Cleveroad

BACKGROUND

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

SOLUTION

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Respondent 1: I'm the co-founder and CTO of a FinTech company. 

Respondent 2: I'm the COO of the company. We're a payments business in the FinTech space with a rewards proposition. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cleveroad?

R1: We hired Cleveroad to help us with mobile app development. I take care of all the tech, but my skillset stops when it comes to mobile applications. While I knew the technology we needed to use, I lacked the necessary skill set to develop it myself. To build a complete team, we sought an agency to provide all these services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement? 

R1: We'd already built out our initial core proposition. Our open-banking payments service has been live for a while. We aimed to add a rewards and loyalty element via a mobile app. The idea is that every time someone spends via our platform as a payment method, they accrue points. As we are UK-based, they get one point for every £1 they spend. 

The mobile app rewards users with points they can redeem for various items, ranging from Uber or Amazon vouchers to higher-tier products like Apple AirPods and even holidays. 

They utilized Flutter for the mobile app for the frontend. The backend was done in Node.js, with AWS for the infrastructure. 

What is the team composition?

R2: We had a team consisting of a backend developer, a Flutter developer, a project manager, and a business analyst. 

How did you come to work with Cleveroad?

R1: I binged on Clutch. I knew what our budget was and what we were looking for. I went through each review, and then we filtered it down. 

R2: We spoke to 15 different app providers. We were very impressed with Cleveroad's approach and communication. The proposal's level of detail and the timeliness of their quote were realistic, and it made sense to go with Cleveroad. Although they weren't the cheapest, we could see the high quality from their proposal. They instilled a lot of confidence from that initial meeting. 

How much have you invested in them?

R2: We've invested $150,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

R2: We engaged with Cleveroad from January 2023–May 2023.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

R1: The project was done incrementally, allowing us to check precisely how it worked. Even before development, when the team worked on the design and the UI/UX, we could pinpoint the bits we thought were done very well and the bits we felt needed readjusting. We had our initial idea, but the Cleveroad team gave us a lot of feedback. There were things we missed from a user experience perspective, and their suggestions ultimately improved the product. 

R2: We rarely see this in tech, but Cleveroad delivered the project on time and within budget. The outcome was exactly what we had planned, and they delivered it flawlessly. They enhanced and elevated our initial idea beyond our expectations. 

How did Cleveroad perform from a project management standpoint?

R2: Our team held a daily Google Meet standup to stay connected. We also communicated via email and Slack channels to check in on the project's progress with different team members. 

The project manager was great at providing frequent updates through Slack, and we always had direct access to the entire team if needed. Overall, it was a well-managed collaboration.

What did you find most impressive about them?

R2: The communication was outstanding, an essential aspect of the project's success. The quality of the work and the code were impressive. 

R1: Initially, we had a mini project. The team wrote the code for our core service, and I was highly impressed with the work. The developer also gave me some excellent recommendations and pointers, which I appreciated. 

When hiring a development team, you expect the development skills to be already present. Communication, management, and planning are the tougher side. Being a developer, I know you can be the best developer in the world, but you can't do well if you can't plan and manage the project. I appreciated that they offered those softer skills as well. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

R2: We've been thrilled with the service. There isn't anything that jumps out. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

R1: If you want to build something, give them a spec of what needs to be made, but don't overdo it. That was one thing I was weary of when looking for an agency. I gave a spec for the project but didn't want to go too deep into it. I expected the agency to ask questions if they didn't understand something. 

Many of the quotes we received were based on the basic requirements I handed over without any questions. That was one of the key points that put me off those agencies. They didn't fully understand what we wanted to build, but wanted to win the contract. Cleveroad asked us many questions before working on the proposal. They added their suggestions as well. They were meticulous about wanting to understand the project, making it easy to choose them as a partner. 

Cleveroad was very appreciative that we were available around the clock. Communication goes both ways and to ensure the project's success, it's also your responsibility to provide your time to the agency so that they know exactly what you want. 

