Topflight Apps

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and co-founder of Xennial Corporation. We’re creating an app called Betmingo.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

I had an idea for an application but needed an experienced firm to guide me through the development process.

What was the scope of their involvement?

I approached Topflight Apps with some basic wireframes of the app I wanted to build. They designed the frontend interface and coded the platform using React Native and Firebase. That approach enables the app to function on both iOS and Android devices. They also built the app’s accompanying website using WordPress.

At its core, the app is a crowdsourced user database that allows people to input data regarding specific data points. The software lists up-to-date information regarding gambling and gaming tables. Those listings include betting minimums, table rules, and locations.

The system has multiple layers of functionality including data input restrictions (location verification) to maintain the accuracy of the database. Our backend uses analytic processes to track user data. That helps us identify priority users and augment our advertisement monetization accordingly.

What is the team composition?

Joe (Founder, Topflight Apps) is our primary point of contact. We also interact with a UI/UX designer, a QA resources, a project manager, and two developers.

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

I found them by searching for vendors on Clutch.co. They were one of the only providers to respond to my inquiry after learning about the project’s size. We established email communication and went from there. Joe was pleasant to talk with and provided a detailed explanation of their development process.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent roughly $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in September 2018, and the project is ongoing.

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

Topflight Apps built a high-quality mobile platform in an impressively short amount of time. The apps will launch once we upload everything to mobile storefronts. Their pricing estimates are fair, and the proposed timelines have been accurate.

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

I communicate with the team on a daily basis via Slack. They initiate weekly or biweekly sprints that we track through Trello. This is my first experience working with a development firm, but it’s been a reasonably smooth process thus far.

What did you find most impressive about them?

I have no app development experience, but they’ve been able to guide me through the process and communicate effectively. They understand my vision and are working hard to make it a reality.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. I can’t think of any meaningful criticism.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Coming to them with a detailed pitch accelerated the project. They used the wireframes I provided to assign the correct resources and calculate a reasonable price.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a professor of emergency medicine at an educational institution.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

I needed someone to develop my app idea. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

They developed my app for iOS and Android for a new research field I was doing, as well as the patient dashboard. After they fainted, patients would enroll themselves in this study. It gives the patient a dashboard and user-friendly interface to work within the app as opposed to just answering surveys and putting in data like the prior company had done. They built a geolocator as well.

I’ve focused on iOS to start with, and I just launched the app. The wearables with Apple and the iOS version are much more integrated than with Google Fit, so it made more sense to put the effort into iOS. Although they did a similar Android platform, I haven’t launched on the Android site yet.

They also produced a professional grade video for me and did a great job on that.

What is the team composition?

My main contacts were with their developer/project manager and their founder. I’m sure there were other people doing the testing.

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

I started this project with another company but I needed someone who was able to better customize my app. They recommended working with Topflight Apps.

How much have you invested with them?

I’ve spent $25,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from July–December 2018.

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

They really did a great job making the UI and the customization of the app optimal for me. I’ve had good feedback from users about the dashboard.

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

They’ve been great to work with. They’re timely, and I’m happy with the end result. It’s been seamless. If I have questions, I email the project manager, and he gets right back to me. We had frequent conference calls to make sure the project was moving along or to clarify emails.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re incredibly personable and on top of their work. They’re fluid and dynamic and quick to respond to my needs.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can't name anything.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the CEO of Athcorpo, a behavioral-based analytic software provider for government and private entities. 

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

We needed help with the development of our AI software and making it accessible on all digital devices. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Topflight Apps walked us through a discovery phased initially, asking our team questions and developing mockups for the UI. They then created the UX and developed a progressive web application, using technologies such as MySQL, Laravel, and React.

What is the team composition? 

We work with 9–10 developers and designers, as well as Joe (Founder, Topflight Apps).

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

We met one of their developers and started a rapport that eventually evolved into a partnership. We were sold on working with them mostly for that fact that they had won a design award for another web-based platform. 

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested over $120,000 thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working with them since July 2017 and plan to only work with them on any further iterations needed. 

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

We're very happy with the product Topflight Apps developed for us overall. They went above and beyond to deliver a product that exceeded expectations. Thanks to some of their design efforts, we were recently picked up by a business incubator and will make our products available in their catalog. 

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

They're very efficient with their time, operating in two-week sprints.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their willingness to do whatever it takes to make the product works sets them apart.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, I can't think of anything.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Listen to their advice–they know what they're doing and are exceptionally professional.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the director of finance at Select Ortho. We dispense durable medical equipment at orthopedic clinics.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

We were developing new proprietary software for our clinics. A couple of developers started the software, and we were having some issues getting the software up and running.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We are developing an order entry software; the existing software had a lot of rules to walk through. The documentation for healthcare billing requires the system to manage a lot of “ifs” and “ands” based on what item is being dispensed. Topflight Apps worked with the existing code and then updated the code from AngularJS 1 to AngularJS 5 to make it easier to work with. We also needed the code updated so it would handle the tree of entries necessary to be made by the fitter when they enter a particular product and billing code to bill the insurance payers.

