X2 Mobile

Introduce your business and what you do there.

Collaborative Classroom is a nonprofit based in Alameda, California. We’re a language arts curriculum company, originally a research organization. I’m the director of technology operations.

What challenge were you trying to address with X2 Mobile?

We’ve had a longstanding set of web tools, which we started working on in 2012 with another organization. In 2017, we started thinking about native app development, particularly on iOS.

Our CTO started looking for a second development house to work with us, mainly because we were overworking the current one, and we didn’t want to lose throughput on our main web development.

What was the scope of their involvement?

X2 Mobile has built four mobile apps that are released at this point, and there are more in the pipelines. They work with our technology department as well as with our content creators and digital publishing team.

With a lot of our projects, we’ll have an existing, older web app that we want to reenvision as a mobile-first one. We won’t necessarily come up with a rigid list of requirements, but rather have an organic process, describing in lay terms what the original app was intended to do, what its workflows are, and what we like and don’t like about it.

Two of our apps are student-facing, and they contain the only student-facing material we make. We didn’t want those to require logins or be coupled to the rest of our ecosystem. Those are the first two apps that X2 Mobile created for us.

It was called “WordWorks!.” It’s basically part of our grade two curriculum, and it was originally envisioned as a word sorting classroom activity. Students were working on their own through web browsers, so we thought that it made sense to let them use it on mobile devices. The app was developed for iOS and Android.

The second app X2 Mobile built for us is called “BookRoom!”. It’s been around for about two years. It also doesn’t require a login, and, just like with WordWorks!, using it doesn’t require being in a classroom with a teacher that has one of our products. Anyone can download these first two apps and start using them.

X2 Mobile worked with us to create a simple workflow for letting teachers decide which books students could get, rather than students picking whatever books they wanted, while not making it too restrictive and difficult for a six-year-old or their parents to use. That was important from a pedagogical perspective.

They also created a card deck app for two of our programs. It replaces physical card decks used in our program as a feedback mechanism with students. A teacher might have multiple card decks that are supposed to be randomized, which can become very laborious when using paper cards.

Our fourth app is called “ClassView Pro” and is a mobile-optimized version of the web app by the same name, which is our assessment engine. The engine is teacher-mediated, not student-mediated. 

Teachers evaluate the students’ work in collaboration with students. The teacher records how the student responds. We have other ongoing work with X2 Mobile.  

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with George (Founder & CEO).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with X2 Mobile in April 2017.

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

Analytics is one of the things I’ve been pushing with our organization. We track a lot of information, but we don’t analyze a lot of it. We know how many people are downloading the app, and X2 Mobile has worked with us to ensure that we’re collecting all the analytics.

We haven’t done the analysis to actually see how many of those downloads led to a sale, because that’s not the reason we released those apps. They weren’t released to become a sales pipeline of any kind, but just to enhance the student experience.

We do get some anecdotal responses from teachers. The apps are definitely being used, and teachers are happy with them. We had a web app in the past, which was part of older infrastructure. The reimagining of it, with a new workflow and better feature sets, has been widely praised by our users.

I haven’t looked at our downloads on the App Store, and I’ve been relying on individual testimonials. The use of that app is going to skyrocket when students are back in school because it’s meant to be used in-person by groups of 3–6 students. It’s a bit harder to use in a remote learning environment.

Its true impact isn’t going to be seen until the fall of 2021, but the feedback from our program development team, field staff, technology group, district leads, and teachers shows that it’s going to be widely successful. They produce great work, and they’re part of our team.

How did X2 Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

We agree on a project scope, cost, and approximate delivery time for each new project, but our endeavor on that particular project doesn’t end with the final release of the app. There are always ongoing improvements. 

We treat X2 Mobile as though they are part of our own team. We’re on Slack with them daily, and we get almost real-time responses despite the fact that they’re halfway around the world. They don’t respond at 2 a.m. their time, but the beginning of our day is the end of theirs and vice versa. 

They have enough staff members to work in shifts. We have a high degree of synergy with them, and their communication skills are excellent, both in terms of understanding where we’re trying to go, and in bringing added value to ideas that we’re not able to communicate clearly. 

A lot of other development houses would build exactly what we told them to, but that’s not the case with X2 Mobile. They use our GitHub and Jira for all our mobile projects.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Their willingness to integrate with our company, including people who aren’t tech-oriented, is great. Some organizations may not want that, but we did, and X2 Mobile has been great about it.

