Ralabs

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I co-founded Traxo, a platform for musicians and bands to compose music. I oversee business development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Ralabs?

The platform needed several improvements for artists’ project menus, audio adjustments, and editing tools.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted the UI and UX to be more user-friendly. In addition, we aimed to increase conversion rates for new customer registrations.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

We met the co-founder at a 2017 conference in Amsterdam; she made a good first impression. We kept in contact with her as we evaluated other vendors for this project. We decided Ralabs would be a valuable partner.

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

We have a limited scope for an approximately one-month process. They’ve enhanced the UI design and developed features for the audio editor. The team has coded in Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, Backbone.js, and CoffeeScript.

What was the team composition?

The team includes a project manager and a programmer. We’ve also interacted with the CEO and co-founder in the project’s early stages.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

There are no measurable results because the new features aren’t live. However, deliverables have been timely and error-free. They’ve also stuck to cost estimates.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The process has been transparent and well-structured. They provide daily updates via Slack and email. The team also holds weekly video demonstrations on Skype.

They’re excellent communicators; the developer never hesitates to answer questions or give recommendations. The CEO and co-founder are also readily accessible.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They’re a young and ambitious company. Their friendliness and strong work ethic distinguish them in a competitive market. Furthermore, they’re genuine and open-minded.

Are there any areas where they can improve?

There are no aspects of the collaboration to criticize.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a startup company working mostly with virtual reality & IoT. We have a lot of mathematical logic and machine learning and artificial intelligence under the box. The idea is to reinvent the smart home idea and go beyond the current limits. I’m co-founder and creator of the initial idea. For the most part, I’m focused on and responsible for sales to find new customers on the business to business side.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We wanted to build a complex app that supports the control of various IoT devices in people’s homes. We had a core concept at the beginning for an app in the smart home space. We knew that there were going to be a lot of math related challenges on the technical implementation so we requested help from Ralabs. We wanted them to make an MVP that would support a specific set of physical devices – smart TVs, thermostats, and few other devices. Additionally, we asked for their support with branding design. We have a background in branding design, but they helped us with that as well. Ralabs has both great design and engineering teams.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

We researched companies using public resources and company lists, shortlisted companies, compared them, and made initial requests to each and background checks of each. We were pleasantly surprised by the speed of interaction with Ralabs, the answers they proposed, and their technical ideas. After the first technical call with Ralabs’ engineers, we were ready to start work with them as soon as possible. We were impressed by their desire to help us.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We had already built a simpler app without Ralabs to test the idea and that app got a lot of great responses. So we asked Ralabs to look over that app, and without reusing it, build something similar but with much more complex features. To be honest, we didn’t have the technical knowledge of how our ideas could be implemented, or if it was possible at all. Software engineers from Ralabs investigated different topics and proposed the most suitable technical solutions per our requests. They also made a technical architecture - a skeleton for future app build outs and all of the related estimates. We were extremely happy with their initial work and came back to Ralabs with more development requests. The resources are skilled in Python, Node.js and React.

What is the team dynamic?

We hired a project manager, an engineering team, and QA testers. It was a great working experience from the initial request through to each demo for every milestone. They’re really good! The software engineering team consists of 5 developers, 1 project manager, and a QA analyst. Sometimes we also involve UI/UX resources, and more part-time QA engineers.

How much have you invested with them?

The total price was about $150,000 for 5 months of intensive development.

What is the status of this engagement?

After about five months of development, we completed the scope of work and the app in June [2017]. They’re supporting us currently while we work on sales activities on our side. We have work still to be done, so we’re slowly doing new feature development, but mostly they’re just supporting us right now.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

