Hestabit Technologies

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a social media platform that helps content creators share and sell valuable content.

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

We hired Hestabit to create a bespoke website from scratch with complex features.

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

We came across Hestabit online and decided to send them a message with our ideas. Someone got back to us the same day to arrange a call.

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

We contracted Hestabit to build us a website from scratch using HTML, CSS, JAVA SCRIPT, PHP & MYSQL. Features such as; messaging system, media sharing, subscribing, blocking etc were all included. The idea of the website was for it to act like a social media platform, similar to Facebook.

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

We only spoke with around 5 people briefly for our project. We spoke with one person who was our main point of contact throughout the project. They were all either developers or managers.

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

Hestabit managed to most of the features coded in but unfortunately they made a mess of the code with many inconsistencies which has left us with a website we can't do anything with.

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

The management and communication at Hestabit is done through WhatsApp or email, but is absolutely appalling. A website that should've taken 4 months took a total of 15. None of the deadlines were completed on time and communication was very poor. Sometimes we were left waiting hours for meetings which were scheduled for specific times and most of the time we were left wondering where pieces of work are.

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

There is nothing impressive unfortunately. They are unique in that I have never dealt with such an awful company before.

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

Hestabit need to brush up on their English skills because there are a number of spelling errors within the code of my website and displayed on the user interface. Hestabit need to employ developers that work together on a project to prevent inconsistencies in code rather than asking developers to work independently.

Hestabit need to manage and schedule calls properly and make sure they are not double booked or in meetings when they schedule calls with customers. Hestabit need to stick to contracts and complete work within a timely manor. My project took almost 4 times the time it should have. This is unacceptable. Hestabit need to brush up on their manors and respect.

Many of the employees can be very pushy when it comes to making payments or removing reviews. We have been threatened and patronised by Hestabit over the past year that we have worked with them. There are probably many more things they need to fix or do differently.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m an executive at an IT development company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hestabit Technologies?

We had a client who needed web development, so we needed someone to help us with that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hestabit Technologies is developing and designing a web and mobile app for us, including the UI/UX and backend. In terms of features, they’re applying a survey-type quiz solution for the wellness space.

What is the team composition?

We’ve been working with a project manager, a technical analyst, and a team of developers.

How did you come to work with Hestabit Technologies?

We found them online, and I chose them because they offered end-to-end services; that appealed to me.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent around £5,000 (approximately $6,650 USD) with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

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

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

The beta test on the website has received excellent feedback in terms of design and development, which makes us happy with their work.

How did Hestabit Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good, and they’ve met every deadline; we have a dedicated project manager who regularly keeps in touch with us and updates us on deliverables and milestones. In terms of communication, we use emails.

What did you find most impressive about them? 

They have a complete team that goes from designers to developers.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Try a pilot project first to see how your engagement works, but I’m sure they’ll deliver.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are a data processing and data solution company. I'm the project manager.

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

Our client's website was 10 years old and not optimised with all new features and data processing. We are upgrading their site as well as set up better data structure. Because we are specialised in data we need someone to help get the other part of infrastructures right. Hestabit works on this part and our main goal is to get the upgrading and integration completed before we start working on data.

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

We searched online for web app developers who can work together with our team. They need to adopt a flexible work pattern as well as good at communication. After interviewing them, we chose this vendor based on their past projects, good communication and teamwork and their skillsets.

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

We had a kick-off meeting to discuss our requirement and objectives. From there, we send all technologies used backend or frontend for them to start. They quickly get the concept and started working just the second day. After a few iterations and feedbacks, their team worked on our shell and developed an informational e-commerce site with full functionalities and services. They updated the content to reflect our client's business and created many new functions based on the new features to suits business needs better.

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

A project manager was our main point of contact throughout the process. There were also 1 full stack developer, 1 dev ops and a front end designer working behind the scenes.

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

Clients love the updated platform and happy that they can now have more flexibilities on their website also get more from their user data. And they now have a better understanding of our services.

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

We create requirement sheets to divide requirements into small tasks for them to work on and track progress. We had daily stand-ups with their project manager, who communicated with the rest of the team. Their devs also attended our internal meetings to discuss issues, progress and tasks. We used Slack, Zoom, Jira, and GitHub to coordinate, and they worked well with our team.

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

They respond fast and I'm very pleased for the fast response especially for hotfix. They are very professional and known what they are doing. For some difficulties we encounter, the project manager suggested a team from them to involve, which in the end helped us solved the hidden issue.

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

When the site first launched, there were some minor bugs. I believe more testing is needed. When we let them know, they were quick to fix the issues though.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I own a boutique marketing and design agency.