They know how to build modern apps efficiently and quickly, and they do quite a bit of QA. One of the things we appreciate is that they do device compatibility validation. If they’re building an iPad app, they test every variant that exists. It’s much harder to do with Android, but they do it there as well. 

They advise us on features that may restrict the kinds of devices the app can be deployed on. X2 Mobile’s technical prowess is obviously stellar, but there are a lot of great developers out there. What truly sets them apart is their communication.

We’ve had George in particular directly interact with our customers. He’s been on webinars to demo our product, and he’s very good at that. We don’t send him every support ticket that we aggregate; just the ones that I feel will improve their team’s morale and the ones with constructive criticism. It’s a great partnership.

He asks the right kinds of questions to really understand what’s going on. This may be a subtle distinction, but it’s an important one for us. On our end, we have multiple departments looking at a project, and they’re sometimes looking through very different lenses. He’s actually helped us communicate more clearly with each other.

It’s always worrying when offshoring work to different timezones, particularly to non-English countries, but the only way we even notice that X2 Mobile isn’t in the US is that when it’s daytime here, it’s nighttime there. 

There may be a slight accent or something like that, but it’s more like they’re in a neighboring state than halfway around the world. We have to worry about cost as a nonprofit, and their rates are quite affordable.

This review was published on December 10, 2020.

Greg Melancon

Digital Project Manager, Collaborative Classroom

Nonprofit

51-200 Employees  

Alameda, California

$10,000 to $49,999

July 2019 - Ongoing

Project summary: 

X2 Mobile provides ongoing mobile application development for a nonprofit organization. The team was hired to create a digital version of the client's physical card used in SIPPS and Being a Reader programs.

Feedback summary: 

X2 Mobile's output earned great reviews from initial customers and it was energetically welcomed. The team conducts meetings, email exchanges and they utilize Jira for reporting. They delivered the project promptly and on budget.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a Digital Project Manager at Collaborative Classroom. Collaborative Classroom is a nonprofit organization that improves children's school experience by providing teachers with engaging curricula and ongoing professional development that supports their students' academic, social, and emotional development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire X2 Mobile?

Collaborative Classroom wanted a digital version of their physical cards used in its SIPPS and Being a Reader programs.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted a tool that would mimic the classroom experience, but also had an interactive quality that would keep students' attention.

SOLUTION

How did you select X2 Mobile?

After extensive research, our CTO chose X2 because of their experience with other projects in the U.S. educational space.

Describe the project in detail.

X2 handled all development for both Android and iOS, as well as some design responsibilities. They created four programs within the app: SIPPS Third Edition, SIPPS Fourth Edition, Being a Reader First Edition, and Being a Reader Second Edition. SIPPS and Being a Reader support new and struggling readers in grades K-12 build skills and confidence for fluent, independent reading.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we worked with the CEO of X2 to support us and serve as the main point of contact throughout the project. Later, I was made aware of their project manager, 3 developers, and a QA engineer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Reviews by initial customers have been great. The physical card version of SIPPS is already popular and widely used. The app was energetically welcomed.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication wise, meetings, email exchanges, and JIRA reports were enough for us. X2 was able to comprehend what we were trying to accomplish, so they could make helpful recommendations. This helped the project to finish quickly and on budget.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their ability to understand what we wanted to accomplish stood out to us. They have quick, excellent development skills and provided regular progress reviews.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We don’t have anything. We’re looking forward to starting new projects with X2 in the future.

Star Ratings

Overall rating: 5

Quality: 5

Schedule: 5

Cost: 5

Willing to refer: 5

This review was published on July 5, 2020.

Project summary: 

X2 developed an educational game app for Android and iOS, utilizing both animation and audio. In addition to development responsibilities, they also contributed limited design work.

Feedback summary: 

Pre-release reviews have been positive and X2 positioned themselves well to be assigned future projects. They used a hybrid communication style to provide constant accessibility and accurately internalized project goals. Their commitment to transparency was noted and appreciated.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the CTO of Collaborative Classroom. We’re a nonprofit organization that improves children’s’ school experience by providing teachers with engaging curricula and ongoing professional development that supports their student’s academic, social, and emotional development.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire X2 Mobile?

We wanted supplemental apps to support the implementation of our English Language Arts program.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted an app that would mimic the classroom experience but also had an interactive quality that would keep students’ attention.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor?

After extensive research, I chose X2 because of their experience with other projects in the U.S. educational space.

Describe the project in detail.

