Voypost

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO and development manager of Shape Digital, an agency that manages custom application development and transformation projects for clients. Our projects go from rebuilding e-commerce websites and making integrations with typical platforms to building brand new web-based or mobile applications.

What challenge were you trying to address with Voypost?

A client of ours had a backed ERP system on their website, but the website was outdated. Thus, they wanted to build a new website from scratch, for which they required custom development due to their backend system. As a small agency, we mainly work with third-party providers and outsource a lot of our development work because we manage a lot of projects. For this project specifically, we hired Voypost to help us out.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Voypost helped us create a brand new wholesale e-commerce site for our client. We started the project with some introductory meetings. Then, we provided them with designs and detailed requirements, after which they started the development process. Throughout the project, they delivered various features as they finished them for us to test them. Whenever we found bugs, they fixed them, and they moved on to the next phase after our approval.

As far as technologies, the website was built on Next.js. Our client had quite complex requirements for their site’s search engine feature, so Voypost helped us create the software architecture for that feature.

What is the team composition?

I worked with the owner and founder of the company, who was present in the initial meetings and touched base with us at various points of the project to see how it was going. He also provided assistance with some of the architecture requirements. We also worked with a project manager, who was the liaison between their developers and us. Voypost’s development team included three developers, a technical lead who reviewed their codes, and a QA analyst who supported testing.

How did you come to work with Voypost?

We found them on a job posting website. We looked at a few different partners and selected Voypost because they seemed the most suitable for us; the way they worked seemed to fit our needs. We also had quite urgent requirements, so we had to get started quickly, and they were available to start working immediately.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with Voypost in August 2021, and they completed the project in March 2022. After that, we engaged in a two-sprint maintenance contract, the first sprint cycle happening in May 2022 and the second in June 2022. The site is now complete, but we might engage with them again for future changes based on our client’s requirements.

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

A month after the site was launched, our client provided us with the following success metric: they went from making $1,000 per day on sales to $10,000. It was an impressive result.

How did Voypost perform from a project management standpoint?

Voypost’s project management was very good. The project was quite challenging due to the client’s strict requirements; they changed their mind a few times throughout the project. Still, Voypost was very flexible and adjusted to the changes as those kept coming. We also adjusted the management process a few times according to the difficulty of those changes, but they seamlessly adjusted their style to meet our needs.

I had weekly video conference calls via Google Meet with the project manager, but I also communicated directly with the developers to speed up the process when small changes or questions were needed. Voypost used Monday to manage the project, and we internally used Trello to manage the tasks and their progress. On their end, I know that the development team had daily meetings with the project manager because they provided us with details of those meetings, including a review of what they had accomplished for the day. They provided us with those details over Slack for us to provide feedback as well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Voypost provides high-quality development work. As a small agency working with different providers, we don’t always have positive results. However, working with Voypost, the technical quality of their deliverables was never a concern for us; they really stood out for that.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Considering the challenges of the project, Voypost did a great job overall. We had a recap meeting to discuss the good and bad things about the project, and the majority of the improvements we agreed on for future projects were around streamlining our communication, improving our processes, and setting better expectations. The project wasn’t as organized as the projects they were used to, so it took them some time to adjust. Still, improvements were needed on both sides, so I wouldn’t hold them entirely accountable for that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ensure that your business requirements are clear and that you can communicate those effectively. Doing that will result in a more efficient process, and there will be less back and forth.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the chief product and technology officer (CPTO) of Parqio, a technology startup.

What challenge were you trying to address with Voypost?

We needed to develop our product as quickly as possible to roll it out in the market. Around the third month of the development process, we brought in Voypost to help us out.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Initially, Voypost came in to help us with mobile app development. However, their scope has expanded since then, and they’ve also helped us with web app development and backend development.

As for the mobile app, Voypost has built it from scratch using React Native, making it compatible with iOS and Android. They’ve also built the web app from scratch using React and Node.js. It works as the administration app that helps us manage our products, but it also allows users to manage their locations.