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

Working with a variety of clients we found ourselves in an unexpected upsurge of wordpress web development needs in a market in which hiring had become especially difficult.

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

We looked on upwork at a number of candidates and found few with the right mix of communication, capacity, and cost. It seemed there were very clear trade offs in most every candidate and it was frustrating as I could not expose my client base to that kind of risk. Then we met Hesta. Hesta was clear, engaging, and capable, at a cost we could digest.

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

We developed several website with hesta, all within the wordpress framework, most of reasonable complexity. hesta is a professional team and handled the problems well.

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

We worked with two members of the team, a developer and a manager.

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

All projects were completed on time and clients satisfied.

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

Hesta was a great team member and met our requirements in every way. Notably they were adaptable to our team processes of the use of Harvest for time tracking and Asana for communication and PM.

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

Hesta provided a team member that truly became part of our team, which is a noteworthy accomplishment.

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

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of a UK-based hiring platform called Gradbay. We have two sides to the business; a recruitment agency side and a DIY hiring platform, or a multimedia job board.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hestabit Technologies?

Hestabit has been helping us build our DIY hiring platform.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We focus on graduate hiring, which is a niche space in the UK. Our approach was to build a more interactive process, both for job seekers and for employers to find each other. It’s essentially a marketplace essentially for jobs — there’s one side for job seekers who are graduates in this case, and on the other side you have employers that are looking to hire them. Both groups sign up and there are dashboards, as well as a backend that they log into. 

There’s also an onboarding process that asks those users to build their profile out depending on whether they’re looking for a job or looking to hire — with the job seekers, it’s an interactive experience. If applicants want to add video profiles or answer video questions that are pre-set by employers, they can upload those directly to the site or through WhatsApp, which links to the dashboard.

On the employer side, we built some tools to help with companies hiring diverse members of staff or at least a diverse network of applicants. When an employer comes along and they copy and paste their job ad onto the system, they can click a couple of tools that will read the job description.

Hestabit used JavaScript to build the website from scratch. The original complexity was that we had built an initial form of the site, so they had to come in and try to help unpack some of the work that had been done already.

They also made specific design suggestions based on the requirements we gave them — they helped design specific landing pages which are normally for a large enterprise client. On top of that, they did the user testing and built us an automated user testing tool so whenever we push an update on the site, we can instantly check that nothing is breaking as a result.

Moreover, we also had to conform to the data protection policies of a big brand group. They wanted to check if we had the right encryption levels in place for our servers, and requested a two-factor authentication for all users of the platform. Hestabit helped us integrate these requirements, and were more than happy to answer technical questions for the brief to get sorted out.

What is the team composition?

We have a business analyst who is also the project manager, a full-time backend developer, a UX specialist, a QA tester, and a designer. 

How did you come to work with Hestabit Technologies?

I started looking for an agency that would have more capacity to deal with what we needed and found Hestabit on a website called PeoplePerHour — they were rated highly on that platform, and I really liked some of the work they’d done. They had won an award but most importantly, the examples of dashboards they built and designed were very similar to what I was looking for.

How much have you invested in them?

We’ve spent around £115,000 ($157,100 USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

The project began in August 2020 and it’s still ongoing. They provide us with maintenance, regular penetration testing, and quarterly reviews. They also monitor any kind of unusual activity on the site.

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

I would say they’ve had a 60–70% positive impact on our business since our user base has grown considerably. When they joined, we only had under 25,000 users but a year later, we’re now at 72,000 active users. Additionally, our clickthrough rate has increased to about a 65%, compared to the 9% we had before. That’s because our customers are easily associating our messages with the quality of the product.

The testing tool has been massively helping us minimize downtime because they took over someone else’s code. This means that we can move faster, as well as save money since we don’t have to keep spending when the team manually checks all of the codings. 

How did Hestabit Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re very transparent, and they will always tell you in advance if they think that something needs more time or resources. They’re dealing with a startup where things are coming out of the blue, and I highly appreciate that. There have been times when something has taken them a week or two more than anticipated, but I don’t necessarily put that down to them — that has more to do with the fact that they’ve picked things up on the back of someone else’s work. 

We use Trello for project management and communication. We also have a WhatsApp group with the main principals and have weekly video calls to check in and discuss certain aspects of the project.

Furthermore, even though there’s a time difference between our companies, there have only been a couple of issues regarding communication. They’ve worked midnights and they always go above and beyond the scope without complaints — Hestabit is always happy to help and that alone makes them a really good team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We’re impressed with how much they get involved with us as a customer — they don’t see us as just any other project and from day one, their process has always had a personal touch.

