Rubyroid Labs

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the digital director for i-Motor, and we provide web development services to the automotive industry. We manage about 2,000 websites, and our business is based in Melbourne and Sydney in Australia, with about 45 staff members.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We had a headless CMS that was part of our core website architecture, and we needed help in app development. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

We engaged Rubyroid Labs to help us with Ruby on Rails development, their core expertise. First, they audited our code, and we briefed them about the required tasks. They then suggested a team structure to address the project. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with the company’s principal, an account manager, a project manager, some developers, and some testers. 

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

I researched for available service providers, and we met with each of them to discuss technical approaches and engagement models. After going through the same discovery process with three other vendors, we chose Rubyroid Labs. 

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $200,000–$250,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July 2021–March 2022.

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

Rubyroid Labs completed the project very satisfactorily. They didn’t just deliver the work that we asked them to do, they also refactored and remediated a lot of the existing codebase. Their efforts were extremely successful — we had a completed and improved app. We were delighted with their work. 

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Rubyroid Labs’ communication was excellent, and their scheduling was fine. We operated on weekly sprints and had weekly stand-up meetings and 1–2 additional conferences. Their availability and communication were good. 

Rubyroid Labs was flexible to our time zone, which was important for us — the start of their day was our day’s end, but that was managed quite well. They did all of their communication and transactions in English, which was important to us because we were in Australia. We collaborated using Zoom, Basecamp, GitHub, and Slack, but we didn’t use email.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There was a scarcity of Ruby on Rails talents in Australia, and I was impressed that Rubyroid Labs had precisely the people we needed. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They are experts on Ruby on Rails, and they work efficiently using that tool. However, our team becomes more efficient if we go out of that lane and work on JavaScript or API tasks.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

The quality of the work you get is proportional to your brief and communication quality. You need to have a regular cadence of communication and be clear with what you ask. Otherwise, you might face challenges.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm CEO of a marketing agency focused on the tech industry. We serve clients across the globe.

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

Since we are working in a relatively new industry — the tech industry — we had very specific marketing and sales workflows that no off-the-shelf CRM could cover.

So we needed a team that could develop a custom CRM for us while dealing with lots of uncertainty on our end, such as, for example, us not being able to come up with exact requirements since many potential workflows we thought we needed had to be tested in real-world situations first, before implementing them.

How did you select Rubyroid Labs and what were the deciding factors?

Someone from my network recommended Rubyroid Labs. We had a discovery meeting in their office. What we found there was a very vibrant team that spoke our language, and we clicked. Of course, we thoroughly studied their completed CRM development projects, too; a number of them were quite similar to what we were looking for. So we took it from there.

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

They did extensive discovery and BA first. Then they came up with wireframes for us to see if we are moving in the right direction in terms of the design and UX and so we could course-correct, if needed, until it's too late.

Ultimately, they did implementation and integration with the other marketing tools we use. The project is still ongoing as we rolled out an MVP and now are testing it heavily to share further requirements.

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

On their team, there were a PM, a designer and three senior developers.

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

One of the key achievements was that the project was delivered on time. We are now actively using the MVP of our CRM to test our hypotheses, see what works and what doesn't, and actually serve our clients.

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

The Rubyroid Labs team joined our collaboration space in ClickUp and set up the work environment there, including all the docs and boards we needed to smoothly communicate throughout the project. They also introduced a very energetic PM, who did their best to make sure our team can track the progress as well as provide feedback in a timely manner.

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

I think it's how they deal with challenges and screw-ups. They would always take responsibility for fixing things.

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

Not that I could think of anything at the moment.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the founder and CEO of Plaus Technologies Inc., an insurance tech startup. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We hired them to develop an MVP.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rubyroid Labs set up a website with Ruby on Rails (Rails). It processes PDF documents that are used in the insurance industry to extract data points. Those data points are then used to apply some logic to develop an output.

The team also set up a database that sits in concert with the code that does the data extraction on the PDFs.

