hire someone internally and pay them the same amount, but I’d be missing out on Alva Commerce’s cognitive power.

Rather than telling them to deliver exactly what we want, I tie them in to understand our overall goals. That way, they can evaluate the solution and give their own spin on how things should be done. The outcome usually ends up better than what I’d originally thought.

On the design side, they went heavy on the backend with clean coding. They made sure that we could go back in and build upon their work if we wanted to change anything.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would love it if they kept their prices a little more competitive, but, again, I’m paying for what I get. They could also hire more people to build up their development capacity and delivery speed.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

This is more general advice when looking for a development partner, but you should know your scope of work to determine if a vendor is the right team for you. As far as I understand, Alva Commerce is a web-based programming company, so stick to their strengths. 

It’s also important to come to an agreement on costs, what comes with it, and who owns the code. Once you’re dependent on a development team, it becomes harder to move away if you decide to move elsewhere. You need to make sure you own whatever has been developed.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of Crystallize It Inc. We employ lasers to etch people's corporate awards and images with an optical crystal.

What challenge were you trying to address with Alva Commerce?

We didn't want an off-the-shelf solution for our website, so we were looking for a vendor to develop a customized e-commerce website for us.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We gave Alva Commerce our requirements, and they developed a customized backend for our website. The system supports communication between our head office and different retailers or business partners. Our customers require photos of the product and barcode scanning, so we wanted to make sure that no order information was lost during the entire process. Alva Commerce has both programmers and designers on their team, so they were able to make valuable recommendations and help us find the best solution. They're also providing SEO services for us.

What is the team composition?

We usually work through a project manager, and they've assigned a team of four people to our project.

How did you come to work with Alva Commerce?

Our previous SEO provider connected us to a team member from Alva Commerce, who helped us clean up our website for better SEO results. We were impressed with how the website looked, so we decided to give Alva Commerce the second project, which had more complex requirements.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent between $20,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2018 and the relationship is ongoing.

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

We're currently rolling out the website to the first location in a real environment. I wouldn't be presenting the website to different business owners and partners if I wasn't confident it was robust and could support hundreds of thousands of transactions.

How did Alva Commerce perform from a project management standpoint?

We have weekly sprints and they're doing a great job with reporting. Their English is excellent and they’re great communicators, so language has never been a barrier.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They're very honest and transparent. They’re proud of their work and they treat our project like it's their own. Also, they're willing to put in extra hours to make sure everything is functioning perfectly and better than we had anticipated.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I can't think of anything.