About Custom Software Solutions, Inc
Since 2005, Custom Software Solutions, Inc has operated as a technology services provider. Their core services include Custom Software Development and Web Development. The company operates with a team of 10 - 49 professionals. Typical hourly rates run around $100 - $149 / hr/hr. Clients have rated Custom Software Solutions, Inc 4.5 out of 5 in 1 reviews. Their home base is Irvine, CA. This gives a quick snapshot of what to expect when working with Custom Software Solutions, Inc.
Where We Specialize
15%
Mobile App Development
Mobile App Development
15%
Cryptocurrency Wallet Development
15%
Smart Contracts Audits
15%
Enterprise App Modernization
12%
Web Development
8%
AI Development
8%
Agile Web Development
8%
Virtual Reality
7%
Game Development
6%
SEO
3%
Mobile App Design
3%
Industry Expertise
Events & Event Management25%
Agriculture19%
Government & Public Sector17%
Real Estate13%
Telecommunications13%
Retail & E-commerce7%
Aerospace & Defense6%
Typical Project Size
68%
Enterprise
19%
Midmarket Business
13%
Small Business
Custom Software Solutions, Inc Reviews
Write a ReviewCheckout redesign that improved completed transaction rate from the first day in production
Siobhan Gallagher / Chief Technology Officer - Northumbria FinTech Ltd
Verified
May 23, 2026
May 23, 2026
Project summary: The project had a board-facing delivery date tied to a strategic initiative. We needed a partner who would treat that date as their own, not ours.
I came into this engagement as a sceptic. We had been through a failed implementation with a previous vendor and I had high standards for what evidence of competence looked like before I would trust a partner with our core systems. This team earned that trust progressively — through the quality of the discovery documentation, the rigour of the technical proposals, the consistency of the sprint deliveries, and ultimately the stability of the production system. I no longer lead with scepticism when recommending them.
PROS
Commercially transparent throughout — no hidden assumptions, no bill shock at the end, change requests that were fair and clearly explained rather than used as a margin-recovery mechanism
CONS
Pipeline availability for kickoff required a few weeks of lead time — in hindsight that selection pressure means you are working with a team that is in demand for the right reasons
Project TypeE-commerce Development
IndustryAgriculture
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationNov 2025 – Feb 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Northumbria FinTech Ltd operates in the Agriculture sector with headquarters in Edinburgh, UK. In my role as Chief Technology Officer I am accountable for the full technology agenda — infrastructure, product, and vendor relationships. We are a commercially driven organisation and every technology decision is evaluated against a clear business case before it is approved.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Regulatory requirements in our Agriculture segment had changed and the compliance timeline was set by our regulator, not by us. The E-commerce Development changes required were significant enough to justify engaging a specialist partner rather than diverting our internal team from the product roadmap.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Primarily E-commerce Development, with adjacent work in solution architecture and quality assurance. They were responsible for the full build from requirements through to go-live, including integration with four existing systems in our technology landscape. The breadth they covered without requiring additional vendors was commercially and logistically valuable.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We had a failed engagement behind us and were more rigorous in our selection process as a result. We asked detailed questions about how they managed scope change, how they handled estimation, and how they communicated problems. The answers were specific, evidenced, and consistent across the team members we spoke to. That gave us confidence that the process was real rather than rehearsed.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Agriculture experience that reduced the context-setting overhead significantly. They understood the domain vocabulary, asked the right questions, and translated business requirements into technical specifications with a fidelity that meant the development phase had very few clarification cycles.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Professional and efficient. The project manager maintained a clear view of the critical path at all times and communicated changes to it transparently. The one significant scope adjustment we made mid-project was handled through a clean change request process — fairly priced, clearly documented, and absorbed without disrupting the overall timeline.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and within the approved budget. The estimation accuracy was notable — they had broken the work down in sufficient detail during discovery that their forecast proved reliable throughout, rather than being a number that shifted with every change in scope. We received one change request and it was for scope we had introduced ourselves.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI case we presented to our board was conservative by design. Current performance against the financial model suggests we will hit the projected payback point in under twelve months against an eighteen-month target. The operational efficiency gains in particular have exceeded the model, in part because the quality of the data the new platform generates supports decisions that the previous system could not.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The post-launch behaviour. Some vendors consider go-live to be the end of their professional obligation. This team treated it as the transition to a different kind of engagement. The hypercare period was substantive, the documentation was thorough and genuinely useful, and they checked in proactively at the thirty-day and ninety-day marks to review production metrics with us.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes. I would add the context that this is not the cheapest option in the market and they are selective about the engagements they take on. If your primary criterion is price, there are alternatives. If you want a technology partner who can be trusted with a complex E-commerce Development programme in the Agriculture space and will deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.