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

I reviewed a lot of companies through an RFP process and got information from Clutch and other websites. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $21,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked with Rubyroid Labs from April–June 2020.

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

Rubyroid Labs was very diligent, professional, and competent. The work they did was more than expected, and I was very happy with the services they provided. 

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They performed well. I sent them a technical scope of work that outlined the inputs and outputs that were required for the project, and they worked from there. The team provided a timeline to make sure that they were on track to meet all of the deliverables. 

Everything was well-managed, and their communication was very clear. We had weekly calls in which they’d give me updates on the development of the project. It was very collaborative between us.

They were always available and quick to respond. We communicated via Slack and it was a successful collaboration.

What did you find most impressive about them?

What impressed me the most was actually also the reason I decided to work with them. After I had developed the technical scope and outlined an approach that I thought would be successful, they came back and made an alternative suggestion with one of the APIs that we were going to use that was integrated into the software. 

That specific recommendation, and subsequent integration, was very successful in yielding the completed project. The team recommended that we use Google Cloud Vision API to get the software to work the right way, and it was the right move. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, not that I can think of. They did everything I expected plus more. 

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

One of the reasons our engagement worked out well was because I remained engaged and provided them with direction on a weekly basis. Additionally, providing fine detail with respect to the scope of work that a client would be looking to accomplish was helpful for them.

The instructions I gave them were robust and clear, which was a good starting point for the collaboration. Having that mapped out upfront made sure that there were no surprises along the way. I would recommend potential customers to do the same.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the CTO for Veego, a SaaS company. We provide software for large e-commerce businesses to basically automate their daily operations.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We create software that integrates with a number of e-commerce platforms – like eBay, Shopify, Amazon, and others – in order to show all of a business’s orders in one place. It is very hard work to integrate our software with the huge number of e-commerce platforms that are out there, and we hired Rubyroid Labs to help with that.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rubyroids Labs completed several integrations with our product. Our product shows all orders and items in one place, even if the business is trading simultaneously across multiple e-commerce platforms. 

They’ve connected e-commerce platforms via their API to our software via API as well. It was purely backend work and server-to-server communication. They used Ruby as the programming language, as well as RabbitMQ and Sidekiq.

What is the team composition?

There was a developer, a very experienced architect who supervised the work of the developer, and a brilliant project manager who basically organized all of the work.

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

They were brilliant for us, and I am 100% sure that when we need another integration, we will call them.

How much have you invested in them?

It was between $10,000–$20,000. They are worth every penny spent on them.

What is the status of this engagement?

I believe we started working together in January 2019. After they completed the initial project, we gave them a few more. I think they worked with us until October of 2019.

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

We can estimate this by the amount of work we’ve had to do since they delivered the product, which is zero hours. They did everything according to our quality standards, from the first attempt. I have spent very little time organizing the work because their project manager did it brilliantly. The software is working perfectly. They fixed any glitches that we identified very quickly.

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They excelled at project management. My time as a manager was not spent on the phone at all; they did it all by themselves. Their project manager made sure that everything was advancing and that it worked.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Nowadays, it is quite hard to find an outsourcing company that you can trust and that will actually do the work. Rubyroid Labs not only wrote the code but actually completed the work and delivered business value.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there’s nothing that I could mention currently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Do not reject their offer for a project manager.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a manager at a large software development company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We had a client who needed Ruby development, and we didn’t have the internal capacity to handle this. My company decided to outsource this development work to Rubyroid Labs.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rubyroid Labs outsources a backend developer to help our client develop their marketplace platform. The developer, an extension of our client’s team, is responsible for maintaining and upgrading the API, which talks to the web and mobile frontends. The primary technology that she uses is Ruby.

What is the team composition?

Rubyroid Labs’s developer works directly with our client; my team doesn’t interact with her often. They have a high-level account manager who deals with issues or questions.

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

I’d worked with one of Rubyroid Labs’s tech leads on another project, when he was part of another company. He came to me in search of a contractor.  

