Development partner for technology-first companies
We help CTOs, Product Owners, and managers of technology-first companies who want to build or scale up their development teams with reliable, friendly, and proactive experts.
Clutch named The Software House the most highly-recommended software development company in Poland in 2020.
WHY SHOULD YOU WORK WITH US?
① 220+ developers, DevOps, QAs, and Designers
② 200+ projects done in 24 countries
③ We cut a client's cloud costs from $30K to $100
④ A Dutch fintech app we built became No 1 in the Netherlands
AWARDS
Financial Times 1000 / Deloitte Fast50 / ComputerWorld Top200
SERVICES
➊ Agile development teams on demand
- Node.js, React.js
- Symfony, Laravel
- React Native
➋ Full-cycle product design & development
- Product design
- MVPs
- Cloud development
- Scaling
- Maintenance & support
- QA as a service
➌ Modern software architecture
- Microservices
- Serverless
- Moving to the cloud
- Re-architecting
➍ Cloud adoption & engineering
Official AWS Select Consulting Partner with 36 accredited and certified cloud engineers.
- Cloud architecture, migration, maintenance
- Cloud tool development
- DevOps team augmentation
LET’S CONNECT
What’s your next step?
> See the success other professionals had with us:
tsh.io/portfolio/
> Find out if our developers will fit your culture:
tsh.io/about-us/
> Consult your project for free and in private:

headquarters
other locations
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Celna 13/12Kraków 30-507Poland
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ul. Twarda 18Warszawa 00-105Poland
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Singel 542Amsterdam, NH 1017 AZNetherlands
Focus
Portfolio
eSky.com, GoConnectIT, Reservix, Pet Media Group, Prisma, WieBetaaltWat, Smartum, Takamol, Synerise, TVT, Smartum, PAAY, Property Finder, BrickVest

Esky - Scaling up a global travel platform
eSky is an online travel agency that offers services of over 500 000 of hotels and 650 airlines. The Software House team forms part of a group responsible for designing and building efficient and future-proof platform that enables eSky to grow in international markets. We offered our client the best technical solutions, addressing business challenges of the new platform.

Migration to microservices for UK fintech
The goal of our cooperation was to transform BrickVest’s competitive fintech ideas into modern scalable web applications ready for market success.
Over the course of over seven years, BrickVest and The Software House’s cooperation resulted in the release of multiple fintech web applications for various types of clients. They made BrickVest a major disruptor in the world of fintech

A technology partner of a leading pet marketplace
Pet Media Group has embarked on a quest to make their portals more scalable and efficient together with The Software House’s team.
With the help of The Software House, the company found a way to transform marketplaces smoothly into efficient web applications that connected to their network.

Upgrade Reservix ticket platform with a custom CMS
Germany's second-biggest ticket distributor optimized their CMS for usability
After a record sale of 7.5M tickets in 2018, Reservix decided to rework their popular platform’s event creation engine with The Software House’s developers.

Product design process for Bahr’s marketplace
Bahr.sa is in the portfolio of a Saudi conglomerate producing proxy marketplaces for suppliers, handicraft artists, and similar professionals. The Software House has been their development company of choice for years now. As our continuous reliability earned more of the client’s trust, we got a chance to redesign their Bahr platform from the ground up.

Web platform for virtual graduation ceremonies
The idea was to create a web platform that allows the students to upload their short graduation speeches and send them through the web app. The Software House was chosen to cooperate with StageClip and build this new application. The biggest challenge was the very tight deadline – as the graduation ceremony season in the USA was to start 6 weeks earlier than the original plans. We needed to scale up the development team accordingly, making sure we meet the deadline and deliver the product on time.
The project was delivered within the expected timeframe, meeting the tight deadline and all the technical objectives. The feedback we got from the client was very positive. The new application is being used by over 800 universities and thousands of students from all around the world. Thanks to the new solution, StageClip is now capable of providing its services to way more clients than ever before.

Benefit platform for 70+ Finnish municipalities
Being a long-term Arantio partner, The Software House was responsible for the initial business analysis of the project. The idea was to connect with the existing API from Arantio Core and to add customized frontend part of the app. Also, The Software House was responsible for the so-called BFF (backend for frontend) development.
We’ve created the proxy to connect the brand new frontend with the existing API. The whole project was managed by our experienced PM, overseeing the team of a variety of specialists. Among them were not only frontend and backend developers, but also QA engineers, testing the product on every stage. Last but not least, the interface of the Vaana platform was designed by UX/UI specialists from The Software House.