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

We received a really good minimum viable product as we expected. It is ready to use and ready to sell. Ralabs also proposed new features, and we built them as well. They really shined when at one point we had a lack of data – Ralabs proposed a really good idea of how to setup our app to get more data for testing. We got incredible results and really appreciated that! They actually make the app work better and better every day.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They are transparent in all things: development, communication, and management. Also, a great characteristic of Ralabs’ software engineers and the owners is their initiative. They try to understand your business and solve your business needs, instead of blindly developing software. I appreciate it! One more thing that I want to highlight - it looks like nothing is impossible for Ralabs. Seriously. When we asked them to investigate the car integration for future development (with the Tesla S), they responded honestly that they didn’t have previous experience with that and it could be a challenge. But after just one week they provide a comparison table that we wanted.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I’m just thinking about price, but I think everything was fair and the price-quality ratio is really great. Ralabs is really good when it comes to management, communication, and development processes. They just need to continue work with the same (or even better) performance and quality as they have right now. We’re planning a to work together on a couple more small opportunities related to smart home projects.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

The goal of the application was to manage advertising companies. The main aim of the project is to simplify control of the advertising process. The project consists of three parts. The first part are bots that parse social networks and many other sites with ads full time. The second part was setting up an admin panel for operations with internal objects. The final part was developing the front-end side for viewing shared object pages. The panel gives the possibility to CRUD [create, read, update, and delete] and publishing operations, generating QR codes with URLs for external pages on the front-end side and contains two types of objects. All browsers are supported based on the WebKit, Presto, and Gecko engines and IE [Internet Explorer] 8 or greater. The front-end pages are oriented for mobile devices and use all the benefits from responsive web design. It also included front-end pages that have desktop, mobile, and tablet device detection. I am the founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We tried to find somebody technical who could help us to build the app. We had the desire and technology vision, but we didn't have a team to implement our needs. Ralabs helped us to convert our abstract vision into real services.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We were completely open to any technology vision and approach, so we accepted numerous proposals from Ralabs developers. The initial scope consisted of end-user pages with a list of ads and to make a super-responsive page for users. The next sprints included the building of bots and increasing the functionality of admin pages. Until the end of the development sprints, about 95 percent of the covered sites had advertisements, and we're able to detect almost 100 percent of ads anywhere.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

We looked at a few companies but, after a technical interview and just talking with their CEO [Andrew Yas], we decided to choose them. Also, they had good feedback on their public profiles. They were able to build a test application that was so awesome that no other company could compare.

How much have you invested with Ralabs?

We had a team consisting of 6 developers. The total cost was in a range between $20,000 and $60,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started at the end of 2015 and finished a few months ago [2016].

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

Everything has been a success – starting from management, development, testing, and so on. They covered all of our needs.

What did you find most impressive about Ralabs?

They have a clean technical vision and awesome management. They're able to meet deadlines.

Are there any areas Ralabs could improve?

Any business wants to get their product done faster and cheaper. However, I think the price wasn't that high, and they delivered the product by the deadlines.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are a coding school. We are a school for people who want to become IT [information technology] specialists. We also train people who are already working in the IT field and want to be more productive and become experts. I'm the CEO.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

We have many applications, beginning with our home page and site for internal usage, plus all of the systems for automatic calculations and information regarding our students. One of the latest things that Ralabs helped us to build was a system for automatically tabulating and verifying homework for our students.

Sometimes, we use a peer-to-peer approach for homework. In our school, we have classes where you can have up to 10 students. We have year-round peer-to-peer coding verification. It starts with students checking their classmates' homework. After that, we have the next level, where our technical mentors with experience check the homework. If it were necessary, the next level beyond that would be a teacher or other teachers from other courses who can check the homework and provide comments and instruction for each student if it's needed. For smaller pieces of homework, we use an application to do this automatically, and Ralabs helped us to plan and build the application to do that.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Ralabs was more like technical support of all the things that we are doing. We have a bunch of tools for internal usage, and they helped us to implement them. For instance, they previously helped us with something related to Google Calendar. They created the relation between Google Calendar and our CRM [customer relationship management] system, which allowed us to manage our groups easily, track our students' information, and not leave out or lose any student information. Ralabs worked with us to provide more technical help. Most of the platform utilized MEAN stack. The primary languages involved are PHP, NodeJS & Express and Angular for frontend. Services included GitHub, Amazon Web Services and Docker. Integrations involved include ZohoCRM, Google Spreadsheets, Firebase and Trello.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

I think our friends recommended them. Before that, we had found some companies and had consultations that formed our basis of comparison. They are also located near us. We wanted to work with somebody who is near. Before we worked with them on anything else, we gave them a small technical task. They built it successfully, so we decided to work with them. They actually made improvements to our original idea. What they made was really awesome.