X2 handled all development for both Android and iOS, as well as some design responsibilities. They created four games that worked together to teach language, using audio and animation to get students interested in completing the exercise.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Although the game will debut to a broad audience this fall, reviews by initial customers have been great. We expect a very warm welcome with the wide release.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Communication wise, weekly meetings plus email exchanges were enough for us. X2 was able to comprehend what we were trying to accomplish, so they could make helpful recommendations. This helped the project to finish quickly and on budget.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

Their ability to understand what we wanted to accomplish stood out to us. They have quick, excellent development skills and provided regular progress reviews.

Are there any areas for improvement?

We don’t have anything. We’re looking forward to starting a new project with X2.

Star Ratings

Overall rating: 5

Quality: 5

Schedule: 5

Cost: 5

Willing to refer: 5

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We’re web app consultants that help our clients with designing, implementing, and maintaining apps with ongoing revisions. Our company has our own developers, but we also outsource dev help for more specialized skills. 

What challenge were you trying to address with X2 Mobile?

We wanted someone who could dedicate a team to handle iOS development and rely on them for revisions.

What was the scope of their involvement?

They just completed an entire rewrite of the iOS app that we’ve been maintaining for a client. To start, they helped consult on both the design layout and UI functionality during the design and planning phases. Following that, they implemented the design and release. They did the development and helped us with the testing phase. At this point, they’re making revisions and adding new features to the app. Our next step is to deploy the solution through the app store. 

What is the team composition?

We worked with four people: the owner, two developers, and a project manager. 

How did you come to work with X2 Mobile?

We found them on Upwork originally. After posting the job on our site, we invited several different dev shops to interview for the position. We chose them because of their expertise, bandwidth, and price. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $50,000–$200,000 on their services. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in February 2017, and our work with them is ongoing. 

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

We have several thousand people that use the app weekly. The rewrite included UI changes, so we put together videos to inform consumers of how things have changed. Since they’ve hired QA resources, we’re finding fewer bugs and issues than we used to. That’s helped us move along quite easily.   

Our clients are excited about the new launch and are satisfied with the functionality of the app. The new features have also been happily received by users. 

How did X2 Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

We used Jira to manage the project for internal development. Because of that, we provided them with logins to all of our work. Within that project, they managed everything through our Jira platform, which was really appreciated. They created tasks, sprints, and releases. We were impressed with both project management and communication. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

Even while we maintaining the buggy old code base, they were responsive to fixing issues. They aren’t afraid to share their ideas on how to further improve the solution.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They underestimating the time that it would take to do the app, and it hurt them financially because this was a fixed-bid project. On our side, it took longer to build than expected. It was a little difficult to determine a timeline estimate. Moving forward, we’re in a better position to estimate deadlines.  

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask them for their opinions and advice. There are features that we thought we wanted in the app, but they offered additional suggestions that made the app even better. Be open to change with them, or else you may miss out on their expertise.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the CTO of ClassLink, a web application that enables users to quickly sign in to multiple applications at once or access remote files on several devices.

For what projects/services did your company hire X2 Mobile?

We relied on X2 Mobile to develop our mobile application.

What were your goals for this project?

Because of the prevalence of mobile devices, we decided that ClassLink needed to develop a robust mobile presence. We hoped to build a mobile application that had similar functionality to our web application.

How did you select this vendor?

Our team researched many different companies and asked them to develop a small prototype application. X2 Mobile exceeded our expectations with the prototype.

Describe the project in detail.

After we selected X2 Mobile, we had weekly meetings to coordinate the build. Once X2 Mobile understood the functional requirements and the APIs, they produced mockups and more substantial prototypes before finally executing the full build. We continue to have scheduled meetings to review our app’s functionality.

What was the team composition?

Initially, we worked with a project manager and a mobile developer. Our team has since grown to include the project manager, three mobile developers, and a full-time QA technician.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Within three months, X2 Mobile built and delivered our application. They currently maintain our application, which is used by thousands of daily users.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

The team communicates in English well. I’m appreciative of their willingness to continue having regular meetings with us even after the project’s completion.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

George (CEO, X2 Mobile) frequently communicates with our team and stays on top of the latest trends in mobile development. George has also visited our office several times in the past few years.

Are there any areas for improvement?

No. We are satisfied with their work, and we expect our partnership to continue for years to come.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a partner in a software development company.

What challenge were you trying to address with X2 Mobile?

We were looking for extra resources to support our mobile development projects.

What was the scope of their involvement?

X2 Mobile allocates a portion of their staff to work alongside our team and expedite the development of several projects. We developed an original application before engaging them, but they help us release new versions for both iOS and Android. Our in-house team provides the designs and X2 Mobile solely assists development. In addition to their web APIs, the app also utilizes a lot of third-party integrations like Twilio and Stripe.