Cloud architecture that reduced our monthly infrastructure spend by over a third
Reuben Loh / CTO - Marina Bay Ventures Pte Ltd
Verified
May 20, 2026
May 20, 2026
Project summary: Cross-agency data sharing had been blocked by incompatible systems for four years. A secure integration platform was the prerequisite for every transformation initiative in our roadmap.
We had worked with three agencies before this engagement. The comparison is not flattering to the others. What distinguished this team was a systematic approach to understanding the problem before proposing a solution — something that sounds obvious and is practiced far less often than it should be. The delivery phase ran to schedule, the codebase is clean enough that our internal engineers made positive comments during handover review, and we have not logged a critical incident in five months of live operation. We intend to use them for our next phase of work.
PROS
Commercially transparent throughout — no hidden assumptions, no bill shock at the end, change requests that were fair and clearly explained rather than used as a margin-recovery mechanism
CONS
Pipeline availability for kickoff required a few weeks of lead time — in hindsight that selection pressure means you are working with a team that is in demand for the right reasons
Project TypeCloud Services
IndustryGovernment & Public Sector
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationOct 2025 – Apr 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As CTO at Marina Bay Ventures Pte Ltd I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Government & Public Sector operations in Singapore. We are a commercially focused business and our technology choices are always evaluated in terms of their direct contribution to business outcomes rather than technical elegance alone.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
A competitive threat had accelerated our roadmap. We had planned a significant Cloud Services investment for the following year. External pressure moved that timeline forward by six months and required us to find an external partner rather than attempting to build internally in the time available.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core engagement was Cloud Services delivery, though their scope expanded to include technical consultancy during discovery that materially improved our requirements. They also took ownership of the third-party integration workstream that had been a coordination challenge in previous projects, removing that complexity from our internal team entirely.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process was the first indicator. Vendors who ask precise questions in the sales phase tend to apply the same rigour during delivery. That hypothesis proved accurate. The technical proposal was substantive, the team structure was senior throughout, and the pricing was transparent.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Government & Public Sector experience that reduced the context-setting overhead significantly. They understood the domain vocabulary, asked the right questions, and translated business requirements into technical specifications with a fidelity that meant the development phase had very few clarification cycles.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
The project management framework was the most structured I have experienced with an external vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, retrospectives were honest and acted on. The project manager treated the shared backlog as a live document and the risk register as an operational tool rather than a compliance artefact. I never had to ask for a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
The project landed on time. The budget was managed within the agreed ceiling, which included one client-driven scope addition that was quoted fairly and handled without affecting the original delivery stream. The discipline around budget transparency throughout meant there was no surprise at invoice stage.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
We went live four months ago. User adoption exceeded the target we had set by 23 percent in the first month. Support ticket volume has dropped measurably. The features we had deferred because the previous architecture made them prohibitively expensive to build are now in development. The platform they built has opened our roadmap.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their instinct for keeping the business objective visible throughout technical decision-making. I have worked with technically excellent teams who lose the strategic thread as complexity increases. This team maintained a clear connection between every architectural choice and the outcome we had agreed to achieve. That orientation made the trade-off conversations significantly easier.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes. I would add the context that this is not the cheapest option in the market and they are selective about the engagements they take on. If your primary criterion is price, there are alternatives. If you want a technology partner who can be trusted with a complex Cloud Services programme in the Government & Public Sector space and will deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.