How much have you invested with Ralabs?

We've used 3 or 4 developers. It has probably cost around $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them at the start of this year in January 2016.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We teach about 100 students and, in each group, we use all of the tools that they built. Any tool that they helped us to build was successful and is being used currently. It truly helped us to be a good school. I think all the work we've done with them has been successful.

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

We use goals to measure their results. We decided not to use some complex approach. We wanted to use some Scrum methodologies. They recommended using Kanban, so we did that. We decided to use Trello, and we track all information on the boards. Also, after we integrated and used Trello in our tools, we began using Trello for CRM functions. They provide us help on project management, but we do not have a project manager from their side.

We have project management from our side. They provide us help for project management and help to set up the processes that we use to manage projects, but we do that ourselves.

What did you find most impressive about Ralabs?

I think something probably related to the design aspect – from the UI [user interface] point of view. We'll give them the overall idea, and they propose something that's a great fit for the idea. They also can convert an idea to the technology stack with the right UI. They also can build a UI that is awesome from the user experience side. It's cool for the end user to use the systems they can build.

Are there any areas Ralabs could improve?

They could probably do the work faster. They're always trying to complete projects before the deadline, and we understand that it's not always possible. It's not often late but, sometimes, they go beyond deadlines. It's almost always on time. So far, they are almost perfect, so we continue working with them.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

MMA Center is a mixed fighting training center and competition organization. We started in the Western Ukraine region and then expanded ourselves to the entire Ukraine. We have training centers in five cities and organize tournaments around all of Ukraine. In terms of our regional office, we have 50 people, but in terms of all of Ukraine, it’s almost 300 employees. I'm the co-founder.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Ralabs?

Ralabs designed for us a web application to schedule our training and synchronize it with all cities. We wanted to introduce the system so people who travel from city to city can continue their training within different cities and not lose anything while they are moving or if they cannot attend their training in their city. Also, we want to implement a PayPal system and WebMoney system to provide users the opportunity to pay for our services online. This system also includes an employee management system with everything we need to have such as tax calculations, etc.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

The application was separated into two parts: the admin tools for employees, internal scheduling and management and the client part, where the clients can read news, can take part in meetings, tournaments, and also track their training systems, their trainers' schedules, and more.

How did you come to work with Ralabs?

We found them on Upwork. We are not tech oriented people but the guys did very well understanding how we described the problem and what we wanted as a final product. The communication was good. They were always on Skype. They also respond to e-mail. They do not fail deadlines, and that was the main reason it was good. 

How much have you invested with Ralabs?

A little bit more than $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them eight or nine months ago. They finished our product in August, but we still haven’t published it to our internal programs.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

We haven’t started using the product because of internal issues inside our company. We bought one hosting package for this site and then we decided to move to another host. We've had some problems with deploying the project, but it’s not related to Ralabs.

How did Ralabs perform from a project management standpoint?

We used JIRA, and we made a Skype call every Friday. They performed pretty well. Everything was in accordance with our terms. They don’t fail anything. There were not many bugs inside the product.

What did you find most impressive about Ralabs?

The communication was very good. They asked about everything, despite the description we gave them. It was our fault that the description was poor. The guys were investigating every point of the user interface. They were interested in developing what we really needed. The communication was the best part of that. I’m not technical. As a user and as a customer, I am satisfied with the product I received.

Are there any areas Ralabs could improve?

I don’t know. Maybe they can improve something, but I’m not a tech person.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Product & Engineering of StrideUp

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Residential and buy-to-let financing for customers in the UK

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ralabs to accomplish?

• QA testing

SOLUTION

How did you find Ralabs?

Referral

Why did you select Ralabs over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Referred to me

How many teammates from Ralabs were assigned to this project?