We’re in the implementation phase now. They’ve been extremely responsive to adjusting items and addressing issues that we’re having with the code when we interface with an inventory management system. There are issues that you can’t identify when you’re testing. Once it’s onsite and live, there are things that pop up that you never could foresee. That’s been ongoing.

We’ve scheduled a meeting to look at doing the next phase of development.

What is the team composition?

We work with Nelio (Project Manager, Topflight Apps), one main developer, and Heather (QA Specialist, Topflight Apps). 

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

We were referred to Topflight Apps by our backend developer.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $20,000–$25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in March 2018 and the work is ongoing.

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

The fact that we’re up and running is the metric that’s most important to us. It’s a service that we’re able to provide to our clients, which nobody else in the industry can provide.

Our internal fitters are the ones using it right now. They’re generally set in their ways because they have a process that they’ve been using for a few years, so we knew it was going to be challenging to get them to switch over to a completely different process. At the initial location where we rolled it out, the acceptance of what we were doing was almost instantaneous. Employee acceptance of the new process has been absolutely fantastic. We’re really pleased. We’ve now rolled it out at two other sites. 

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

There’s one person in charge to make sure the project is going forward. We’ve been using Microsoft project management software to track our progress. We have weekly calls to discuss issues and next phases and steps.

They work well with our team. Healthcare billing is especially complex and there’s a lot of documentation, especially dealing with Medicare. They were great at understanding the flow of what we needed and when we needed it and what needed to happen when a particular item was dispensed.

Heather was great at interfacing between our clinical people who were talking in a clinical language and the developers who were talking in a technical language. She meshed those together and understood what needed to be done on our side with documentation and workflow and conveyed exactly how the code needed to look and work to the developers.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They’re responsive to our issues or questions we have. There’s not a lot of lag time between us contacting them and them at least letting us know they’re working on it. The implementation of our requests is normally less than 24 hours. 

They understand what we’re trying to accomplish. They are far and above anybody else that we’ve worked with. They took the time to understand our business so the software we’re developing works for our business. It’s been impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. It’s been a great experience.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Make sure you know what your goal is. It makes the process a lot easier.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Respondent 1: Initially, we were a startup. We had an app that provided clients with their clinical history.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

R1: We started development with a local firm, but we had troubles with the local providers. We wanted to find a Spanish-speaking project manager because we wanted to reuse the code we already had, and it was difficult to find an agency willing to work with a code developed by someone else.

R2: Even though a development with them was more expensive than with any local company due to the exchange rate, for us, having a local team wasn't easy.

What was the scope of their involvement?

R1: We were looking for new technologies like HTML5, JavaScript, and Angular. Those were tools that we didn't find easily on the local market. We wanted to link with an e-commerce platform. It was a gateway that we had to turn into a local platform under Colombian regulations.

R2: The fact that we needed a site with American compliance, which is something local developers are not familiar with, made working with them a great option.

What is the team composition?

R1: There were three developers as project managers working exclusively with us, and they had a bigger team working with them behind the scenes.

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

R1: At a health conference in Silicon Valley, I met someone working on technologies applied to health who had worked with Topflight before. We trusted their recommendation.

Topflight sent us their portfolio, and we saw they had similar projects to what we were looking to do so they were a good fit for us.

How much have you invested in them?

R1: We’ve invested around $28,000–$38,000 with them so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

R2: We started working together at the beginning of 2016 and we continue to work with them.

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

R1: We complied with the Colombian financial regulations, which was extremely complex. They helped us innovate our financial health plans; now, instead of paying a monthly fee, doctors can pay per added patient. We connected that with the bank system. I think we were the first ones in Colombia offering anything like that.

We also increased our number of users after the development; we reached more than 700 new users from all over Latin America.

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

R1: They met all deadlines. We had the advantage of working in different time zones so we were able to have some developments prepared and ready overnight. They worked even more than we expected.

We used Trello as a project management tool. Most of the previous development was in Spanish, but they were able to understand without any problem.

Having found an agency with a Spanish-speaking project manager made everything easier. The project manager they assigned is excellent. He has fluid communication with us so we are happy working with them.

What did you find most impressive about them?

R1: It’s great for us to have Spanish-speaking developers. We have developers in Mexico who provide great support, especially when we have any issues. Another thing that was great was the code migration; it was exceptionally clear and well explained.

Their project management is also great. We had Skype calls to validate the code in real time.