Distributed ledger that finally solved a trust problem we had spent three years arguing about
Niamh O'Sullivan / Director of Product - Munster Digital Ltd
Verified
Apr 28, 2026
Apr 28, 2026
Project summary: The project had a board-facing delivery date tied to a strategic initiative. We needed a partner who would treat that date as their own, not ours.
We gave this team an aggressive timeline, a technically complex scope, and a client-side project team that was stretched thin and not always available at the speed the engagement required. They absorbed all of that gracefully. Where they needed input they were precise about what they needed and when. Where they could proceed independently they did. The result was a delivery that landed on time despite the constraints on our side, which I regard as evidence of genuine professional maturity.
PROS
Collaborative culture that made the team feel like a genuine extension of our organisation, strong asynchronous communication across time zones, zero-drama handling of the inevitable mid-project changes
CONS
The quality of documentation they produce means our team needed to set aside dedicated review time to do it justice — a minor scheduling point rather than a genuine criticism
Project TypeBlockchain Development
IndustryAgriculture
Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999
DurationAug 2025 – Feb 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Munster Digital Ltd operates in the Agriculture sector with headquarters in Limerick, Ireland. In my role as Director of Product I am accountable for the full technology agenda — infrastructure, product, and vendor relationships. We are a commercially driven organisation and every technology decision is evaluated against a clear business case before it is approved.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
A competitive threat had accelerated our roadmap. We had planned a significant Blockchain Development investment for the following year. External pressure moved that timeline forward by six months and required us to find an external partner rather than attempting to build internally in the time available.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope covered the full Blockchain Development lifecycle: discovery and requirements definition, solution architecture, iterative development across twelve sprints, integration testing, performance validation, production deployment, and a structured four-week hypercare period. They also provided system documentation and a knowledge transfer programme for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We ran a structured shortlisting process across five vendors. The technical evaluation eliminated two immediately. Of the remaining three, this team's proposal was differentiated by the specificity of their Blockchain Development approach and the evidence base they provided — reference projects in Agriculture contexts, not generic case studies. The reference calls confirmed a track record that the proposal had described accurately.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Comprehensively. The discovery phase they ran was more thorough than anything we had experienced with previous vendors. They challenged requirements that were vague or contradictory, proposed alternatives where our initial thinking was limiting, and produced a functional specification that our internal stakeholders agreed was the clearest articulation of the product they had seen written down.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
The project management framework was the most structured I have experienced with an external vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, retrospectives were honest and acted on. The project manager treated the shared backlog as a live document and the risk register as an operational tool rather than a compliance artefact. I never had to ask for a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. There was a single sprint where a dependency on a third-party API introduced a one-week delay. The team identified it three weeks in advance, presented two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the schedule within the same sprint cycle. That level of foresight is what separates good project management from reactive problem management.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The most direct measure is the performance of the system in production. In the five months since go-live we have had zero P1 incidents, our page performance scores have improved across every Core Web Vitals metric, and two enterprise clients who had cited our previous platform limitations during contract negotiations have since renewed without that objection arising.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The willingness to be direct. When our requirements were unclear they said so. When our priorities were contradictory they explained why. When a technical approach we had assumed was the right one turned out to have significant downsides, they told us before we had committed to it. That kind of intellectual honesty is what I look for in a long-term technology partner.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Unreservedly. We are in active scoping conversations for a second engagement and I expect this to develop into a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Agriculture sector looking for Blockchain Development expertise combined with genuine delivery discipline, I would put this team at the top of the evaluation list.
Consulting that delivered real options with real trade-offs rather than a predetermined answer
Zara Hussain / Head of Technology - Ravi Digital Agency
Verified
Mar 27, 2026
Mar 27, 2026
Project summary: Our agents were spending more time managing data across disconnected systems than managing relationships. We needed a unified platform to give them that time back.
Six months after go-live our platform is processing three times the transaction volume we specified in the original brief. The architecture choices made during discovery accommodated that growth without remediation work. That is the difference between a team that designs for what you tell them and a team that designs for what you are likely to need. We are in conversation about a Phase 2 engagement and I expect to be using this partnership for several years.
