About Def Method
Here, they feel just as satisfied hanging out in the business world as they do coding—and that means you get technological solutions that provide results. Their experienced team of developers and senior developers take an experienced, full-service way to Rails and mobile application development, developing end-to-end, one-on-one and made-to-order solutions.
Services
Mobile App Development
Web Development
UI-UX Design
Custom Software Development
E-commerce Development
Android App Development
iOS App Development
iPhone App Development
Def Method Reviews
Write a ReviewMobile-first thinking that translated perfectly into a product users love
Isla Mackenzie / CEO - Highland FinTech Ltd
Verified
Dec 27, 2024
Dec 27, 2024
Project summary: Underwriting decisions that should have taken minutes were taking days because of a legacy policy administration system that predated modern API architecture.
Twelve weeks from kickoff to live production deployment for a project of this complexity. I would not have believed that was achievable if I had not watched them do it. The velocity came from genuine engineering discipline — clear requirements, short feedback loops, automated testing, and a team that communicated internally without the overhead that slows most agencies down. The product has been live for four months with no critical bugs and one minor patch. We are already in scoping conversations for phase two.
PROS
Collaborative working style that made them feel like an extension of our team, excellent written communication for our async timezone relationship, clean and readable codebase
CONS
Time zone difference required some adjustment to our internal communication habits but the team managed the overlap window efficiently and it never affected momentum
Project TypeMobile App Development
IndustryInsurance
Project Cost$500,000+
DurationSep 2025 – Apr 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As CEO at Highland FinTech Ltd, I manage a cross-functional technology team serving our Insurance clients from Edinburgh, UK. We are a commercially focused organisation and every technology decision we make is evaluated against a clear business case. We needed a partner who understood that context, not just the technical brief.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
We had a product concept validated by market research but no clear path to build it within our budget and timeline constraints. Our Insurance competitors were moving quickly and we could not afford to spend eighteen months finding out a generalist agency could not execute the Mobile App Development work our product required.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core engagement was Mobile App Development but expanded to include technical consultancy during the discovery phase, which helped us refine the requirements significantly before development began. They also took responsibility for coordinating with our third-party data providers, which removed a significant coordination burden from our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A direct referral from a peer who had used them for a comparable Mobile App Development engagement in the Insurance space. That peer's experience had been excellent and their project profile was similar enough to ours that the recommendation carried real weight. Everything we found during our own evaluation reinforced that this was the right decision.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
The requirements understanding was solid from early on, aided by the fact that they had prior experience in the Insurance sector and did not need us to explain domain context that a less experienced team would have required. That background knowledge shortened the discovery phase meaningfully and reduced the volume of clarification questions during sprints.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Communication was handled primarily asynchronously given the time zone difference between Edinburgh, UK and the team's base, but it was managed so well that the gap rarely felt like a constraint. Written updates were clear and timely, escalations were handled promptly, and we never had to chase for a status update. The cadence was exactly right — enough to feel informed, not so much that it created overhead.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and within the agreed budget. They had given us a range estimate at the start, which I had been sceptical of, and they landed within the lower half of that range. Their estimation accuracy came from having broken the work down in genuine detail during discovery rather than giving a rough number and hoping. It showed in every sprint.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Quantitatively: user engagement metrics are up significantly since launch, our support ticket volume has dropped, and we have received unsolicited positive feedback from clients who noticed the improvement. Qualitatively: our internal team is proud of the product we now have, which affects morale and retention in ways that do not show up on a dashboard but matter enormously.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The quality of the written communication. This matters more than most clients articulate. Clear, concise, technically accurate updates that our non-technical stakeholders could read and understand. Proposals and change requests that made the decision obvious rather than obscuring it in jargon. That communication quality reduced our internal coordination overhead significantly.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes. The referral I would give comes with context: they are not the cheapest option and they are not the fastest to schedule. If you are optimising purely on price or looking for someone to start tomorrow, there are other choices. If you want the work done properly and a partner you can trust with a complex, high-stakes Mobile App Development engagement, this team is the answer.
Results that made the business case look conservative in hindsight
Akiko Fujimoto / Head of Product Development - Sunrise Commerce KK
Verified
May 05, 2024
May 05, 2024
Project summary: The project had both a hard delivery date tied to a board commitment and a scope that our previous agency had told us was not achievable. We needed someone to prove otherwise.