WBW - Bill-splitting app with 1 000 000 downloads
WieBetaaltWat (meaning “who pays what”) is a Dutch brand offering solutions for people who share their finances with others. The company decided to invest in web and mobile applications, but couldn’t find qualified developers in the Netherlands. They contacted us and we crafted native iOS and Android apps, as well as a web application based on Angular. Intuitive interface and useful functionalities resulted in over 1 000 000 downloads, and now WieBetaaltWat and The Software House work on expanding to the European market.

AI-driven marketing dashboards used by the biggest
Synerise is a “Growth as a Service” platform offering innovative marketing solutions. The Software House was approached by Synerise and asked for help with the frontend development of their tools. Our leading JavaScript developers used React library to create new dashboards, allowing users to easy personalise their marketing campaigns and gather customer data. These solutions are now recognised by world-famous brands such as Microsoft, Carrefour and Oriflame.

Smartum - Employee benefit system in Finland with 1 mln users
Smartum is an employee benefit provider for Finland. As the company grew, their internal systems turned out to be inefficient. The Software House crafted a completely new administration panel based on PHP Symfony, as well as native iOS and Android applications for end users. Improving the UX on every level resulted in an increased user base and now Smartum is the biggest employee benefits provider in Finland, offering access to over 20k venues.

A tendering platform bringing together 7500 firms
Forsah is an announcement board where offers and requests for simple tasks are published. The Software House was involved in Forsah project for 14 months. During this time, 25 developers and the DevOps team were responsible for creating the customised platform that supports the whole tendering workflow. It was the first big implementation where our React.js programmers could really spread their wings and use their vast knowledge and abilities.
Forsah’s appeal lies in clear usability and straight-forward workflow – from verifying the company (organiser), displaying the list of applications, comparing offers, manually selecting the right offer and sending a message to the tender winner to finally collecting the payment from the company organising the tender. Simple as that!

Ticketing system for events in Switzerland
Ticketpark is a Swiss platform, allowing event organisers to manage their events, with emphasis on ticket reservations and sales. Apart from booking, institutions can communicate with attendees, deliver tickets, issue vouchers, control admission, access customer data and receive feedback. Ticketpark cooperates with theatres, conferences, concert halls, transportation companies, festivals and many more.
The Software House was chosen due to our proficiency in web development in Symfony. Our main tasks include ensuring a stable technological foundation, developing new features and ongoing maintenance. Among new functionalities suggested by Ticketpark and added by our backend developers, there is CRM panel for event organisers, flexible voucher system, support for large events (with 1000+ seats), mechanisms automating the accounting tasks, and many more.

Modern mobile apps for Weenect’s GPS trackers
Weenect offers a wide range of GPS trackers, which allow for precise real-time geolocation. With Weenect, you will always know where your pets or family members are. The company has long had a range of mobile apps which allow users to control the trackers and set various parameters for their performance.
Thanks to this combined creativity, we created iOS and Android apps far superior to the original ones. In a short time, they were downloaded over 100 thousand times and averaged 4.5/5 in reviews.

Business accelerator program supporting over 1000
Kanaf is a platform that allows startups to apply for business accelerator programs and receive advice on putting their ideas into action. It’s a very useful tool for young talents and developing businesses. If the idea is good enough, startups will receive seed funding, office space, mentorship and coaching, access to investors and experts and necessary exposure.
Kanaf has been created by our PHP and Angular teams, along with the Product Desing team creating the responsive web design in accordance with UX/UI standards. Just for the purpose of this project, our team invented and implemented a custom open-source tool for translation management - Babelsheet. What’s more, it was one of the first projects where we were used the API Platform framework.

Flyo - Customized airport shuttle system with Android apps
The Software House helped PKS Oslo to digitise and automate their offer and it led to the birth of a new brand – Flyo. We’ve started with an in-depth analysis of the project. After that, we’ve come up with an idea to develop a new platform for workflow management (including a route-planning system). We’ve created a web app according to the best responsive web development practices.
The brand new app allows travellers to book Oslo Airport transfer in a few straightforward steps. Moreover, we’ve developed Android applications for both the clients (with an integrated payment system) and the drivers.