Are there any areas they could improve?

R1: We would love if they had an office in Bogota; it would be great for us to have them closer to us.

R2: Our long-term relationship implies that things are going well.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder and CEO of a babysitting and pet care tech startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with TopFlight?

I was looking for a local, creative development company that could help us build our app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

TopFlight designed and developed a cross platform mobile app, using React Native. They incorporated features that allow users to find and trade certain care needs with other users, and provide creative input for ways to improve the app throughout the process.

What is the team composition?

I work with a few designers and about four developers.

How did you come to work with TopFlight?

I'd been asking around and searching online through sites like UpWork. I believe they reached out to me after seeing my project posted and I ultimately decided to work with them because they could provide local support and I liked the quality of their previous work.

How much have you invested with them?

We've invested about $33,000 in their services thus far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We've been working together since September 2017.

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

TopFlight provides exceptional UX designs and high-quality development work. It's been refreshing to work with a similarly entrepreneurial company that genuinely cares about the product. They continue to exceed our expectations, providing valuable and creative input on ways we can improve our app.

How did TopFlight perform from a project management standpoint?

Their team's project management has some room for improvement. They could've been more organized in the beginning and mapped out the scope of work better. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their designers and developers are incredibly creative in regards to coming up with strategies and utilizing the latest technologies available. They're willing to tackle anything I throw their way.

Are there any areas they could improve?

It would help if they could employ better management of the design process when taking over existing designs.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the founder of RocketMath. We produce various curricula to help students learn basic math, facts, and information. We have a couple of apps, as well as paper-and-pencil programs that homeschoolers and teachers can access.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

We wanted to produce an online game that students could play on various devices in order to practice at school and at home. Further, we wanted to give teachers and parents the ability to monitor progress.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We based the design of the web app off of our existing iOS app. We held several sessions for discussing features, and they helped refine the scope of the project into something that I was able to afford. We gave parents and teachers the ability to track progress, and we added multiple learning tracks—which included more challenging assignments than the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

What is the team composition?

We worked closely with their group of developers, but the founder was involved in the beginning stages and later on as necessary.

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

They responded to my RFP, and they were clear and responsive. They didn’t try to upsell me on anything. They sought to provide me only with what I needed.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent about $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January 2017, and the web app was completed in July 2018.

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

The web app has been live for about a month, and we are finding that people and schools want to buy it and use it. The fact that it exists and it works and people are buying it is promising.

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

They provided regular updates, and they were willing to clarify all actions during the development stage. We worked mostly with the developers, but the founder was always available.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were allowed to work directly with the developers so that the project progressed quickly.

Any advice for potential customers?

They provide good value for the money. They are reasonable and do not promise anything over-the-top that your project doesn’t need.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I am the COO of a healthcare startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

We needed a prototype of our web application, both as a proof of concept but also as a tool to demonstrate our capabilities to customers and investors.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They provided the design of the UX and UI. They developed the code base and implemented it. I provided some specifications of wireframes, but they were able to create mockups and work with it end-to-end. The platform is based on Laravel and uses PHP. It allows doctors and their staff to review patient information and provide feedback on the status of patients and what kind of care they may need.

What is the team composition?

I worked with two developers and a designer. Topflight’s CEO was involved as well but to a lesser extent.

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

A colleague of mine connected with them on Upwork or a similar platform. He collected all provider options, and I managed the selection process. They stood out because they are a full-service shop and had a demonstrated emphasis on design and implementation. They also had a familiarity and background with healthcare technology.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $25,000 and $30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2018, and the product was delivered in April. The prototype is being used as a training tool to onboard our clients to our systems. We also use it for customer demos and in discussions with investors. The full and functional version is still in development with our in-house team.

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

In part due to the quality of the prototype, we’ve had between 10–15 customers advance to the contracting phase of our onboarding process.

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

Across the board, they were on time. Both developers were talented in terms of content production and quality feature development, but one was a better project manager and communicator than the other. We usually used Google Documents and email to communicate.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They have very talented in-house designers. That was clear in the selection process, and they delivered on their potential.

Are there any areas they could improve?

In terms of the technology stack they used for our project, Laravel/PHP, it’s considered a little outmoded – but this was in part due to budget considerations, and I appreciated them being mindful that our tech spend is limited since we are a small company.

Any advice for potential customers?

It’s best to pay close attention to striking the right balance of how much you put on yourself versus how much you put on them. At the outset, I would do the wireframes, really map them out, out of concern that they wouldn’t deliver what I wanted if I wasn’t specific. But they were talented and often filled in the gaps I didn’t know where there. Eventually, I gave them more white space to work in. I had to realize that UX is not what I do, it’s what they do, so it’s best to trust them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm the director and founder of TMJ Sleep Therapy Center of San Francisco.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight?