PROS
Production system that has performed as specified since go-live without remediation work, documentation thorough enough to support internal maintenance, knowledge transfer that left our team genuinely capable
CONS
Their insistence on a detailed functional specification before development began felt like friction at the time. In retrospect, it was the reason the development phase ran without the ambiguity that has derailed similar projects for us previously
Project TypeIT Consulting
IndustryReal Estate
Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999
DurationNov 2025 – Feb 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As Head of Technology at Ravi Digital Agency I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Real Estate operations in Lahore, Pakistan. We are a commercially focused business and our technology choices are always evaluated in terms of their direct contribution to business outcomes rather than technical elegance alone.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
We had a defined product vision for our next phase of growth in the Real Estate market but lacked the engineering depth internally to execute it. The IT Consulting requirements in particular required specialist experience that we could not realistically recruit for on the timeline our business plan required.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Primarily IT Consulting, with adjacent work in solution architecture and quality assurance. They were responsible for the full build from requirements through to go-live, including integration with four existing systems in our technology landscape. The breadth they covered without requiring additional vendors was commercially and logistically valuable.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process was the first indicator. Vendors who ask precise questions in the sales phase tend to apply the same rigour during delivery. That hypothesis proved accurate. The technical proposal was substantive, the team structure was senior throughout, and the pricing was transparent.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Comprehensively. The discovery phase they ran was more thorough than anything we had experienced with previous vendors. They challenged requirements that were vague or contradictory, proposed alternatives where our initial thinking was limiting, and produced a functional specification that our internal stakeholders agreed was the clearest articulation of the product they had seen written down.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. The discipline around asynchronous communication was particularly effective given the time zones involved between Lahore, Pakistan and the delivery team. Written updates were specific and consistent, response times were same-day for anything that required a decision, and nothing fell through the cracks across a six-month engagement.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. There was a single sprint where a dependency on a third-party API introduced a one-week delay. The team identified it three weeks in advance, presented two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the schedule within the same sprint cycle. That level of foresight is what separates good project management from reactive problem management.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Quantifying the impact precisely is complicated by other variables in our business, but the metrics we can attribute directly to the IT Consulting work are meaningful: session duration up, conversion rate up, error rate down, and our NPS for the digital touchpoint has improved by eleven points. Our account managers report that the new capability is coming up positively in client conversations.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The continuity of the team. The engineers who participated in the discovery sessions were the engineers who built the system. That consistency of institutional knowledge across a six-month project has a value that is difficult to quantify but easy to notice when it is absent. Every conversation built on the previous ones.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes. I would add the context that this is not the cheapest option in the market and they are selective about the engagements they take on. If your primary criterion is price, there are alternatives. If you want a technology partner who can be trusted with a complex IT Consulting programme in the Real Estate space and will deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.
A digital marketing partner who optimised for business outcomes, not vanity metrics
Maja Söderström / Head of Product Engineering - Scandia Digital AB
Verified
Mar 08, 2026
Mar 08, 2026
Project summary: B2B customer churn was concentrated among accounts that had complained about portal usability. We needed a complete redesign of the self-service experience before the next contract renewal cycle.
The thing that retrospectively seems most significant is how little drama there was. Complex technology projects tend to accumulate incidents, escalations, and tense conversations. This one did not. Problems were surfaced before they became incidents. Scope changes were handled with process rather than conflict. Risks were managed rather than avoided. That level of maturity is rare in my experience and it made the delivery feel almost effortless from our side, which I know it was not from theirs.