GDPR-compliant mobile app for personal data management
The Software House was chosen to take over the preliminary APIs and improve them. Initially, we were responsible for integrating these APIs into the existing web platform.
Then, the main goal for us was to develop native applications for Android (Kotlin) and iOS (Swift). Also, we’ve implemented some features, such as a user profile panel, signing in through social media/email profiles and live chat functionality.
Reviews
the project
Web App Refactoring for Software Company
“They always understand our position and work with us to find good solutions together.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CTO of a software company in the geographical information systems market.
What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?
We acquired a company and product, and their software development team was below the standard in quality and delivery. The product included a mobile app for the field and a web app for office use. We needed a partner that could help us change the web app, and we decided to outsource development from The Software House.
What was the scope of their involvement?
The Software house is our staff augmentation partner; we source all the roles for our development team from them, including developers, architects, and testers. Meanwhile, we provide the management resources. They’ve helped us completely refactor the web application we acquired, bringing it to modern standards.
We delivered the existing documentation to The Software House. However, because the previous team wasn’t running smoothly, there was little documentation, and the app had many problems, including bad code quality. The Software house has worked to bring the product to maturity and bring the documentation to a new level. They've done front- and backend development work.
The product is a PHP web application that handles every step in the fiberglass rollout workflow, from collecting data, taking pictures, testing the fiber, and handing the data to the network provider. Contractors can arrange meetings with house owners who want fiberglass installed, and the customers can get a confirmation for those meetings. The app also enables contractors to plan assignments for their resources based on skillset and location.
What is the team composition?
The team composition has changed with each phase. In total, we’ve worked with 20 people from The Software House, including developers, testers, and architects. Our main contact points are the project manager, a lead developer, and an architect. From a technical perspective, we also have contact with a project lead and an account manager.
How did you come to work with The Software House?
They've been our partner since before I joined the company, so I don’t know how we found them.
How much have you invested with them?
So far, we’ve spent €2 million–€3 million (approximately $2.2 million–$3.3 million USD).
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in Q2 2019, and the engagement is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Before this project, the product was unstable, both from an uptime perspective and regarding the number of bugs noted by our customers. We also had a lot of issues with doing new releases. Thanks to The Software House’s work, the application is much more stable. They’ve helped us increase uptime, reduce problems during releases, and decrease the number of complaints from our customers. Additionally, they’re really becoming part of our organization — they’re our development team.
How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?
Their communication and compliance with deadlines have improved over time. In the last big project we did, I was very happy with the amount of communication and forecast from the project lead and their on-time delivery. We have daily standups with our main points of contact, and they work with our product owner daily, who assigns them tasks. We use Jira for project management.
In the first year, we struggled to build this team and get it to work as we wanted. Finding stability and the right focus took time, partly because many of The Software House team members found it difficult to work with our complicated codebase, and we had some resource replacements. However, we eventually found the right mix of people. They've made some adjustments to their onboarding process and have ensured their team has the right tools to work with. The team has finally reached stability, and they've developed a sense of ownership of the project.
What did you find most impressive about them?
What I most appreciate about working with The Software House is the feeling that we matter. We’re an important customer to them; they always understand our position and work with us to find good solutions together.
Are there any areas they could improve?
The team should ensure that releases are clean and well-tested and that the release process is better. We’re still having some unnecessary release issues. From a company perspective, there’s nothing they need to improve; I’m quite satisfied with them.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
My advice is to ask for a good governing structure; make sure you have a good project manager who understands your business and needs.
the project
Mobile App Development for Travel Information Platform
"Having defined a clear path, we had some fun working together, and I think that kept us motivated."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I’m Rick ter Laak and I’m the CEO of Travelia, a Dutch app with travel information that delivers a more than fantastic vacation. I’m responsible for general operations, finance, and sales.
For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?
For the development of a mobile app in React Native.
How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?
Once, we found The Software House on Clutch. Then, we hired their DevOps to migrate our product from Heroku to AWS infrastructure. Since the team met our expectations with a very proactive attitude, we decided to hire people from the same source again.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.