What is the team composition?

We work with George (Founder & CEO, X2 Mobile) and one project manager. We’ve also communicated with one Android developer and an iOS developer.

How did you come to work with X2 Mobile?

My business partner found them on Clutch. We decided to work with them based on their experience. They focus solely on mobile app development, so all of their developers are familiar with the tasks we need them to perform.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent $50,000 so far.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in May 2017 and the engagement is ongoing.

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

We like working with them because they’re super flexible and can reliably supplement the developers we have in-house. Whenever we need to meet a deadline or are tied up in other projects, X2 Mobile contributes extra developers to work as needed. They’ve helped increase our productivity and overall work capacity.

How did X2 Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

We’re located in different time zones, but they do an excellent job of working late to overlap with our working hours. We use Slack and Skype to communicate. They’re very well organized.

What did you find most impressive about them?

X2 Mobile’s biggest strength is mobile development. They don’t focus on a lot of different technologies and that makes them experts at what they do. We’ve engaged with other firms that try to work with any technology, but they often don’t have the expertise to adequately deliver. We also appreciate X2 Mobile’s ability to quickly integrate with an existing project and provide services as needed. Additionally, George traveled to our offices to meet face-to-face and discuss our needs. It’s hard to ask for much more than that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Have some documentation and designs ready for them. We hand over the exact specifications for what we need and that makes the process reasonably seamless.

Please describe your company and your position there.

Safelet BV is a manufacturer of personal safety products that allow users to notify friends and family where they are during an emergency.

For what projects/services did your company hire X2 Mobile?

We hired X2 Mobile to take over a project that had turned into a nightmare. Our Android and iOS apps were originally developed by another company for a fixed fee. This company cut so many corners to fit our budget that their final apps were fundamentally unstable.

What were your goals for this project?

We wanted first to improve and stabilize existing, unstable apps. Second, we wanted to work out a long-term plan to rebuild the app step by step to fit within our available budget.

How did you select this vendor?

We found X2 Mobile by doing an online search for companies in Romania. Romania has a great high-tech culture at an affordable cost which makes it an ideal location to find a partner for start-ups.

The X2 Mobile director met with us in Amsterdam. He immediately gave us peace-of-mind when we described the situation and he showed us the ways he could help.

Describe the project in detail.

X2 analyzed existing code and stabilized the app before making more fundamental changes. Their team used an oversight structure to inform us through every step. They also document the apps' coding so we could always take control of the project or bring it to another company. Then, the apps were redesigned and rebuilt within a period of six months. X2 is currently working on multiple iOS and Android products for our clients.

What was the team composition?

They provide a dedicated iOS and Android developer, and an account manager.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

X2 Mobile stabilized our apps within two weeks. The apps have clear and excellent UI/UX. Their clean code made sure the apps were stable and running smoothly.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We conduct weekly calls to communicate. We also use Slack and GitHub to keep track of items and their status. We schedule all new requests in ZenHub. 

What did you find most impressive about this company?

We are impressed by their ability to keep their promises on delivering on time and within budget. They also impress us with the availability of our account manager outside business hours.

Even with some hiccups in our relationship, they are always there when I need them most—even if they have to work extra hours.

Whenever a new OS release causes issues with the iOS or Android apps, they always create solutions before customers experience problems. They are a great business partner and I will continue to work with them.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the head of product development for a parcel forwarding company. I oversee most of the development for our web app and our internal iPad app.

What challenge were you trying to address with X2 Mobile?

Initially, we needed a web app for internal processes in our warehouse. Our warehouse employees had to be able to move around while still interacting with our server. We had previously just used computers and a browser, but we decided that we needed a more portable solution. We only had a general idea of what we wanted so we needed to engage a firm who could help up make that idea a reality.

What was the scope of their involvement?

X2 Mobile built our app from scratch a couple years ago. They’ve made improvements to it since then. We reviewed out-of-the-box solutions, but they didn’t fit our specific needs. We honestly weren’t sure what the best solution would be, so X2 guided us into something that made sense on an iPad. We knew we were going to only use iPads, so they developed the app using Xcode. More recently, they’ve also developed a couple of stand-alone apps for us in Swift, which is leaner and quicker to code. The Xcode app took several months to develop, whereas the Swift apps each only took a month to go from conception to a working version.