R2: Echoing what my colleague has said, have an idea of what you want to bring and have the framework, but be open to their intelligent and scalable suggestions, as opposed to being fixed on precisely what you want to deliver. Cleveroad are the experts; let them add their expertise. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive of LTMAssets, a small social media company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cleveroad?

We needed help with app development.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cleveroad has developed an application for iOS and Android using Flutter. We initially provided them with a brief of the critical features and attributes we were looking for. The app has social networking, content sharing, and storage features. Users can share and store photos, videos, and texts.

Additionally, Cleveroad provides ongoing long-term support.

What is the team composition?

Our main contact is a project manager. Additionally, 11 people are involved on the team, including a customer service representative.

How did you come to work with Cleveroad?

I found them online along with other companies. Then, I narrowed down my choices based on Clutch reviews. In the end, I interviewed three companies and ultimately chose Cleveroad due to the plan and budget they provided.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $180,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in October 2022, and our relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Everything has been great. Cleveroad has done an excellent job; they’ve met all the needs we laid out.

How did Cleveroad perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve delivered on time and within budget. Moreover, Cleveroad’s team has been responsive. We mainly communicate through emails and Google Meet.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They work quickly and are very thorough.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of anything they could improve.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The key is to outline and map out as much as you can. Cleveroad is great a following exactly what you give them; the more details you can provide, the better they’ll be at quoting and executing.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Superfam is a content creator focused social media platform. Our goal is to empower people to make a living with their true passion. We will also offer a in-house token which allows users all over the world to participate in our vision. I am the founder and CEO of the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

Cleveroad helped me design and develop the whole platform. The goal was to build an online platform that is beautiful and simple yet powerful and scalable for huge userbase. They definitely nailed it.

SOLUTION

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

I knew them from a former project where they also performed very well.

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

Web based platform with features such as content replay, payment options via Stripe and MetaMask (for FIAT and Crypto payments), chat, user subscriptions, income overview, high level affiliate links and much more.

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

• Project manager
• business analyst
• designer
• solution architect
• 2 quality control engineers
• 3 front-end developers
• backend developer
• success manager

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We just launched but I already see lots of great feedbacks. We will start to scale soon.

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

We used Slack and Gmail. Communication was very quick (usually within minutes).

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

It really felt like having my own team. Everyone is dedicated and loves their job.

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

From the development side they completely nailed it. When it comes to English texts, they sometimes made minor mistakes. But texting is actually not part of their job, so that's easily forgiven.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Cognate Learning Language, a company building a customized language learning platform. Our users go to our website and fill out a questionnaire detailing their professional and personal interests. Based on their responses, we build a customized learning curriculum for them.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cleveroad?

We needed assistance in building the MVP of our platform.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cleveroad helped us develop all the software behind our platform. We already had a UI/UX designer internally, so we initially provided them with mock-ups. We also had a good idea of how we wanted our website to work, look, and feel.

From there, we divided the project into six sprint cycles, during which we developed the different parts of the platform, including an administration panel, a CMS, and the landing page for our website. Cleveroad was also in charge of building the user-facing lesson navigation, the lesson presentation, the practice modules, and basically, the whole software solution. Once they completed the development process, we collaborated on QA, testing the product in-house.

As for the technology stack, we used AWS for cloud hosting, React for frontend development, JavaScript and Node.js for backend development, and Amazon DynamoDB for the database.

What is the team composition?

We worked with eight people from Cleveroad throughout the project. Their team included a backend developer, a frontend developer, a QA engineer, a project manager, a business analyst, a designer, a DevOps engineer, and a solutions architect.

How did you come to work with Cleveroad?

I found them online while looking for web development companies. They had a really good portfolio, and they had done other education platform projects, so they seemed like a great fit for us. Then, we interviewed, and everything looked good, so we hired them.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent over $100,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around mid-July 2022, and we launched our product in November 2022. However, we plan to work with them in the future once we raise more funding because we want to add more features to the product.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Thanks to Cleveroad, we had a successful launch, and we were very happy with the product.