Their team developed a new mobile app using React Native to replace the two native apps we had. The previous ones were made in 2016, so it was time to refactor the code, and we wanted to have one code base for the new app instead of two separate bases costing us money. The Software House also provided design and QA services for this project
How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
1 project manager, 1 product designer, 3 full-stack developers, and 1 QA Engineer.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
Thanks to the Software House, we reduced the maintenance costs by 40% for the mobile app and by 25% for the production environment with the use of newer technologies.
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.
We let The Software House lead the project in full because they impressed us with their approach to Agile before. To begin with, we had to get through a couple of pre-development meetings that we weren't used to. Their role in the project turned out to be critical. We had a clear definition of done, which improved our communication tremendously. Having defined a clear path, we had some fun working together, and I think that kept us motivated.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
They’re actively trying to make everything work better. The designer and QA inspired us to consider many changes to the product’s UX/UI that could improve the user journey down the road.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
Their estimate of work said three months, which we were hoping for, but the project took five. This is because we agreed to optimize a few things during the project which added to the backlog.
the project
Custom Software Development for Subscription Service
"They understand our mission and want to help us succeed."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the project manager of an Amsterdam-based subscription management service. I handle all our outsourced projects.
What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?
We needed help in custom software development.
What was the scope of their involvement?
The Software House developed our session management tool from scratch. The solution controls the number of concurrent sessions per user and account. They later deployed it in the AWS environment so we could use it for our clients.
They initially helped us with scoping the project. I provided them with relevant information, and they wrote the technical document. After that, we went to the development phase. They worked on the backend, frontend, and infrastructure environment.
We entered the testing phase two months later — the product and its quality seemed good, and it passed our tests. They then deployed the tool into our production environment.
The project has almost been completed. However, our contract is ongoing, and they are providing us with ad hoc support — we can contact them if something goes wrong.
What is the team composition?
I’ve worked with two developers, one project manager, one DevOps, and one frontend developer.
How did you come to work with The Software House?
While looking for someone to partner with, The Software House was referred to me by one of our employees. Additionally, I also saw their reviews on Clutch.
They seemed like they had some experience in AWS custom development. I looked into their projects, and they had also worked on a relatively similar product. We shortlisted 7–8 companies, but The Software House was the best fit for us.
How much have you invested in them?
We’ve spent less than $50,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in August 2021, and it’s ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
The product is beneficial to our company. My team says the quality of their code and structure is much better than any other external vendor we’ve worked with.
How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?
Initially, we had some difficulty because they followed a different methodology from what we expected. After some weeks and iterations, they understood what we needed and adapted their approach. Our workflow has been smooth since then. We communicate through Slack and email.
What did you find most impressive about them?
The quality of The Software House’s work makes them stand out from the competition. They’re on the higher end in terms of price, but the cost is worth it.
Additionally, their team is super motivated. They are engaged and interested to know how the product will contribute to the business. They understand our mission and want to help us succeed.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They could’ve asked about the project management methodology we were most comfortable with instead of thinking we would also want what they had previously used. It took a few weeks for them to get things right.
It will be good for them to ask what we think is the right way for communication, project reporting, and status updates. They can build the framework around that.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Keep them close. They are good and have independent managers, but they can overengineer things if you don’t manage them properly. Ask their thoughts about the logic and project scope. Ensure they understand your expectations, and they will work accordingly.
the project
Software Update for Employee Wellness Company
"There was no issue that they left unaddressed."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m a technical product manager at Smartum Oy, an employee wellness company.
What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?
We needed their team to update our e-payment platform.
What was the scope of their involvement?
The Software House recreated and modernized the front- and backend of our e-payment platform, which was also built by the other members of their team back in 2017. We gave them access to our existing platform and provided the API documentation for our backend.
The Software House then proceeded with redeveloping it to improve the ordering, payment, and distribution processes. We previously used Drupal to run our system, and their team replaced that with a React-reliant payment platform.
What is the team composition?
We worked with one project manager and one developer for this project. However, we used to work with a bigger team for our previous development projects with The Software House.
How did you come to work with The Software House?