I wanted to develop an app that would facilitate patient data extraction and help patients connect with their doctors.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Many of my patients desperately needed a way to keep a daily log of their symptoms and connect with their doctors. The chronically ill patients especially feel like society has left them, or that they are a burden, and the app allows them to communicate with a doctor and not be brushed off or pushed around.

Topflight helped me create an iOS and Android app where patients could keep a daily log of their symptoms to substantiate how severe their symptoms are and how much they are progressing. This produces more accurate data and reduces the subjective quality in diagnosis and treatment.

Users receive a daily push notification on their phones at 7:00 pm and input how their treatment is going and the severity of their symptoms on a scale of 0–10. The app keeps an accurate log of how patients are feeling, as opposed to them trying to think back and remember their symptoms from weeks ago. With the information the app collects, we can also collect and compare treatment data from different centers to identify the most effective approaches for certain symptoms.

What is the team composition?

There were quite a few engineers and developers working behind the scenes. Our main point of contact was the frontend developer, who we spoke with on a weekly basis.

How did you come to work with Topflight?

One of my patients worked with Topflight for his own business. He had a great experience and recommended them to me. This patient actually helped me on the project. I explained to him what I wanted, he wrote a proposal, and he used his existing business relationship to meet with them and help me achieve my business goals.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $25,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working with Topflight September 2017, launched the app on Google Play and the Apple app store a few weeks ago, and have an ongoing relationship for updating the app and adding more features as needed.

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

Overall, we’ve gotten positive responses and feedback. Even though we launched a few weeks ago, patients have already started downloading and using the app and commenting on how self-explanatory it is; Topflight made it simple and easy for anyone to understand. Our patients that have downloaded the app now use it as their primary form of communication with the office, which has reduced the workload in terms of phone and email.

How did Topflight perform from a project management standpoint?

I have dealt with many contractors in my business career, and Topflight is by far the most professional and responsive I have worked with. They’re prompt, give regular updates, answer emails—our main form of communication—within an hour if not right away, and work incredibly hard to fix any problems.

We had an issue where the app was sending out four push notifications instead of one. I noticed this on Saturday, and by Monday morning they had it back to normal.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They spelled everything out at the beginning, fulfilled every promise, and were honest about the cost. In every other working experience I’ve had with contractors, I’ve been hit with hidden or additional charges. With Topflight, I paid exactly what had been agreed upon.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I would tell them to keep doing exactly what they’re doing. I was very lucky to find them.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Know what you want, put it in writing, make sure you communicate clearly, and don’t second-guess yourself. Topflight is professional and will give you whatever you ask, as long as you’re clear on your needs. Clear communication from the beginning will save a lot of trouble.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the EVP of Engagement for a branding firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Topflight Apps?

We were working on a global rebrand for one of our clients, and we needed help with the web design element of our deliverables. We were already working on a new identity, logo, and look and feel, so we decided to reach out for the website design piece.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They helped us with the UX and UI of a new website, for both mobile and desktop. We briefed them on the project, and they immersed themselves in a lot of information, in terms of the brand identity we’d already created. We started out agreeing on what the UX was going to be, going over a couple of different design ideas, and then narrowing it down based on client feedback. They didn’t do any content creation, but that handled all of the visuals for the site.

What is the team composition?

We mainly dealt with the project lead and a designer.

How did you come to work with Topflight Apps?

I’d known them for about a year, and I was looking for the right project to engage them on. I really liked and connected with the owner, and I wanted to see them in action. This project had a great-sized scope and was in our core competencies, so we went with them. Originally though, we liked how collaborative they were, because that’s how we like to work.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from February to March 2018.

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

They were able to jump in, understand the brand, and deliver the UI and UX in about six weeks, which was really impressive. Especially considering the pressure we were under.

How did Topflight Apps perform from a project management standpoint?

We collaborated via text, email, and video calls, and they were highly communicative, often responding within minutes. The end-client was in a different time zone, but Topflight was really flexible in terms of working and collaborating with us, even if it wasn’t during the typical workday.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They were really easy to work with, which is rare with creative firms, and especially so when you talk about design. They were open to feedback and were very collaborative. In terms of response time, they were able to turn things around really quickly.

Are there any areas they could improve?

If this had been a larger scale project, I would say that should have utilized a project management tool where we could see our progress. For this particular project, it wasn’t needed, since we also had a short turnaround, but on other projects, I would recommend for them to use one if they don’t already.

Any advice for potential customers?

You need to find someone that has the same kind of work ethic as you, in terms of response times and availability. We’re available to our clients at almost any time, and Topflight made themselves available to us. Having that same perspective, in terms of customer service and experience, is important.