How much have you invested with them?

Costs are around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The work began in April 2018, and it is ongoing.

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

Everyone on my client’s team who has worked with the Rubyroid Labs developer, including the VP of engineering, says that she is very skilled and reliable. The feedback has been consistently good.

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve performed great. Communication and management are good, and they use some kind of tracking system.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Rubyroid Labs is very passionate about Ruby technology. They work independently with the client. Another plus is that they’re consistent; there hasn’t been any turnover.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can’t think of any.

Any advice for potential customers?

Let them know the kind of person you need, and don’t wait until the last minute.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the VP of engineering at DroneBase, a drone service company based in Santa Monica.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We were looking for a company to augment our existing engineering staff. We needed more resources to join our team and help us build things in general, rather than having a specific project.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Rubyroid Labs has been fully involved in our regular product development cycle. We have one dedicated person from their side. At this point, we consider her a team member. She takes part in everything we do. The specific technology stack we usually work with is Ruby on Rails. For the frontend, we use Angular.js.

Rubyroid Labs works on new features with us, but they don’t do any product development. Their resource they assigned us focuses exclusively on engineering. She collaborates with us just like any other engineer on our team. 

What is the team composition?

Rubyroid Labs has assigned one developer to your project. We're planning on expanding, but we haven't had a chance to yet.

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

I was introduced to Alex (CMO, Rubyroid Labs) through someone I met in Santa Monica. We interviewed a handful of Ruby on Rails engineers that were remote from both RubyRoid Labs and ones from other companies. We ended up selecting the developer we've been working with for over a year now.

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent between $100,000–$200,000 so far. On average, we pay the engineer about $7,000 a month.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in 2018 and have an ongoing relationship.

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

Qualitatively, Rubyroid Labs is very timely. The work they deliver is always high quality. I use Velocity, a tool from Cold Climate that sits on top of GitHub, to manage all my engineers and their respective performance. 
They communicate very well and are flexible about the work hours. We've had been a great relationship with Rubyroid Labs so far.

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

We primarily interact with the developer from Rubyroid Labs through Slack, which we use to communicate and track the work.

Our company holds a daily stand up that our employees can attend in person or through video conferencing. Since Rubyroid Labs is remote from us, their developer joins via Google Hangout, but that's never been a problem.

Due to the time zone difference, we have an overlap of about five hours a day in the morning. The developer even responds outside of the window of working hours. She goes beyond our set expectations.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The most impressive factor about the developer from Rubyroid Labs has been how excited she is to work with us. She even visited us for two weeks. Her enthusiasm has been much appreciated as Rubyroid Labs has helped us build a company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I don't really think so. We've only worked with one engineer from the team so far, but it's hard to find anything that hasn't been very positive.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice would be to treat the engineer Rubyroid Labs assigns you the same way you would consider an in-house employee. Interview them similarly and work with them as a regular staff member. 

We work with and assign projects to their engineer just like we do internally. This method works for us because our company is set up well for remote work. If you use a lot of online tools for management and collaboration, it should feel natural.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO at Mint Media LTD, an independent publishing house.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We were having difficulties with our website. The traffic to our site had grown to a million views, but the whole system began to fail, even falling down twice a week. Our extra developer didn’t know what to do, so I was looking for a professional team who could work on Ruby on Rails.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Their developers fixed the configuration of the picture distribution as it was written with an error. They moved our site to a new server, which only took one night, and even helped our hosting company to save us a few days of work coordination. The work involved several different elements, including work with Elasticsearch and SSL Certificate.

We also needed help with another issue, as users couldn’t correspond to the legislation of our country. The users had to enter their identification code with a phone number. It took Rubyroid Labs a month to address that problem.

What is the team composition?

I communicated with the chief developer, who delegated the work to different developers.

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

When we started to have difficulties with the site, I asked our host company to recommend a team and they advised me to reach out to Rubyroid Labs.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together in November–December 2018.