In addition to those projects, Voypost offers ongoing maintenance, and we leverage their development resources through an open-ended contract. Thus, whenever we have new projects, their resources come in and do the work. For example, they’re currently helping us with hardware development, more specifically with IoT Raspberry Pi projects.

What is the team composition?

We currently work with four developers from Voypost.

How did you come to work with Voypost?

We found them on a website, so they were kind of a referral. We’ve been very fortunate to have them on board.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent over $200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in December 2020, and our engagement is ongoing.

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

The app developed by Voypost has reached around 8,000 users since December 2020.

How did Voypost perform from a project management standpoint?

Voypost is performing well. They work directly with me, so I’m the one running the project management. Still, we have very tight sprint cycles, and their team works very well and delivers good work on time. Initially, they offered to manage the project, but I declined because I wanted to keep a close relationship with the development team.

We use Kitemaker to manage the project. As for communication, initially, we used Slack to communicate, but we then moved to Keybase.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Voypost’s biggest strengths are the recruitment, hiring, and training processes they have in place. They put a lot of emphasis on upskilling their team and making sure that they’re constantly learning and growing, which is very valuable.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No. We’ve had a very constructive and productive relationship, and I’m currently considering bringing them into a different project for a different company.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have very clear scope and task descriptions to minimize the chances of misunderstandings. Additionally, have multiple sprint meetings and follow up on each sprint cycle because the best way to leverage a remote team is to have good communication.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company makes SaaS solutions for the enterprise with the ultimate goal to help them better understand their people in a frictionless matter.

For what projects/services did your company hire Voypost?

We wanted to explore a new business opportunity that our core-team didn't have time for to develop. To validate the MVP we had to go from idea shipping to users <4 weeks. The challenge was to develop a lightweight and frictionless way to understand employees without bothering them.

This required us to build a SaaS application with analytics and a discussion platform to manage the responses, as well as a dashboard for users, a chrome extension, and a landing page.

The Voypost team helped us to scope out and develop a large part of the back-end while we did a design sprint, and from there we were able to quickly develop the front-end.

What were your goals for this project?

It needed to be built for the web, be mobile responsive, and frictionless for users in the browser through a chrome extension. The initial MVP was all about speed to deliver, but as we continued our partnership, the product was built to have flexibility and reliability in mind.

It had to be able to scale smoothly without having to redo the entire architecture.

How did you select this vendor?

Because the project was critical to delivering fast in order to validate the idea, we wanted to work with a team that knew how to launch products quickly. Voypost and the team had the experience of startups themselves, and it helped us to ship in weeks vs months for the first version.

It really helped us reduce the scope dramatically, and collaborate closely as if they were fully part of the team and not act like typical agencies.

Describe the project and the services they provided in detail.

They helped us to through ideation face with how to make a stable back-end infrastructure that would scale enough for the initial MVP, yet lightweight to build within a few weeks.

As we completed our own design sprint, they plugged into the process smoothly and scoped out in detail the cost and timeline, which really helped us greatly to prioritize and cut out non-essential solutions. They helped build the back-end, front-end, and performance management throughout the project, and we continued the collaboration across a few more releases.

Also, their project management to help translate the requests and needs to the developers and the detailed issue management was very smooth. They also supported us greatly with QA testing.

What was the team composition?

We had a core team of 3 developers constantly, with one PM to help coordinate all the efforts. The lead architect and the PM took care of all the admin, so we could really work smoothly together. Depending on the timeline and the needs to ship before a certain timeline, we were able to quickly add up to 8 developers to make sure the deadline remained sacred.

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

The impact was huge for us. With their services, we were able to make them a natural extension of our own team, which made it a super smooth experience. It helped us pursue a new opportunity and ship a product in weeks, that we were previously not able to do.

The regular reviews on both sides, helped us sharpen our internal processes tremendously to make sure we could always ship big updates fast to our users. It really helped us rethink how to ship high-quality products fast.

How was project management arranged and how effective was it?