As I mentioned, we already worked with The Software House prior to our site update needs, so we thought it was best to hire them again for this project — we all knew that they’re a proactive team that gave us a good working experience.
How much have you invested with them?
We spent about €1 million (approximately $1.2 million USD) on all their development projects.
What is the status of this engagement?
The redevelopment project ran from March–July 2021.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We weren’t able to keep track of quantitative data, but The Software House delivered an improved platform that pleased our customers. They especially appreciated the system’s user-friendly frontend, which in turn gave us fewer support issues and complaints to process.
How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?
They were a responsible and communicative team. We dealt with some issues at the beginning of our project — we only provided them with the API documentation, and they found it challenging to connect that with our internal operations. However, they quickly addressed that by adjusting their learning process.
The miscalculations were mainly on our end, but they remained proactive and cooperative. Overall, we were pleased with the professionalism they showed.
What did you find most impressive about them?
What truly set The Software House apart was their communicative nature, which was exemplary given that they were a foreign company. Their work ethic and project management skills made for a highly organized process.
Are there any areas they could improve?
There was no issue that they left unaddressed.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Make sure to plan your project thoroughly with your internal team before relaying everything to The Software House. Had we realized the importance of this step early on, we wouldn’t have dealt with any delays and issues during the project.
the project
Custom Software Development for Events Services Company
"It was easy, and they were approachable."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m a software architect that works for an events services company. We’re one of the main event organizers in central Europe, not limited to ticketing, but that’s our main business.
What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?
We outsourced custom software development work to The Software House.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We came to them with ready-made requirements, and we discussed them with The Software House. After consulting with them, we made some modifications and went through the solutions suggested in the requirements in an agile and scrum-like development process.
Their team did the backend development on Node.js provided by Docker containers and frontend development using JavaScript and the React framework. They also used AWS.
What is the team composition?
We had up to three software developers from junior to senior levels. We also had a project manager on the TSH side and a QA engineer.
How did you come to work with The Software House?
We found them through a network recommendation.
How much have you invested with them?
Overall, it was around €200,000 (approximately $235,000 USD).
What is the status of this engagement?
The ongoing partnership began in September 2019. Because of COVID-19’s impact, we put things on hold. Since November 2020, we’ve been working with them on a different project, but it’s using the same technologies and setup.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
The final product is in production, and we’re absolutely content with it. It’s also making a profit for us.
Their team said it would take half a year, and it was more or less done in that time. I’ve never seen such a precise estimate; it was really on point. The budget projections were always very correct, and I was very impressed with how precise the estimates met the actual reality.
How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?
We typically communicate through Slack, which both of our companies were familiar with. We also have Zoom meetings and use Jira for project management and tickets.
Their team is very responsive. We always get an immediate response, and they have always been available to us. We’re located in Germany, and they’re in Poland. We’ve regularly visited each other.
What did you find most impressive about them?
We’re also a software company. They actually gave us access to their tech people right from the start.
The communication from the beginning was between the tech people on our side and the tech people on their side. It was easy, and they were approachable. There was no shield between their technical staff and ours, which has been nice.
Are there any areas they could improve?
Not really. The way we work together has been fine from both sides.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
This isn’t specific to The Software House, but I think any software agency can best help if you know what you want. I don’t have anything specific.
the project
Custom Software Dev for E-Commerce Hosting Company
"The knowledge transfer from their colleagues is done very well."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the COO of an e-commerce hosting company that provides servers and additional services for many big e-commerce companies in Holland and Europe.
I’m responsible for managing the software development teams for customizing products and processes and for automation.
What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?
We have only three in-house developers, and our priorities are determined by how it’s going with customers. It’s hard to plan the work and it can be frustrating.
We were looking for a way to extend our developer capacity so that we could make a roadmap.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We worked with The Software House in a team extension model, not the team as a service. We used our own processes and project management methods. We set up the architecture for the ideas we had, and they helped us with the implementation.
They helped us execute what we wanted to do so that we could also build on top of it ourselves. We still felt it was our own code, and we still determined a lot of basic things like the frameworks to use.