X2 Mobile also assisted us in finding barcode scanners that met our requirements, altering them to suit our purpose. They built us a custom Arduino interface for the scales and cameras we use. In short, they’ve been able to modify devices in the warehouse, enabling us to more efficiently use them within our proprietary software.

When the relationship began, we were only working with George [Purusniuc, co-founder]. Over time, we’ve worked with three different developers who have been really good as well. One developer gets assigned to us at a time, and the one we have now is quick and able to critically analyze issues.

How did you come to work with X2 Mobile?

I found their profile on one of the freelance sites. I was looking for a firm who was willing to learn details about what we do. George at X2 took the time to ask smart questions about our business and our processes.

How much have you invested with X2 Mobile?

Over the course of our relationship, we’ve invested over $200,000. Last year, we paid around $60,000–$80,000 for their services.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in April 2013. They continue to support the app with updates and improvements. After the first six months, we realized that we wanted a long-term relationship with X2, so now we essentially look at them like a salaried employee.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

I haven’t tracked specific metrics. However, I appreciate that they’re very responsive to production issues or time-sensitive situations. George is really good at spotting issues in the way we plan things out. He’s able to foresee any resulting problems in other parts of the app and advise me on a better direction.

How did X2 Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

We use GitHub Issues for all our server-side project tracking and I brought that over to the iOS side as well. I’ll create milestones and hand them over to X2. They charge us an hourly rate and give us a breakdown of the hours on a weekly basis. We communicate using Slack and GitHub Issues. We write out the full explanation of an issue and have a direct discussion about changes on the issue itself. We use Slack for more conversational communication on smaller details. When we have bugs or issues, X2 is good at responding quickly and determining how they can fix those.

What did you find most impressive about X2 Mobile?

They’re very responsive. There is a time zone difference so we’ve had to contact them well after business hours. Despite this, they were quick to answer a question or spring into action when necessary.

Are there any areas X2 Mobile could improve?

They could improve the way they communicate expected timelines to us. There have been times when I wasn’t as clear as I should have been regarding project management and they ended up working on projects that weren’t high priority to me. I take some responsibility for that so I can’t fault them too much.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

We are web consultants building custom web and mobile apps for a variety of clients. I am a co-owner of the company. My partner and I are responsible for sales and high-level project management.

What challenge were you trying to address with X2 Mobile?

We had hired another company for the initial build of an iOS app, and have involved several parties for its development. Those companies were either unavailable or didn't perform well, so we started looking for another company which could fix some issues and add new features to the app.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We've hired X2 Mobile a couple of times, for work on the same iPad application. X2 Mobile took over the development, with our company managing the project on behalf of the client. X2 Mobile made some changes, increasing the app's stability, and added new features. We provided mockups of what we were looking for, as well as high-level requirements.

Our client is one of the largest publishers of liturgical music for Catholic churches. They have several hymnals which needed to be displayed on an iPad. The app allows users to download material, turn pages, create lists of hymns to be played, listen to sample music, make annotations, and share lists with other people.

How did you come to work with X2 Mobile?

I found X2 Mobile on Upwork. X2 Mobile seemed professional, had great ratings, and were responsive during our first contact. We needed someone right away, and X2 Mobile was available immediately.

How much have you invested with X2 Mobile?

The cost of X2 Mobile's work has been close to $10,000. We pay X2 Mobile through Upwork.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with X2 Mobile in April 2016. X2 Mobile is currently our go-to company for any maintenance or changes to the app. We're currently putting together the set of requirements for a new set of revisions.

Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?

X2 Mobile has been able to fix stability issues and make the app perform much better than before. Before hiring X2 Mobile, we had a 40% crash rate, but we've come to have a 98% rate of successful sessions.

How did X2 Mobile perform from a project management standpoint?

We've used Skype and Teamwork, which was our main project management tool at the time. We created an account for X2 Mobile's team and posted tasks and other details. X2 Mobile received alerts for any new requests and responded within the tool. We outsource all our projects to other companies and freelancers throughout the world and try to integrate all of them into a single tool. X2 Mobile was very responsive, more so than we were. X2 Mobile often had to wait for us to get back to a client or come up with more changes.

X2 Mobile's team is based in Romania. X2 Mobile's principal visited us in Chicago in the fall of 2016. It was nice to meet him personally.

What did you find most impressive about X2 Mobile?

Most of our freelancers are given freedom to give recommendations and make changes as they see fit. X2 Mobile has been very good at working with us, instead of only taking care of what we ask them to do. X2 Mobile has offered great suggestions on how the app could be improved.

Are there any areas X2 Mobile could improve?

There is nothing that I can think of.