How did Cleveroad perform from a project management standpoint?

Cleveroad delivered the product on time and on budget, which we really appreciated. Moreover, their project management was excellent — they handled everything. Their project manager ensured that everything was kept in line and on schedule; we simply approved their plan and provided them with feedback when necessary. 

It took us a little time to get into the proper rhythm of working with an outside vendor; we had some growing pains during the first couple of sprints. However, the process was excellent once we got into a good rhythm.

We communicated via email, chats, and video calls, and we shared documents over Google Drive. Additionally, Cleveroad used a digital whiteboard, as well as other networking and productivity tools.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Cleveroad was very helpful, and they went above and beyond regarding their recommendations for our platform’s functionality. They suggested great improvements and different ways of doing things, which ultimately made the product better.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not really; we were extremely pleased with their work. However, it would be great if they were more flexible regarding their engagement policy. Currently, their requirement is to engage with them for at least one sprint cycle, but it would be helpful if they provided maintenance and support for one-off issues that could be solved in one day to avoid impacting our budget.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Know exactly what you want to build. Additionally, having a technical background is very helpful. As long as you set the right expectations, you’ll be fine.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder & CEO of Koralgo, a travel platform. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cleveroad?

I didn’t have the technical skills to develop a platform. I needed a vendor to do the entire development process, including creating the specifications, the design, and the development and managing the project itself. 

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cleveroad has developed a three-sided platform for me using Node.js and React; we’re currently in the third iteration of the project. The platform has an administrative panel, a backend that holds the content, and user-facing screens. There are quite a few algorithms, including one that generates travel itineraries. 

At the start of the project, I made it clear to Cleveroad that I needed the backend infrastructure to be quick and scalable. I also needed their frontend expertise for the UX/UI design. Their team initially used Invision for design but then migrated to Figma. Everything needed to be attractive to users. 

The initial development took about six months, but after receiving market feedback about how we needed to pivot, we did another iteration. That feedback process repeated, and we put together a third scope of work for the third iteration of the platform. 

What is the team composition?

I work with a project manager. 

How did you come to work with Cleveroad?

I selected Cleveroad after finding them on Clutch. I chose them out of the other companies I looked at because they were responsive and their prices were reasonable. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested $150,000–$250,000 with Cleveroad. 

What is the status of this engagement?

This ongoing partnership, which began in June 2020, has been going on for three years. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There are no concrete metrics, but whenever I request something from Cleveroad, they manage to deliver. Even though sometimes the costs they incur are higher than I expect, I’m not a professional, so it's not easy for me to assess potential costs. 

How did Cleveroad perform from a project management standpoint?

Generally, we communicate through Slack and direct messages with the project manager. We also have biweekly or weekly meetings with the project manager. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Cleveroad’s team is responsive and has a wide range of capabilities. Their team is big enough to provide coverage when their teammates are unavailable or when my project needs additional support. They are very flexible. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

Cleveroad team is not proactive enough. They should have given me feedback on which developments to prioritize and not let me spend money on minor features.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d advise customers to push Cleveroad to provide feedback on their goals and priorities. Push Cleveroad into improving their advisory services. 

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the product manager for a company providing supplemental nursing education to help nursing students pass their tests or improve their grades and find success in their education.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cleveroad?

We wanted to find an all-in-one shop that could help us design, develop, and implement a new web app, as well as a mobile app.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Cleveroad has helped us redesign and develop our web and mobile apps. Initially, we provided them with our legacy product, which they took, modified, and improved to bring to a more modern technology stack using Node.js and AWS. This product allows users to create accounts, purchase subscriptions, and access custom, multimodal content that can help them learn specific topics and understand the knowledge necessary for nursing school in greater depth.

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with around 10 people from Cleveroad, including a project manager, a business analyst, a designer, 3–4 developers, some mobile developers, and an account representative.