They did mainly web development for both the frontend and backend. We used React on the frontend and Symfony PHP on the backend for some products.
One of the features they built for us is DNS management. It allows our customers to manage their domains. It’s a common functionality for hosting providers, and it’s a good additional service to have. It’s best to offer clients a single product where they can manage their webshop, server, and domains.
The Software House also developed a notifications API. It enables customers to get notified when certain things are going on with their servers and applications. Notifications are made via WhatsApp, email, or Slack. They set up the first version of that, and we’re building on top of it ourselves now.
What is the team composition?
We worked with around seven people from The Software House: frontend and backend developers, QA engineers, and a project manager. Their setup is such that the members switch to other projects sometimes. In total, we’ve worked with three frontend and four backend developers.
This wasn’t an issue for us because The Software House made all the knowledge transferring internally. We didn’t have to give explanations again every time; we onboarded a developer only once, and that person onboarded the next developer that worked on the project.
How did you come to work with The Software House?
I’d had some experiences with outsourcing. Not all of them were great, but I could definitely see the potential.
A friend of mine had used them for one of his projects and then recommended me to the company. He’s the CTO at another startup in Amsterdam. I’d known him for a long time, so if he gave me a recommendation, I wouldn’t be afraid of trying it.
We agreed to have a one-month trial with one developer, so there was almost no risk for us.
How much have you invested with them?
We paid them an average of €8,000 (approximately $9,000 USD) a month.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with The Software House in the second quarter of 2020, and we finished about a month ago.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
The flexibility that The Software House gave us was a big plus in terms of scaling up. We were able to do more frontend work one month and more backend the next. They have all the capacity to grow with us.
We worked in two-week sprints, meaning that we determined the scope of the work every two weeks. We made sure that everything was clear for the developers, including specifications and responsibilities. After everyone was in agreement, they’d make a commitment on what they thought they could do in those two weeks. After those two weeks, we’d review and measure what was and wasn’t done.
We had a lot of things worked out and prepared when we started working with them. We just needed some extra hands to fulfill the job and reach our internal targets. We reached all goals 50% of the time. When we didn’t, it usually was because of external factors unrelated to The Software House.
How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?
I give them an 8/10. They performed well enough. I found that it was important to put a lot of work into preparing all the work. They’d get nervous if there were a lot of question marks, which is something we had to get used to. We used Azure DevOps, Slack, and Google Meet.
What did you find most impressive about them?
It’s the speed they have in adding new members to the team. For example, the last frontend developer got some important things done the day he started. They’re agile, and it doesn’t take them a lot of time to get the project up and running. The knowledge transfer from their colleagues is done very well.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They need to be more direct when there’s an issue. There were times when they need to ring the bell a bit quicker when they didn’t have answers for certain questions. It’s something I’d like to see improved for our next collaboration.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Clients need to put a lot of thought into specifying everything that needs to be done and make sure that all the designs are done and validated. That way, their team can be as productive as possible.
If they start working on day one, there should be almost no questions. They like to keep on going and have a list of things that need to be done. If all of that is clear, they can go really high.
If they get stuck with something, it can cost a lot of money and create delays. We ran into that, and we learned from it to put way more effort into preparing the work.
the project
Staff Augmentation for SME Loan Company
"They're always an excellent collaboration."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CTO of FIBR, an SME lender based in the UK. We lend to small and medium companies.
What challenge were you trying to address with The Software House?
We were looking to grow our software development team quickly, but we couldn’t find people fast enough, and we decided to outsource.
What was the scope of their involvement?
The Software House provides software development services. They allocate software developers to our project to meet our specifications, which they work in collaboration with our in-house team. We went through multiple project scoping sessions; It took us 2–3 weeks to get all set up, and then they allocated a small group to our project.
What is the team composition?
We now have 15 people from their team, and my main point of contact is the project manager and a managing director.
How did you come to work with The Software House?
We found them through an online search. We chose them because they provided dedicated teams for specific needs.
How much have you invested with them?
We spend £50,000 (approximately $68,800 USD) with them every month.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in April 2020, and the project is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
They brought in the right talent at the right time with the right expertise. We’ve been happy with the quality of their work.
How did The Software House perform from a project management standpoint?
Project management is good – I can always reach my points of contact at any time. We communicate via WhatsApp, Slack, and email, and we use Jira to keep track of the project.
