Umbrella IT

What was the scope of their involvement?

I provided them a prototype for them to develop. We’re running an agile scrum project and they’re developing the software and doing the testing.

It’s an online catalog for franchisees and wholesale partners to purchase stock. A huge part of it is the QA, in terms of test certifications to ensure that a product is legal and suitable to be shipped to certain territories. There’s a lot of logic behind the functionality to quickly and easily enable a franchise partner, but also handle merchandise and determine its suitability.

There’s also a product information management side of things, in which we extract data from our merchandising system, consolidate various attributes, and display it on the site for our franchise partners and our merchandisers.

What is the team composition?

They have a project manager in charge of two developers and a QA tester. I initially spoke with Stas (CEO & Founder, Umbrella IT).

How did you come to work with Umbrella IT?

I looked on sites like Upwork and stumbled across a few profiles, then contacted them directly. Initially, I gave them a simple task to check out the quality of their work and communication. I was very satisfied with the response, which is why I gave them more and more work.

What is the status of this engagement?

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

What was the scope of their involvement?

Umbrella IT has handled everything from design to Node.js programming. We designed mockups, which they used to create our design. Since they did a great job, we requested very few changes. Then they passed the work on to their developers.

The product is a multistep form where users choose details like the number of rooms in their house. Since long forms are bad for conversion, our product transports users from one step to another. It’s simple, but has conditional logic: if a user specifies that they have an apartment, there’s no use asking the size of their land. Umbrella IT had built similar solutions for other companies, and they've done a great job with ours.

What is the team composition?

We work with five or six members of their team, including a project manager and two full-time developers. We also have two or three QA specialists and one designer. 

How did you come to work with Umbrella IT?

I checked the billed hours of companies on Upwork. I’m from Russia, so I specifically looked for Russian companies. Even though they aren't as cheap as Indian companies, they're better. I found four companies on the platform, talked to all of them, and settled on Umbrella IT.

I chose them because their contact asked the most questions. I received quick estimates from the other companies, but after three calls with Umbrella IT, they were still asking new questions. I knew they would understand the scope of the project. Their estimate was the highest, but not because we were overcharged. They could simply tell how much time it would take.

How much have you invested with them?

It cost a bit more than $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Umbrella IT in December 2017. We planned to finish the first phase in April, but have worked uninterrupted with their team since the beginning. The collaboration will continue for at least six months.

What was the scope of their involvement?

After the previous firm failed to deliver, I needed Umbrella to finish the remainder of the project in a timely and affordable fashion with higher quality. They ended up fixing numerous issues the prior team left.

Initially, Umbrella did some enhancements and changes to the core business model behind the app—the way we were going to turn a profit. Through that, though, they found security issues. The old team had left the app insecure and vulnerable to hacking, and a user had actually taken advantage of that and credited their wallet with in-app purchases. Umbrella also found some other minor bugs and issues they were able to fix.

We’ve now started moving the app to the live servers on the Android and App Store, and Umbrella’s implemented the same changes to our web platform. The old platform would upload videos multiple times or play them in landscape instead of portrait, and Umbrella fixed that.

In the app, users vote on videos, and Umbrella set a tracker to see the number of users before a competition went live. This allowed us to better achieve our business goals and was one of the main changes. We’re currently working on additional features to enhance user engagement (like a comments section), and we’ll roll them out soon.

What is the team composition?

The team manager is my main point of contact. He relays all my information to his team.

How did you come to work with Umbrella Web?

I met someone who had used Umbrella to develop her entire app, and I was blown away by the quality, price, and timeline she mentioned. I then found them on Upwork. I was considering other companies, but I was happy with what Umbrella offered and went with them.

How much have you invested in them?

I’ve spent between $25,000–$30,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked from October 2017–February 2018.