PROS
Collaborative culture that made the team feel like a genuine extension of our organisation, strong asynchronous communication across time zones, zero-drama handling of the inevitable mid-project changes
CONS
We underestimated the input required from our subject matter experts during the requirements phase. The team flagged this early but our resource planning did not fully reflect it — our responsibility, not theirs
Project TypeDigital Marketing
IndustryTelecommunications
Project Cost$500,000+
DurationJul 2025 – Jan 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As Head of Product Engineering at Scandia Digital AB I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Telecommunications operations in Gothenburg, Sweden. We are a commercially focused business and our technology choices are always evaluated in terms of their direct contribution to business outcomes rather than technical elegance alone.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Regulatory requirements in our Telecommunications segment had changed and the compliance timeline was set by our regulator, not by us. The Digital Marketing changes required were significant enough to justify engaging a specialist partner rather than diverting our internal team from the product roadmap.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope covered the full Digital Marketing lifecycle: discovery and requirements definition, solution architecture, iterative development across twelve sprints, integration testing, performance validation, production deployment, and a structured four-week hypercare period. They also provided system documentation and a knowledge transfer programme for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process was the first indicator. Vendors who ask precise questions in the sales phase tend to apply the same rigour during delivery. That hypothesis proved accurate. The technical proposal was substantive, the team structure was senior throughout, and the pricing was transparent.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thoroughly and precisely. The requirements document they produced was detailed enough that our QA team used it directly to write acceptance criteria. Every user story had a defined business objective attached. Nothing was left to interpretation. That discipline in the requirements phase paid dividends throughout development and testing.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Communication was proactive, timely, and appropriately calibrated. Technical updates for the engineering audience, executive summaries for the steering group, risk flags with proposed mitigations rather than just problem statements. The fortnightly sprint reviews gave our stakeholders visibility without requiring them to attend every working session.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. There was a single sprint where a dependency on a third-party API introduced a one-week delay. The team identified it three weeks in advance, presented two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the schedule within the same sprint cycle. That level of foresight is what separates good project management from reactive problem management.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI case we presented to our board was conservative by design. Current performance against the financial model suggests we will hit the projected payback point in under twelve months against an eighteen-month target. The operational efficiency gains in particular have exceeded the model, in part because the quality of the data the new platform generates supports decisions that the previous system could not.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The willingness to be direct. When our requirements were unclear they said so. When our priorities were contradictory they explained why. When a technical approach we had assumed was the right one turned out to have significant downsides, they told us before we had committed to it. That kind of intellectual honesty is what I look for in a long-term technology partner.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. With a specific note that the value starts in the discovery phase — clients who approach that process with seriousness will get the most from the engagement. We invested appropriately at the front end and the returns are evident in what was delivered.
Data engineering quality that will support our growth for years without a rebuild
Zofia Kamińska / CTO - Odra Tech Studio
Verified
Feb 18, 2026
Feb 18, 2026
Project summary: Customer expectations had reset and our conversion funnel data showed precisely where we were losing them. We needed a commerce platform capable of delivering the experience our competitors already had.
Six months after go-live our platform is processing three times the transaction volume we specified in the original brief. The architecture choices made during discovery accommodated that growth without remediation work. That is the difference between a team that designs for what you tell them and a team that designs for what you are likely to need. We are in conversation about a Phase 2 engagement and I expect to be using this partnership for several years.
PROS
Commercially transparent throughout — no hidden assumptions, no bill shock at the end, change requests that were fair and clearly explained rather than used as a margin-recovery mechanism
CONS
Time zone coordination required some deliberate overlap management from both sides in the first couple of sprints, after which we had an efficient async rhythm that worked for the whole project
Project TypeData & Analytics
IndustryRetail & E-commerce
Project Cost$500,000+
DurationJun 2025 – Nov 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As CTO at Odra Tech Studio I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Retail & E-commerce operations in Wrocław, Poland. We are a commercially focused business and our technology choices are always evaluated in terms of their direct contribution to business outcomes rather than technical elegance alone.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Regulatory requirements in our Retail & E-commerce segment had changed and the compliance timeline was set by our regulator, not by us. The Data & Analytics changes required were significant enough to justify engaging a specialist partner rather than diverting our internal team from the product roadmap.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope covered the full Data & Analytics lifecycle: discovery and requirements definition, solution architecture, iterative development across twelve sprints, integration testing, performance validation, production deployment, and a structured four-week hypercare period. They also provided system documentation and a knowledge transfer programme for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We had a failed engagement behind us and were more rigorous in our selection process as a result. We asked detailed questions about how they managed scope change, how they handled estimation, and how they communicated problems. The answers were specific, evidenced, and consistent across the team members we spoke to. That gave us confidence that the process was real rather than rehearsed.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Retail & E-commerce experience that reduced the context-setting overhead significantly. They understood the domain vocabulary, asked the right questions, and translated business requirements into technical specifications with a fidelity that meant the development phase had very few clarification cycles.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. The discipline around asynchronous communication was particularly effective given the time zones involved between Wrocław, Poland and the delivery team. Written updates were specific and consistent, response times were same-day for anything that required a decision, and nothing fell through the cracks across a six-month engagement.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and within the approved budget. The estimation accuracy was notable — they had broken the work down in sufficient detail during discovery that their forecast proved reliable throughout, rather than being a number that shifted with every change in scope. We received one change request and it was for scope we had introduced ourselves.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The most direct measure is the performance of the system in production. In the five months since go-live we have had zero P1 incidents, our page performance scores have improved across every Core Web Vitals metric, and two enterprise clients who had cited our previous platform limitations during contract negotiations have since renewed without that objection arising.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The continuity of the team. The engineers who participated in the discovery sessions were the engineers who built the system. That consistency of institutional knowledge across a six-month project has a value that is difficult to quantify but easy to notice when it is absent. Every conversation built on the previous ones.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. With a specific note that the value starts in the discovery phase — clients who approach that process with seriousness will get the most from the engagement. We invested appropriately at the front end and the returns are evident in what was delivered.