The deadline was sacred to the Project Manager, she did an incredible job to

1. deal with our continuous request, and
2. to make sure the needs were always properly translated to all the engineers.

We never had to worry about scaling up the team when it was needed, the PM made sure that everything went super smooth, and also challenged us when needed to cut down on scope and requirements to make sure we made the deadline to the users.

What I was most impressed by was the hungriness to learn from our shared retrospectives and instantly make changes for the future.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The team really cared about the end-result and the deadline was sacred to everyone. They knew how important it was to ship a high-quality product to users and showed in every step they cared. Typical agencies tend to care about billing and protecting their hours. With this team, it was like the A-players in our own team.

If necessary they worked entire weeks 14 hours per day to make sure it was shipped on-time when the promise was made. Typical agencies or freelancers think it's 5 or 6 pm, this is what I got done, that's what you'll have. This was the opposite, I would hire them full-time as employees without second-guessing. They always kept their promises.

Are there any areas for improvement?

When working with startups that are in ideation face, or explore a new opportunity, things can be a bit messy, and as you learn new things as it comes alive, it requires sometimes the flexibility to go outside the scope, and re-ass how to best make impact for the users, and refactor the scope.

You could ask the client to say "If we say Yes to this, what can we say No to? Perhaps that will help the sparring to come to the best outcome without losing time.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the Founder and CEO, We are a San Francisco based startup in the intersection of Retail, eCommerce and environmental space.

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

We wanted to develop an MVP that will hep us connect eco-conscious brands with zero-waste stores, big-box retailers and independent retailers. We started in the health and beauty space. Our goal was to build a super sleep, simple and easy to navigate system and to test waters to see if users sign up and how functional is it as a system.

How did you select Voypost and what were the deciding factors?

We found them on upwork, along with 4 other vendors. In our evaluation process one of our primary asks was for a partner who would deliver high-quality work in a reliable and collaborative manner. What made us go with Voypost was the attention to detail and responsiveness they showed even at the very initial stage, to understand project requirements. They asked the right questions and even helped us solve a few unsolved areas when thinking about our user experience and features.

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

They designed and developed a Java-based application that's hosted on Firebase.

1. Collaborative scoping: We used airtable to map our every single detail of the requirement from the UI Design.
2. Once that was cleared, the Voypost team moved on to create UI components that mirrored our design to perfection
3. They divided the project into 4 milestones and moved in stages to complete every single one of them. Every week the progress was shared with the entire team.
4. UAT: Voypost team is very precise with UAT and they use monday.com to check off every box. Any incomplete item or a bug is noted immediately as unresolved and the team completes it within the next 24 hours.

Product Features:

• Brand Dashboard to show the brand their profile
• Product Dashboard: All the product brochures created by brands are displayed here
• Questionnaire: Series of questions that brands click and complete to build their profile
• Payment interface: Integration with Stripe to allow users to pay once they want to download a PDF version of their product brochure
• Chrome Extension: Developing a chrome extension that allows category managers to save products on their wishlist and initiate conversation with those brands later.

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

5 People from the Vendor's team worked with us, below are their positions: Maria - COO (previously a PM & QA on Correlate) Pavel - Product Manager & QA Nazar - Team Lead, managing the devs Oleh and Natalia are devs Nikita - CTO & Architect

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

We were able to launch the solution right on time. And the team performed so well we are now continuing to work with them to develop the retailer interface also.

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

The project management was exceptional. The Voypost team was precisely on time for all of the deliverables and sometimes delivering a lot earlier. We used Slack for all communication.

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

It is their exceptional collaboration internally and externally with us that's truly unique. We never found that things were lost in translation. We never had any lag or delays in communicating changes or development milestones. I would highly recommend the Voypost team if you are looking for exceptional quality of code and stellar communication skills.

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

None.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m currently the head of product, design, and engineering for AFK Agency Ireland. We build digital products and experiences for large blue-chip companies.

What challenge were you trying to address with Voypost?