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

After 200 total hours of work from them, the site works correctly. Their chief developer suggested using HTTP protocol and now it’s hard to imagine how we lived without it when we used just HTTP. Our traffic has grown by over 30%. We'd had a developer help us in the past, but no one ever suggested this simple, effective measure. We want to continue working with them to improve some more things on the site.

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re responsible and work quickly to solve our problems. I always knew the percentage of the work done, which was convenient.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have a high speed of work and are very professional.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, they’re perfect.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

No.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re a mobile development company with several directions: we make mobile products for our own needs and do mobile outsourced development as well.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We were in need of a backend development company for our own products and we were looking to choose between different technologies, like Java, PHP, and Ruby on Rails. The team from Rubyroid described all the advantages of the Ruby on Rails technology, so we chose it for our product.

What was the scope of their involvement?

The scope of work was to build a backend for our mobile app, which is a business solution for moving companies. We’re not skilled enough to build a good-quality backend at our site, given that we’re a mobile development company first of all, so we asked the team from Rubyroid. They estimated the job, we gave them the scope of work, and they gave us back an estimation—around 2,000 hours.

They built only the backend and API for our mobile apps as well as an administration panel for orders from the app and other information. We gave them specifications covering only the mobile development. They put together a special document describing everything related to this. We gave them a description of our mobile apps, and they wrote down their specification for backend development. We approved it, then moved forward.

They used the Ruby on Rails framework, which gave us a nice speed of development; it’s also reliable and easy to scale. We’re not scaling it right now, but we believe that there won’t be any technical issues when it comes to it.

What is the team composition?

Rubyroid Labs assigned three developers. There was a project manager on their side, but our developers communicated directly with theirs. The manager kept everything tracked, he ensured that everything was okay and that we were happy as a customer.

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

We looked for backend development companies on Clutch.

How much have you invested with them?

$80,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in May 2018. We’ve finished the first iteration in August, and we have another one, which will start in January 2019.

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

We’re happy with the MVP we’ve received and we’re planning to launch it. We consider the job done at the moment. We’re not in the market yet, so we’ve only shown the app to our staff.

I can’t comment on the quality of code, because I’m not a backend developer, but I know that our CTO reviewed the code every two weeks, and there were no serious issues there. He was also okay with all the numbers regarding the productivity on the server side.

Moreover, Rubyroid used test-driven development and we appreciated this a lot. We didn’t have any serious bugs during development or at the final stage. There were some minor things, but that's always the case.

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

The quality of communication was okay and they’re reliable as business partners. We’re very happy to work with Rubyroid Labs. Our own project manager was in charge of the work, so I can’t describe the project management itself. As a customer at the presales and negotiation stage, I’m okay with them. They seem to be professional. I negotiated with their chief of marketing, who described everything.

The only issue we had during the project was that they only managed to give us two developers at the start. The third one was only added after three weeks of development. They notified us about it and explained the situation. We understand that it can be hard to provide the exact number of developers at the exact date, so I’m not mentioning it as a serious problem.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I was excited about our three developers; they were great. They were product-oriented and had great communication skills with our own developers. It’s usually a headache to connect mobile developers with backend ones; they can be fighting with each other and having misunderstandings.

I also like Rubyroid’s approach to documentation. Before we started the project, they built several documents describing all the technical things about the API, the backend structure, and so on. It was really helpful, and one of the great advantages of this company.

I’d worked with another backend development company previously, and they were not as good during the early stage of development—to describe all the APIs and provide all the information about how the backend is structured. It was a nice advantage.

Are there any areas they could improve?

As far as I can see, all the business processes on their side are okay. As a customer, I don’t have any advice to Rubyroid about what they should improve. I think they’re great.

Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?

It would be useful for their customers to not rush them. Going to a development group and asking them to start a project the next day won’t give them enough time to staff the team and provide the best developers possible. My advice is to give them some time before they have to start the work.

We were in a hurry, so we had a lack of time for picking developers, so we pushed them to start as soon as possible. It was maybe not so good for the project itself, or for our business cooperation.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CEO of a SaaS business that connects car-wash business owners with potential clients.