1 Employee

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Provide testing capabilities to ensure our product was comprehensively tested and our releases were successfully deployed to production without incident.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Successful test cases written and executed
• Number of bugs which were found in production post release

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

• Fantastic communication and effort from the team member which was provided by RALabs. Always delivered tasks on schedule.

What was your primary form of communication with Ralabs?

Virtual Meeting

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

Ralabs has been very easy to work with and flexible to our requirements by giving us multiple options to work with.

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

Nope.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Director of Equilibrio Weight Loss & Wellness Spa

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Weight Loss and Wellness Spa

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ralabs to accomplish?

• Website design and development

SOLUTION

How did you find Ralabs?

Referral

Why did you select Ralabs over others?

• Referred to me
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Ralabs were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Our company, Equilibriowellnessspa Boca Raton, FL, partnered with Ralabs.org to design our website, including both front-end and back-end development. We had an amazing experience working with Ralabs.org on our website from day one, their team was professional, efficient, and truly understood our needs—covering everything from design to operations, reservations, and financial integrations with third-party software. 

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

We now have a top-tier, fully operational website, and we couldn't be happier!

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Great and on time. A huge shoutout to Marta, our project manager, who expertly coordinated between the Ralabs professionals and our internal teams, kept everything on track and made sure all the moving parts came together perfectly and also A special thanks to Dan and the entire Ralabs team for their ongoing support. 

What was your primary form of communication with Ralabs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

Professional 

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

No. Highly recommended - Ralabs to anyone looking for top-notch web development!

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Executive Director of Media Development Foundation

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Developing independent journalism to strengthen democracy in Ukraine

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ralabs to accomplish?

• Create standardized modern-style media platforms following leading international practices for news media websites.
• The most important points are the stability, user-friendly design, possibility of future scaling, and financial availability even for low-income news portals

SOLUTION

How did you find Ralabs?

Referral

Why did you select Ralabs over others?

Good value for cost

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The Ralabs team was onboarded to create a series of media platforms for the local media. Before the project kick-off, the team conducted thorough R&D to ensure the suggested solution would be easy to replicate for more than ten media but still have a unique identity for each of them. The team made sure that the particular specifications of each media, such as load balancing, SEO requirements, and ease of usage, were met with as little investment from the client as possible.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• 15 media sites which work perfectly 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

High level of project management 

What was your primary form of communication with Ralabs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

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

They did their job on time, no matter what happened around them.

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

NoNE.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the CEO & Co-Founder of a data science developer tool company

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Our company is a data science developer tool company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ralabs to accomplish?

• Staff augmentation
• Roadmap delivery
• Design

SOLUTION

How did you find Ralabs?

Referral

Why did you select Ralabs over others?

Referred to me

How many teammates from Ralabs were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Design of some end to end capabilities in our platform, and elivery of those in addition to a fully brand design.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Roadmap delivery, software quality and design deliverables. 

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

The PM is the best part about the relationship, it's exceptional.

What was your primary form of communication with Ralabs?

Virtual Meeting

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

Most impressive was our amazing project manager and an absolute stand-out set of engineers. 

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

Nothing worth noting. 

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Co-founder & COO of Choosing Therapy

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

ChoosingTherapy.com is media company who publishes educational content and manages a provider directory in the area of mental health, behavioral health, relationships, and parenting.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Ralabs to accomplish?

• Build a provider directory.

SOLUTION

How did you find Ralabs?

Referral

Why did you select Ralabs over others?

• High ratings
• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Great team

What was the size of Ralabs’s team?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

RALABS built a provider directory from scratch that integrated with Google, Outlook, and Apple calendars, Google Maps, Monday.com, and other tools. The site needed to be optimized for search, enable sign-up and self onboarding by providers, and be serviceable by an admin team.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Product launches
• provider sign-ups
• client sign-ups
• pageviews

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Ralabs had an excellent project manager on their team. The projects are delivered within the timelines discussed and always meet our expectations.

What was your primary form of communication with Ralabs?

• Virtual Meeting
• Email
• Messaging App

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

Ralabs truly cared about the products being built and the mission of ChoosingTherapy.com. Working with Ralabs feels like your working with an extension of your own team. Every team member was invested in our mission.

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

n/a