Outsourced IT that improved both the outcome and the cost line simultaneously
Hyun-Su Lim / Director of Platform - Hanam Tech Solutions
Verified
Feb 08, 2026
Feb 08, 2026
Project summary: The project had a board-facing delivery date tied to a strategic initiative. We needed a partner who would treat that date as their own, not ours.
Six months after go-live our platform is processing three times the transaction volume we specified in the original brief. The architecture choices made during discovery accommodated that growth without remediation work. That is the difference between a team that designs for what you tell them and a team that designs for what you are likely to need. We are in conversation about a Phase 2 engagement and I expect to be using this partnership for several years.
PROS
Collaborative culture that made the team feel like a genuine extension of our organisation, strong asynchronous communication across time zones, zero-drama handling of the inevitable mid-project changes
CONS
The engagement was priced at the quality level rather than the budget level. We evaluated the alternatives and concluded that the delta was a reasonable premium for the reduction in delivery risk
Project TypeIT Managed Services
IndustryAerospace & Defense
Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999
DurationMay 2025 – Nov 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Hanam Tech Solutions is an established Aerospace & Defense organisation headquartered in Incheon, South Korea. My role as Director of Platform covers both strategic planning and operational technology delivery. We maintain high standards for our vendors because our clients hold us to high standards — a bar we expect our partners to meet.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
The immediate problem was that our IT Managed Services capability had become the bottleneck limiting our ability to grow. Every feature request, every new client requirement, every internal initiative was delayed by a platform that had been extended beyond its original design. We needed a rebuild, not a patch.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core engagement was IT Managed Services delivery, though their scope expanded to include technical consultancy during discovery that materially improved our requirements. They also took ownership of the third-party integration workstream that had been a coordination challenge in previous projects, removing that complexity from our internal team entirely.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A trusted peer in the Aerospace & Defense sector had used them for a comparable IT Managed Services engagement and their recommendation was unequivocal. Our own due diligence confirmed the pattern they described. The combination of domain knowledge, IT Managed Services depth, and demonstrated delivery discipline was the deciding factor.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Better than we managed ourselves going in. The workshops they facilitated surfaced assumptions we had not examined and exposed three requirements that were in direct conflict with each other. Resolving those before development began saved us what would certainly have been significant rework later in the project.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
The project management framework was the most structured I have experienced with an external vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, retrospectives were honest and acted on. The project manager treated the shared backlog as a live document and the risk register as an operational tool rather than a compliance artefact. I never had to ask for a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes. I had privately built a contingency expectation into my planning given the project complexity and the number of integrations involved. None of that contingency was needed. The delivery landed on the agreed date and the final invoice matched the approved budget to within a fraction of a percent. That outcome is rarer than the industry acknowledges.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Quantifying the impact precisely is complicated by other variables in our business, but the metrics we can attribute directly to the IT Managed Services work are meaningful: session duration up, conversion rate up, error rate down, and our NPS for the digital touchpoint has improved by eleven points. Our account managers report that the new capability is coming up positively in client conversations.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The willingness to be direct. When our requirements were unclear they said so. When our priorities were contradictory they explained why. When a technical approach we had assumed was the right one turned out to have significant downsides, they told us before we had committed to it. That kind of intellectual honesty is what I look for in a long-term technology partner.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. With a specific note that the value starts in the discovery phase — clients who approach that process with seriousness will get the most from the engagement. We invested appropriately at the front end and the returns are evident in what was delivered.