We had a 12-week turnaround for a large digital project and we were trying to increase our development capacity within a very short amount of time.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Voypost is providing us with web design and development, and software development. In addition, they’re building a design system from the bottom up, along with all the components needed to power a headless CMS. TypeScript and React are the technologies used for the development. We also provided all of the intel and the framework to work with.

Our project is one of those projects that never finishes so we’re still working together.

What is the team composition?

We work with two developers and a QA from their side and they’re being overseen by their lead engineer.

How did you come to work with Voypost?

We came across their profile on GitHub.

How much have you invested with them?

So far, we’ve invested somewhere between $30,000–$50,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The ongoing partnership started in December 2020.

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

The project hasn’t launched yet, but Voypost is able to surpass the quality of what the client has at the moment, so the feedback from the client has been positive.

How did Voypost perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re quite efficient in terms of project management. They do daily standups and they like to work knowing that they have the next two weeks planned out. One of their strengths is estimating the amount of work and being efficient in delivering them.

We do two Google Meet meetings a week, and daily Slack updates. We have a joint channel on Slack and we chat there all the time.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Finding actual competent developers is a lot harder than most people think, and Voypost really cares about quality.

We initially gave them a development challenge and they were able to put together a solution for a problem that most people get wrong. I was very impressed because they turned it around in about a day and I praised their competency. Once we decided to engage with them, they started doing really well into our existing process. They took it quite seriously and really cared about the quality before we even had a look at everything.

What they also do nicely is they don’t just give us developers, they complement that with project management and QA resources.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don’t really have that many things that I wasn’t happy with. They swapped a couple of team members from the project in the beginning, which I thought was a weakness at the time, but it turned out to be the right decision. It was just a slight miscommunication at the start, but it was done for the right reasons.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

My advice is to have open lines of communication, be transparent, and be open to collaboration. The first couple of weeks is always difficult in terms of working with a new supplier, but if you open yourself up to them quickly, it will be much more beneficial.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Founder of a web3 company

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

Front End Web Development

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Personal Recommendation from mutual business partner

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

Full website build including front end development and brining existing creative designs to life on the web

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

CEO (for oversight) Project Manager Web Developer

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

Team was very resourceful and had attention to detail through elements of the project, completing the project on time and according to specifications.

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

Project management style is very interactive and hands on. Utilise Slack for communication and other project management platforms allowing clients to stay on top of project progress, milestones, and timelines.

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

We were impressed with the hands-on nature and attention to detail of the project team, from budget and estimate preparation, to staffing, and ongoing project management. Also willing and able to go over and beyond specs of project by suggesting areas for improvement and most optimal route to project completion.

Also had direct access to CEO as and when needed for higher level discussions—and to provide feedback when necessary. Another very impressive quality was their solicitation of feedback of where and how to improve and what they could do better in future engagements.

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

Perhaps relatively less use of some project management software that may (or may not) be relevant for certain projects or clients with less technical skillset. However, this has to be judged on a case by case basis.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the owner of a software company specialised in bespoke software solutions.

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

To help with the speed of developing a project, we contacted Voypost to let one of their developers join our project team and develop the web platform. The team helped building backend and authentication services swell as implementing these in the front-end.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We shortlisted multiple companies and set up calls. After these calls we decided Voypost was the best fit for our project team. They had a similar working flow.

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

We had an introductory meeting in which we defined the scope. Our team delivered the development roadmap, architecture and prototype, which was discussed with Voypost beforehand to discuss the optimal stack. After this we worked in weekly sprints in which Voypost took responsibility for grooming, developing, and QA of the tasks assigned to them.

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

A project manager was our main contact. There was also 1 full stack developer which we had close contact with, during our weekly meeting and on slack. There were also multiple QA and other services that they took great care in.

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

We met all deadlines for the timeline of the project. Voypost delivered great work and took on a lot of tasks. They never failed to deliver and when there was something that had to be done for a certain time (demo or deadline) they would put in the extra hours to ensure completeness.

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

Daily updates through Slack, very clear time reports and pricing. Weekly calls to discuss upcoming and ongoing tasks.