On top of that, they take the ideas we mention in passing and improve upon them. They’re really passionate about our product and treat our company like it’s their own.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would say that their services could be more cost-efficient. I’m not a developer nor do I have their level of technical expertise, so I don’t know the quality of their work behind the scenes. However, the way I experience the product as a user, I can say that their process is really robust.

There have also been odd times when we would have miscommunications and details would get missed, but this is just a very minor issue.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

If you’re going to use Hestabit’s services, immerse them in your business as soon as possible. They have a big team and they can deliver certain tasks on numerous levels, so the partnership would work better if you bring the process under one roof.

Personally, I would use them fully or not at all, because it seems to work better when they’re a 100% partner.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the owner of the company. We’re electrical contractors.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hestabit Technologies?

They’re building our website.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hestabit Technologies has provided electrical installation work and created strategic locations within our website to help with SEO. It’s been a long process, and they’ve given us full attention and been thorough with their work.

They’re currently developing our website using a template with customizable pages, and the content is SEO-rich.

What is the team composition?

We have 4–5 people on the team. The project manager is our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Hestabit Technologies?

It was a free, pay-per-hour freelance. They asked the right questions and showed they were flexible. Hestabit Technologies didn’t make any assumptions, and overall, they wanted to achieve our goal.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve probably spent $4,500.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began our partnership in January 2021, and we’re still working with them.

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

It’s still a work in progress, so we haven’t had any results. Nonetheless, they’ve provided a good service, and the team is excellent. Overall, they execute the work and make sure we’re happy, which is great.

How did Hestabit Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good. Hestabit Technologies’ team is honest, and they do what they say. The problem is on our end. I don’t have the necessary time to give them all the answers, which puts a lot of pauses in the project.

We typically communicate through WhatsApp. When we have meetings through Google, there are many team members within the call.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very responsive, and they’re always available. Moreover, they genuinely care about doing a good job.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There isn’t anything. They’re pretty good.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you have a clear picture of what you want. Otherwise, you’ll be there a long time.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the director of Disabled United, providing online services for people with disabilities

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

Our website was outdated and we hired Hestabit Technologies to redevelop our website.

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

We chose this company based on their portfolio of past projects, skills and cost estimate.

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

Some features of the Project included Speed optimization, implementing logics to show news and features sections and. enabling ads. The technology used is Meteor JS, Node Js, React JS, CSS

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

Two senior developers, One DevOps resource and One Project manager.

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

A fantastic team to work with. They have been a revelation to us. We were struggling to upgrade our website but after choosing HestaBit Technologies all our worries were over. They always delivered no matter what challenges they were facing. They even worked on problems caused by other third parties or previous development and our seniors brainstormed and fixed them as well.

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

The project manager did a great job. Very communicative and quick response time. We used Skype and Slack. Timelines were well communicated and met.

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

Awesome to work with and excellent knowledge and communication

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

The technolody used on my webste is very outdated with many bugs and issues. They were quick to point out those errors and resolve them.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the CEO of a Digital Marketing Agency. We specialise in helping brands have an online presence.

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

We needed to hire a team of developers to help us build a fully transactional website for a women's clothing brand. We wanted to build on the Magento platform and after reviewing quite a few companies Hestabit were within budget and we were confident that they could develop and design the website we needed.

How did you select Hestabit Technologies and what were the deciding factors?

We searched online and also put out a proposal on PPH which they responded to with a solution and project plan in a timely fashion.

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

We had various kick off meetings via Google Hangout to map out the scope of work, we also introduced key milestones while also ensuring that our key objectives were met. A staging site was set up to ensure that all points were tested thoroughly.

How many people from the Hestabit Technologies team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We had a UX Designer, web developer and a project manager where we had daily stand-up meetings to ensure all was on track.

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

After launching the website we had a great reaction from the clients customer base and sales started immediately which continue to go strength to strength.

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

Even though they was based in India and we were based in the UK. The communication was excellent and all key objectives were understood and we had daily stand up calls to ensure that all was on track.

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

Firstly, they had great experience in developing an e-com website. They were hands-on to deal with any issues in a timely fashion and resolve a few minor server issues.

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

No I think they handled the project very well and we are going to continue to work with them going forward on a maintenance contract.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We provide a SaaS compliance document solution to B2B customers in the trade and construction industry. I am the founder and managing director.

For what projects/services did your company hire Hestabit Technologies ?