How did you come to work with Cleveroad?

We went through a research process where we looked up and worked with a couple of different companies. Then, we went through a vetting phase to get a better idea of the procedures each company used. We also got some sample work and some references from them, and we ultimately chose Cleveroad to work with us.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $200,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around June 2022, and our engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The work done by Cleveroad has helped us improve our user engagement, activity, and signups. Additionally, our new product has improved speed and functionality.

How did Cleveroad perform from a project management standpoint?

Cleveroad’s communication has been good, and they’re very organized. They constantly ensure that projects are running on schedule and organized according to priority. We use Slack, G Suite, Jira, GitHub, and Bitbucket for communication and project management.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Cleveroad’s strength has been their great communication skills and proactive approach. They keep me up to date regarding timelines and provide suggestions and recommendations to help improve the product instead of just following instructions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, everything has been great so far.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I highly recommend them; they’re a great company to work with.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Just Play, a sports technology company. We provide services for people who are looking to play social team sports like basketball and soccer.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cleveroad?

We needed a company that could develop mobile apps for us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We work through about 150 physical venues where our games take place, and we built our own platform to manage everything, including payments, events, players, and bookings. We built that separately and not with Cleveroad over the period of a couple of years. 

What we engaged Cleveroad to do was to build our user-facing mobile apps to then use to interact with our platform. The apps allow users to book in, RSVP, interact with their teammates, find out their game times, and receive notifications.

The deliverables were actually four different native apps. As part of our business model, we've split into two brands: Just Play and One Game. Cleveroad delivered two native apps for each brand: one for iOS and one for Android.

What is the team composition?

We worked with six people from Cleveroad, including an iOS developer, an Android developer, a UI/UX designer, a project manager, a QA person, and a solutions architect.

How did you come to work with Cleveroad?

We found Cleveroad through Clutch. We put out a light version of the scope to five different development agencies that had good reviews. We then asked them to engage us in a dialog about what technologies they would use to execute it and what they thought the timeline and budget would be. Based on those interactions, we decided to go with Cleveroad.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $210,000 in total.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on this project from April 2019–April 2022.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

Cleveroad was able to deliver all of the feature sets that we wanted for our users. So far, we’ve got 130 ratings, an average of 4.6 stars, and over 10,000 downloads on the iOS App Store and 4.7 stars and over 5,000 downloads on the Google Play Store. We’ve also had very few issues in terms of bugs and errors within the apps.

Overall, having a stable app in a live environment that our customers enjoy using was a big part of our measure of success for this project.

How did Cleveroad perform from a project management standpoint?

Cleveroad performed well in terms of project management. They were responsive, flexible, and proactive when it came to solving problems. The whole project was broken up into sprints, and Cleveroad did a good job of making it clear where the project was at, how the team was progressing, and the issues they were dealing with.

Moreover, since we're a bootstrap business, we had a strict budget for this project. Cleveroad’s ability to execute the project within the initial budget and timeline was very impressive.

We used Figma for the designs and Slack for communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were impressed with Cleveroad’s technical competence and skills in being able to solve problems and execute what we wanted to do at a high level. Nothing was too hard for them to do — whenever we wanted to solve a problem or deliver something in a particular way, they did their best to do it how we wanted.

But they were also not afraid to push back and make us aware of the technical options that we have so that we could make more informed decisions.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, we have no complaints. We were really happy with their work.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

You need to plan to invest the time from your side to be in regular communication with them and answer questions so that the development team has all the information they need to work quickly.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m one of the founders of my company. We’re building a mobile and web app for hiring construction workers in the US and managing the entire process of getting hired within a construction company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Cleveroad?

There’s a major problem finding qualified, skilled labor in the construction industry, as there’s no real platform. Cleveroad has built an iOS and Android app, as well as a web portal.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The solution allows customers to log in and post jobs and review applications. We’re using geo-based location services, and the website is built on an API that allows employers to access a database of thousands of construction workers.