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

Very clear communication, Never missing a promise made and very good code quality.

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

No major things.

Please describe your company and your position there.

We're a software company building a Marketing tech SaaS solution, here I am the CTO.

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

We needed to speed up our development and hired Voypost to add extra people to our back-end team.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Through our network we came in contact with Voypost, the fact that they had a structure with senior developers joining the architecture discussion together with senior/medior developers for the hands-on work was a great advantage for us as a starting company.

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

They delivered next to architecture designs, implementations of multiple back-end services in NestJS a Typescript API framework.

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

A project manager and a back end developer were our main point of contact. A software architect also joint the discussion when required.

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

After we started working with Voypost production of new features increased rapidly.

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

We communicated mostly through slack. While Voypost easily integrated with our project management in Slack.

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

The combination of different levels of software engineers was really useful to us.

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

None.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Our company provides a platform for realtors, buyers, sellers, and lenders to connect. RealGenius provides realtors and lenders with tools to help buyers and sellers make financially savvy decisions when committing to the purchase or sell their homes. I'm a product management consultant.

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

We needed to digitalized tools we have provided to realtors and lenders for years. Our goal was to develop an MVP, including basic calculations required to qualify a buyer before the house searching begins.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

They were chosen based on these considerations:

• The attention to detail when discussing the requirements
• The responsiveness of the team and professionalism
• The technical recommendations and approach selected by the team

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

Their work involved:

• Developing a browser-based application with backend and frontend including the following features:

1.  Home screen
2. User account creation and login
3. Customer card creation
4. A financial questionnaire, calculations and rendering the results of these

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

The project manager & architect directly coordinated with us. But the team also involved firebase engineers and QA.

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

The results included:

• High quality MVP
• Flexibility to review and adjust when possible (this was really important, given the fact that our requirements, in terms of UI, were still evolving)
• Responsiveness of the team
• Creative thinking to address challenges as we went through the development cycle

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

They were open, agile, transparent, driven by the commitment to provide a high-quality end product. Super patient when it comes to deal with incomplete or ambiguous requirements & different timezones.

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

The willingness to find creative ways to achieve the desired requirements. The understanding of the different tech stack options we could have applied to develop our MVP & definitely the friendliness and patience the team had when dealing with indecisive founder and various stakeholders.

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

None that I can think of. The team was professional, took an advisory role which was really needed in our case & helped us navigate the very first phase of what we hope will be a product that helps realtors, buyers, sellers, and lenders connect and complete successful real estate transactions.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a CTO of a fundraising app. We leverage open banking to round up transactions and donate the difference to charities and schools.

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

After an initial MVP success we needed a fresh app to upscale our tech stack. We went to VoyPost to use the latest technologies available and develop a high standard architecture that we could continue working with.

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We searched and interviewed with a handful of vendors, VoyPost were the only ones to really understand our position being a young startup and being lean with our current MVP build. We were also impressed with their technical ability and recommendations from early conversations.

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

We had a clear brief and designs ready for VoyPost. The development team were more than capable with using our requested tech stack which was React Native written in TypeScript and expo. The project was to build our new sign up flow, handling email verification and the data flow through the process.

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

We had an account manager that was our main source of contact and had excellent communication skills throughout. There were also multiple front end developers and other technical colleagues helping with code quality and tech architecture.

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

It's too early to tell currently but I'm confident our production bug count will plummet as a result of VoyPost introducing best practices, TypeScript and testing to our tech stack.

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

We agreed on using monday.com as a ticketing board and a weekly demo from our account manager. We were able to make constant contact to the team and our account manager through slack.

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

As a small start up we were slightly hindered with our lumpy MVP, VoyPost were aware of this and took this in stride, adapting to the limitations to stay on budget and on the timeline. As well as this their constant communication and code quality met and exceeded our expectations.

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

Possibly the only confusing aspect was paying through upwork, as we were new to upwork too the initial contract setup was sub par. I think both parties have learned from this and this will be better in future.