We hired Hestabit Technologies to develop and launch a web platform with an API integration.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal was to launch the platform to our B2B customers. It needed to integrate with Stripe and a third-party SaaS company's API. The original codebase used React Native and Node.js, but needed a new architecture for file storage on Amazon Web Services (AWS). Creating a good solution was pivotal to the company's success.

How did you select this vendor?

I selected Hestabit Technologies after researching and talking with them. They understood our project's technical and business complexities. I also spoke with one of their long-term customers, who had a similar build and was impressed with their work.

Can you go into detail about the services they provided and the scope of the project?

The team turned existing code into a platform to support many clients. They created a subscription signup process that used Stripe and a project quota system. They also implemented email points using SES and set up the AWS platform with Elastic Bean and S3. I provided wireframes with the look and feel I liked, which we tweaked along the way. Their team continuously contributed new designs.

What was the team composition?

The team mainly consisted of the project manager and one web developer. Others stepped in for specialized roles, such as design, Stripe integration, and AWS development operations. The team stayed consistent throughout the project.

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

Without their relentless effort to launch this product, the whole business would have stalled. They invested in our idea from the beginning and exceeded my expectations.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The project management was excellent. I communicated with my project manager on Skype almost every working day. We had no language issues, which was a welcome surprise.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

I appreciated their dedication to providing the best solution possible. I was also impressed with their enthusiastic, skillful suggestions. They weren't afraid to push back if they thought something could be done better.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

They were great, so I don't have any complaints. They could use a project management solution like Trello to create a faster feedback loop. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the managing director and co-founder of an online review platform. Our website allows people to review businesses.

What challenge were you trying to address with Hestabit Technologies?

We needed help with building our website. We were looking for a company that could take on the volume of work, as our site would be visited by hundreds of thousands of people per day. We needed a company that was capable of working with us, doing what we asked, and turning our ideas into reality.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Hestabit built the site from scratch as well as the mobile app for iOS and Android. Hestabit helped us launch the app in the App Store, which was part of the agreement. They helped us with the functionality, design, and putting them live.

Initially, we sat down for approximately four hours and went through every detail of how we wanted it and the website’s functionality. We left the design of the site up to them, as that is their area. When we were pleased, they took it to the design stage, showing us each page individually in a JPEG format to see if we liked the layout. We made changes based on our likes and dislikes. Once we had agreed upon layout, they set it up in a wireframe and developed the site.

We had a rough idea of what we wanted as far as the logo went, but we left the design to Hestabit. They came back with approximately 15 logos for us to choose from, and we decided on one.

What is the team dynamic?

I have been dealing with Prashant, the co-founder and one of the top people at Hestabit. He helps us out, and we have been lucky in that respect. We have asked him to give us a project manager to take the pressure off him a bit as he was doing too much himself. This is not a negative comment about him, as he really wanted to help us by doing more work. We have been very happy with how Prashant works and his ability to produce what we want him to produce.

How did you come to work with Hestabit Technologies?

We found Hestabit through PeoplePerHour.com. We initially had five companies that we were choosing from, spread across the world from the U.K. to India. I had conversations with each of them and found Prashant to be very professional. A language barrier can sometimes be an issue, but he spoke English very well, which was extremely important. We had a good feeling about Hestabit and started work almost right away.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in early February 2017, and we are still currently working daily with them.

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

The website has only been live for a month, but we have had very positive feedback for both the website and the app. With a project of this size, there is always going to be small bugs. Nothing will be 100% perfect, and we expect that. We haven’t had any critical areas to complain about.

How did Hestabit Technologies perform from a project management standpoint?

It is nice to see someone care about their work, and Hestabit genuinely cares about our project. I usually communicate with Prashant, probably seven days a week. He took the project on as it was so big. He felt he should do the work himself rather than leave it to a project manager. It has been a bespoke job due to the amount of work we had done. We get along extremely well. He takes pride in what he is doing, which is one huge thing I like to see in any company I deal with.

Hestabit has been accommodating about sticking to our budget; they have been more than helpful. Deadlines have been missed, but they have also turned massive aspects of the project around within very short spans of time. If we have 10–20 tasks going on, one task might be three days late and another might be four days early. If they weren’t punctual and didn’t get the work done, we wouldn’t be using them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their knowledge of the industry is exceptionally good, much better than what we expected. When I approach Prashant with a scenario, he will come back to me within two days with a solution, which has been hugely important for my business.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Initially, Prashant was working 20 hours a day on our project, desperately trying to get it done for us. We didn’t realize he was doing all the work himself. The reason he was doing it all was because we had set too low a budget. We can’t pin that all on Hestabit, it is down to us as well. Other than us getting the manpower we needed for that reason, we wouldn’t have any complaints at all.