They’re responsive when we have issues or suggestions for improvements — they’ve helped us out when we needed it. There’s always an excellent collaboration because they accommodate when we need a change with invoicing or other related aspects.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They’re very flexible and adapt to our processes and tools.
Are there any areas they could improve?
I don’t think there’s anything they can improve on.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
Talk to them a lot; the more you talk to them, the more responsive they are. Communication is always key.
the project
Web Product Dev & Maintenance Support for Web Dev Company
"Their flexibility makes it possible to increase and decrease their involvement based on our needs."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I am CEO at Blue Coin, Katowice-based company that develops a range of web portals that provide individuals and businesses with expert knowledge on topics such as personal finance and economics.
Blue Coin wants to equip users with the information they need to make the best decisions in their everyday lives – when choosing accounts and deposits, learning about innovative fintech products and many more.
For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?
TSH’s assistance was required in the ongoing development and maintenance of our most important web products: najlepszekonto.pl and najlepszelokaty.pl. As their popularity grew, a bigger and more flexible team was needed to meet all of our objectives.
Ever since 2015, the objectives gradually changed. They included frontend work with React and backend development with Symfony. An important part was the implementation of the Bolt Content Management System. As the portals grew in popularity, more work was needed on maintenance, optimization as well as development of new features.
How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?
We have used both recommendations and online research in our preliminary selection and then went on to consult our project with a number of pre-selected vendors. The team at TSH impressed us with a highly personalized approach to our project and lots of interesting suggestions, as well as the ability to handle almost all aspects of the projects, including design and project management.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.
The cooperation has been ongoing since 2015 and involved comprehensive custom web development of our web portals with React and Symfony. At various stages, the Bolt CMS, Redis and the Twig template engine were used. The TSH team also had a PM specialist on its own. The development and maintenance of all services is still ongoing.
How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
Up until recently it included two PHP developers and one frontend developer. Now, we are working with one PHP dev and one frontend dev (React), a designer and a Project Manager.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
The work done by the TSH team made it possible for us to keep with the increasing traffic and demands that resulted from it. They helped build a scalable and easy-to-manage content-heavy portal that grows with its user base.
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.
We’ve worked with a few Project Managers during the course of the cooperation. All of them managed to meet our needs, despite having different approaches to the project. We use industry-standard communication tools (email, Slack, Jira) and SCRUM/Kanban approach to development.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
Their flexibility makes it possible to increase and decrease their involvement based on our needs. Their overall ability to deliver is also impressive.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
During the project, any issues we raised were solved efficiently and there is nothing major I can think of.
the project
Mobile App Development for Guitar Learning Platform
"They know what they are doing, they do their best, and they are all super friendly, reliable, communicative people."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I'm co-founder and CEO of Uberchord, maker of the eponymous mobile app. Uberchord Guitar is one of the world's three interactive guitar teaching platforms. Uberchord was founded 2014, uses a patented technology for acoustic chord recognition and raised 2.5M of VC funding.
For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House?
We've set out to develop the entire learning platform from scratch. This includes all parts of the platform. Frontend, backend, CI/CD, devops.
What were your goals for this project?
Until now, Uberchord has only been available for iOS. The new version were to designed be available on iOS and Android, with Mac and Windows coming later.
How did you select The Software House?
I've had a long standing friendship with one of the business executives and had developed a trusting relationship through small projects over the years. My experience with the previous projects, our overall communication, and the growing size and quality of the development team made TSH a clear choice.
Describe the project in detail.
Uberchord had been developed in Swift native to iOS. To be platform independent we needed to move to a new technology, deciding for Unity. In addition, the backend had to be migrated from Meteor to Node JS, and massively extended. Also, we needed to ramp up operation, deciding for Kubernetes and seamless CI/CD.
What was the team composition?
While TSH does not have Unity developers of their, within days they identified the right team from their own backend team and the frontend team from their network. The team consisted of two backend engineers, devops and two frontend engineers.
Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?
Both mobile application and backend are running smooth with tens of thousands of users, with a surprisingly small amount of bugs along the way, which were with few exception easy and fast to fix.
How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?
The collaboration and the workflow has always been smooth. The onboarded us in their Slack, organized a few channels. We invited them to Jira, Figma and our cloud systems and off we went. One standup in the morning, spontaneous Zoom calls when needed and that's about it.