Full-funnel programme that turned marketing from a cost argument into a revenue conversation
Liselotte Bakker / Head of Platform Engineering - Harbour Digital BV
Verified
Jan 08, 2026
Jan 08, 2026
Project summary: Several years of incremental development had left us with a platform that was technically functional but strategically limiting. A structured rebuild was the agreed path forward.
The project brief was ambitious and we had received proposals ranging from two to five times our eventual budget from other vendors. This team came back with a proposal that was commercially realistic and technically credible — and then delivered against it. That alignment between proposal and outcome is not something I take for granted. I have been on the other side of it enough times to know it requires both honesty in the sales process and discipline in delivery. We experienced both.
PROS
Senior-level engineering presence throughout the entire project, not just during the pitch, honest and commercially fair handling of scope changes, codebase that our internal team praised on review
CONS
We underestimated the input required from our subject matter experts during the requirements phase. The team flagged this early but our resource planning did not fully reflect it — our responsibility, not theirs
Project TypeDigital Marketing
IndustryEvents & Event Management
Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999
DurationJan 2025 – Nov 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Harbour Digital BV operates in the Events & Event Management sector with headquarters in Utrecht, Netherlands. In my role as Head of Platform Engineering I am accountable for the full technology agenda — infrastructure, product, and vendor relationships. We are a commercially driven organisation and every technology decision is evaluated against a clear business case before it is approved.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our platform had been maintained by a previous vendor for three years and the accumulated technical debt had reached a point where delivery velocity had dropped to a fraction of what it should have been. We needed fresh engineering expertise and a structured plan to address the underlying issues.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Primarily Digital Marketing, with adjacent work in solution architecture and quality assurance. They were responsible for the full build from requirements through to go-live, including integration with four existing systems in our technology landscape. The breadth they covered without requiring additional vendors was commercially and logistically valuable.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process was the first indicator. Vendors who ask precise questions in the sales phase tend to apply the same rigour during delivery. That hypothesis proved accurate. The technical proposal was substantive, the team structure was senior throughout, and the pricing was transparent.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Better than we managed ourselves going in. The workshops they facilitated surfaced assumptions we had not examined and exposed three requirements that were in direct conflict with each other. Resolving those before development began saved us what would certainly have been significant rework later in the project.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. The discipline around asynchronous communication was particularly effective given the time zones involved between Utrecht, Netherlands and the delivery team. Written updates were specific and consistent, response times were same-day for anything that required a decision, and nothing fell through the cracks across a six-month engagement.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes. I had privately built a contingency expectation into my planning given the project complexity and the number of integrations involved. None of that contingency was needed. The delivery landed on the agreed date and the final invoice matched the approved budget to within a fraction of a percent. That outcome is rarer than the industry acknowledges.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
We went live four months ago. User adoption exceeded the target we had set by 23 percent in the first month. Support ticket volume has dropped measurably. The features we had deferred because the previous architecture made them prohibitively expensive to build are now in development. The platform they built has opened our roadmap.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The continuity of the team. The engineers who participated in the discovery sessions were the engineers who built the system. That consistency of institutional knowledge across a six-month project has a value that is difficult to quantify but easy to notice when it is absent. Every conversation built on the previous ones.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes. I would add the context that this is not the cheapest option in the market and they are selective about the engagements they take on. If your primary criterion is price, there are alternatives. If you want a technology partner who can be trusted with a complex Digital Marketing programme in the Events & Event Management space and will deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.
Company Info
Founded
2005
Employees
10 - 49
Hourly Rate
$100 - $149 / hr
Client Rating
4.1/5 (8 reviews)