For what projects/services did your company hire Rubyroid Labs?

We have been working with them for the past four years to develop, maintain and update our business solution.

What were your goals for this project?

Our goal is to increase profits for car washes and reduce management troubles. We also want customers to benefit from queue elimination and be able to book for a specific time.

How did you select this vendor?

We were looking for an experienced Ruby on Rails development company, who were located in the Commonwealth of Independent States. It was important for us that our partner could communicate in person and was within the same timezone.

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

Rubyroid Labs helped us to understand the basic steps of development. After a discovery period, we separated the development process into 3 phases: preparation of technical documentation, the creation of an MVP, and future improvements in accordance with user reviews. Throughout the project, Rubyroid's team showcased themselves as professionals. They fixed bugs really fast and implemented features in accordance to our time and price estimates. They're currently helping us with maintenance and new features.

What was the team composition?

We work with three full-stack developers, one UX/UX designer, one markup developer, and one project manager.

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

The product they delivered was extremely high-quality. For the last five years, we expanded our business to multiple countries and helped more than 100 car wash owners automate their businesses. We saw businesses increase profits from 40% to 350% and constantly hear positive feedback from clients. 

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

Rubyroid's project manager leads us step by step through the development process. They also answered with competent estimates and responses to our new ideas. Their development time and prices always coincide with our expectations.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

They can always find a solution. It doesn’t matter if we need to implement new complex functionalities or fix a difficult technical issue, they always find a solution. That’s why we're still working with them, even after all this time.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I work for a cruise company that operates in the Adriatic region. We were the first company to enter our specific market and have grown quite large since the company started. We’re a family-owned business and try to maintain the standards and traditional aspects of our company.

What challenge were you trying to address with Rubyroid Labs?

We were struggling with our reservation process and were getting far too many inquiries to handle through email alone. We wanted a more organized way to handle bookings and needed a system that would allow our staff the time to provide the level of customer service we expect.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They’ve helped us expand and improve to handle a larger number of customers. We started working with them on an hourly basis, which has since changed to a contract. They helped build and improve the system in Ruby on Rails. They’ve written and fixed code for us and added functionality to the site, such as bulk check-ins. Most of our check-ins can be done through the CRM now, as well as any emails we send out. They implemented a feedback system that allows us to get a lot more information from our customers on our services. We’re also looking to move our hosting to Amazon soon.

What is the team composition?

We currently have two developers dedicated solely to our project, one at the senior level. I’m in contact with both developers and we have an account manager who is in constant contact with us.

How did you come to work with Rubyroid Labs?

We initially had another company building our CRM system for us that closed. We needed someone to quickly pick up where they left off. Rubyroid approached us in response to an advertisement I posted for a replacement. They seemed like a good, quick solution that would allow us to continue working on the system without downtime.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together around March 2016. Our work is ongoing, and we will continue with them for at least another year.

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

I don’t have a lot of statistical information I can provide from their involvement, but the feedback system we added has been very helpful to us. We don’t own the boats we use, so the personnel on them is a mix of service providers and our staff. The feedback helps us maintain our standard of quality, patch loopholes, and improve our service. We can quickly and efficiently respond to customer needs.

How did Rubyroid Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

Our account manager makes sure we’re happy with the service. Since they’re in another country, all of our communication is through the internet. We’ve never met in person. We have Google Sheets where we manage projects, and talk over Slack or Skype whenever necessary. We have regular meetings to catch up and make sure everything is running smoothly. They’re very responsive and will address problems whenever they arise, even on weekends.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re very proactive and bring up issues before they surface. They’re very reliable and work all the time. I get a very good feeling from them and we get very good customer service. The company we worked with previously wasn’t as communicative as they are.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t have any negative feedback for them, they’ve been excellent.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They will be proactive to find work inside a project and fix things where necessary. It helps to stay on top of providing work for them and staying organized on your side.