What did you find most impressive about this company?
They know what they are doing, they do their best (which is very good), and they are all super friendly, reliable, communicative people.
Are there any areas for improvement?
We had a little bit of a shuffling of resources, partly due to our changing needs. Not sure if that can be improved, especially since TSH had to stretch themselves to always accomodate us.
the project
Web Dev for Language Courses Business Listing
"The most impressive thing was the knowledge and quality of the developers and the second project manager."
the reviewer
the review
The client submitted this review online.
Please describe your company and your position there.
I am co-owner of Language Advisor. The company is a business listing for language courses, offering a personalised search for language courses, matching interested students with schools and teachers.
For what projects/services did your company hire The Software House, and what were your goals?
We hired them to build the platform from scratch. The goal was to have a working platform after a few months and schedule an update/ refinement the second year.
How did you select The Software House and what were the deciding factors?
We found TSH through your website. We selected a short list from developers in Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine. The deciding factor was their promises, proactive way coming forward and size of the company.
Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.
The scope was set detailing two outcomes, from 3,5 to 4,5 months, giving a range between two prices. The elements which were to be delivered were;
architecture, API, Mail engine, File Upload, Online payment gate, Search engine, Login/ register, Account settings, Password reminder, Social media registration, Create profile, update profile, map search, public profile, attaching user as an damin or a teacher, contact form, newsletter, whish list, reviews, user dashboard, school/ teacher dashboard, and business dashboard.
Furthermore, a system admin, statistiscs, CMS, mail templates, financial section, save search result, share, add/ edit for publications, search publications, view publications.
The approach was minimalistic, design was included as considered important. No commitments/ specifications on technologies were made. Work was due to start April/ May 2017. As not all deliverables were delivered, we had to schedule 3 other scopes, the last one ending in November 2019/ January 2020. The website in the end was developed in angular, php and javascript.
How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?
Front end and backend developers, designer, devops , project manager, business analist, and testers. In total, for all scopes we met 11/13 different team members.
Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?
The project was a disaster. 1st scope 5/ 6 weeks delay, and only part of deliverables was delivered. Quality of deliverables was good, but as not all deliverables were delivered we required a second, third and fourth scope. 2nd/ 3th scope was done by an excellent Project manager and a lot of work was done and done well. The other Project managers and business analyst.
Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timelines.
1st scope we used basecamp, 2nd/ 3th scope trello and 4th scope jira. 1st Project manager who wrote scope was overruled by business analist who had his own agenda, became project manager. The original project manager halfway resigned, and the new project manager/ business analist left halfway the project to become head of design.
New project manager halfway 1st scope became head of PHP (but not immediately). 2nd and third scope was another Project manager, nobody of the previous developers was working for the company anymore. This project manager was really good. The 4th Project manager was inexperienced and had little input himself.
The 1st was very proactive, to a degree that he hijacked the project and implemented mainly his own idea, the second was very critical and asked the right questions the 4th was passive. None of the project was delivered in time.
What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?
The most impressive thing was the knowledge and quality of the developers and the second project manager.
Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?
Where do I start? The BA started without project charter and pushing his own idea and abandoned the project halfway for a different position. Our project was used for his own career, a year later he was fired as well. The first PM left frustrated soon after project start.
Deliverables and deadlines weren't met, and worst the wrong program language was used (Angular) making it virtually impossible to perform SEO, combining this with little attention to site structure (category pages, breadcrumbs, landing pages, etc.) which meant the project could never attract any real traffic as it was virtually impossible to index.
Only empty pages (rendering) were indexed and subsequently all pages were empty and had the same meta-data.
The 4th scope was intended to fix this problem, but to little and to late and executed poorly. Renderton was applied and installed, causing for a huge cost increase and after that the wrong time-interval was set. Communicating honestly was hard for them, probably because of previous errors had to be swept under the carpet.
The vendor responded on March 10, 2021.
Dear Client,
As discussed already in private, we are very sorry about your bad experience. We are known not only for technical expertise but also for great customer care, and we regret that we missed the mark. Your feedback is important to us. We have already implemented multiple improvements to our process to ensure that a similar situation does not occur in the future.
Your claims have been addressed in private and as a result, we have reached and signed a settlement agreement. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.
Thanks to The Software House, the app is much more stable, with fewer bugs and release problems, plus increased uptime. The team has integrated with the client’s company, communicating effectively through daily standups and collaborating on Jira. Their customer-centric approach is a highlight.