We’re in the middle of Android development right now, but the iOS version is live in the App Store. They’ve developed everything from scratch. In the next few months, we’re going to launch a marketing campaign and push out our services.

We used them to do the coding of our idea. They put in as much effort to the design and processes and flow of the app as we did. Not only were they writing the code for us, but they helped us along with the ideas.

What is the team composition?

We initially worked with two people, but that’s expanded to five at the moment.

How did you come to work with Cleveroad?

We budgeted the assets to be built in the United States knowing the going hourly rate, but after researching developers in Ukraine, we found them to be much more cost-effective.

I came across several large blogs that mentioned Cleveroad as a well-known firm in Ukraine for mobile app development. They’d worked with a couple of large clients, and that made us feel more comfortable.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around $70,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We’ve been working together since January 2020. My partners and I have come up with other ideas to improve our ecosystem, so what started with a targeted app and no website or Android app turned into an effort that’s ten times its original size.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The feedback has been excellent so far, both internally and with our test customers as far as the design, usability, and functionality.

The design team and the UI team is phenomenal. We seem to work very well together. I’ve been a developer myself for many years, and I know good quality work and great design when I see it.

How did Cleveroad perform from a project management standpoint?

We had weekly meetings, and sometimes twice weekly, including different forms of communication: Zoom, Slack, WhatsApp, etc.

They’ve never missed a single deadline, not even with the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. They’re using InVision for the prototype, as well as a third-party website that we go to to approve the design layout.

We don’t have one set collaboration tool, but email has worked best for us recently.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their team is very smart and intuitive. They’re able to ask the right questions of us to make the app and the other products that they’re developing better. Additionally, the way they're managing the situation now just blows my mind. They haven’t missed a single meeting or deadline. I’ve recommended them to several people. The product hasn’t suffered.

The best thing that they do is keep us on track, following up to make sure we answer their emails and not letting anything slip through the cracks.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’ve dealt with a lot of mobile app development teams over the years, and I can’t say anything bad about Cleveroad. The only thing may be getting more of an internal collaboration system, as, right now, we’re spread across a number of tools for communication. It doesn’t bother us, and it’s not a dealbreaker.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If I was recommending them to someone, I would say that they needed to have a full-time resource dedicated to whatever Cleveroad is doing. Their team is fast, and they ask a lot of questions so don’t make them wait for responses. Stay in constant communication.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

As the founder of both Unified Potential, Inc. and Salmon Upstream, LLC my goal is to develop and implement technical solutions to promote the health of communities and the people that live there.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

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

By client request, we designed a novel social media platform aimed at providing a healthy environment for people involved in any type of activity or competition. When the client was unable to devote the resources to the project, we decided to develop the platform ourselves and reached out to Cleveroad to build it for us.

SOLUTION

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

I have worked on and off with Cleveroad since 2016 and have always found them to be creative, professional, and capable. For example, they are constantly on top of the rapidly evolving software arena and were already versed in Flutter whereas other companies were more interested in continuing to use languages with which they were more familiar. Even during the project they were learning and applying new skills to our build.

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

Backend Firebase and Flutter-based mobile application for both iOS and Android, DeltaSport is a secure social media platform that has all of the functionality that people have come to expect in a platform of this type.

However, the web-based admin panels allow much more stringent control over content creation and user account management than similar offerings, thereby expanding the applicability to organizations for young people including public school systems and youth sports. We are already working on adding the functionality to allow safe and secure usage by children under 13.

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

Project manager, 2 senior designers, customer liaison, and multiple developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

The finished project met every expectation and actually looks and "feels" better than expected!

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

Extremely professional and detail-oriented. They stayed directly on task and completed the project slightly ahead of schedule despite their country being invaded!

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

The entire team seemed genuinely interested in the project and the outcome. Their work ethic and devotion to their craft is simply in another league. These are some of the hardest-working young people I have had the pleasure to interact with.

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

No.