Twelve weeks from kickoff to live production deployment for a project of this complexity. I would not have believed that was achievable if I had not watched them do it. The velocity came from genuine engineering discipline — clear requirements, short feedback loops, automated testing, and a team that communicated internally without the overhead that slows most agencies down. The product has been live for four months with no critical bugs and one minor patch. We are already in scoping conversations for phase two.
PROS
Technical depth across the full stack, honest and timely communication, delivered exactly what was scoped without surprise additions to the invoice
CONS
The initial project brief document they required was more detailed than we were used to providing, but in hindsight that rigour was part of why the project ran so smoothly
Project TypePOS System Development
IndustryHuman Resources
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationOct 2024 – Apr 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Sunrise Commerce KK, a mid-sized organisation in the Human Resources sector headquartered in Osaka, Japan. My remit as Head of Product Development covers everything from infrastructure to product development. We had reached a point where our internal engineering capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap without an experienced external partner.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our existing POS System Development capability had accumulated years of technical debt that was slowing every new feature to a crawl. Incident frequency was rising, developer confidence was falling, and we knew a rebuild was overdue. We needed a partner with the depth to do it properly rather than apply another layer of patches.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The full POS System Development lifecycle from discovery through to production deployment and hypercare support. This included requirements workshops, solution architecture, sprint-based development, QA and automated testing, deployment to our cloud environment, and a structured handover with documentation. They also provided a brief post-launch period of dedicated support which was genuinely useful.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We evaluated four vendors in total. Two were eliminated after the technical assessment stage because their proposed architectures showed a surface-level understanding of what we needed. This team's proposal demonstrated genuine depth in POS System Development and specific knowledge of the Human Resources sector that the others could not match. The reference calls confirmed a consistent pattern of delivery.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thorough and precise. They translated our business language into technical requirements without losing the intent, which is a skill that sounds straightforward but frequently goes wrong. Every user story they wrote was reviewed against the original business objective before it entered the sprint and the acceptance criteria were specific enough to remove subjectivity from QA.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Communication was handled primarily asynchronously given the time zone difference between Osaka, Japan and the team's base, but it was managed so well that the gap rarely felt like a constraint. Written updates were clear and timely, escalations were handled promptly, and we never had to chase for a status update. The cadence was exactly right — enough to feel informed, not so much that it created overhead.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes on both counts. There was one sprint where a third-party integration took longer than scoped because of undocumented API behaviour on the vendor side. The team flagged it immediately, proposed two mitigation options, and we agreed on an approach that recovered the timeline within two weeks. That is how scope issues should be handled and rarely are.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Quantitatively: user engagement metrics are up significantly since launch, our support ticket volume has dropped, and we have received unsolicited positive feedback from clients who noticed the improvement. Qualitatively: our internal team is proud of the product we now have, which affects morale and retention in ways that do not show up on a dashboard but matter enormously.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their ability to hold the business objective in mind alongside the technical task. I have worked with technically excellent agencies who lost the thread of what we were actually trying to achieve. This team never did. Every architectural decision, every trade-off conversation, every prioritisation discussion was anchored to the outcome we had agreed at the start.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely. I would recommend them with a specific note that the quality of the discovery process is where the value starts. Clients who invest properly in that phase will get the most out of the engagement. We made that investment and the returns are evident in the quality of what was delivered.
Custom ERP modules that fit our processes rather than forcing us to change them
Brandon Hayes / VP of Engineering - Apex Digital Partners
Verified
Nov 15, 2023
Nov 15, 2023
Project summary: The shift to EVs required us to build a connected vehicle data platform capable of handling telemetry from a growing fleet while supporting over-the-air software updates.
The technical quality of the work is the easiest thing to praise, but what I want to highlight is the communication culture on this team. Every question got a same-day response. Every risk got flagged before it became an issue. When we needed to change direction mid-project — a business decision on our side — they absorbed the change professionally, requoted fairly, and kept momentum going. That flexibility is something you cannot assess in a proposal and it turned out to be one of the most valuable things about working with them.
PROS
Business-aware approach to every technical decision, strong project governance, fast turnaround on feedback, zero drama during a genuinely complex engagement
CONS
Time zone difference required some adjustment to our internal communication habits but the team managed the overlap window efficiently and it never affected momentum
Project TypeERP Development
IndustryAutomotive
Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999
DurationOct 2025 – Mar 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As VP of Engineering at Apex Digital Partners, I manage a cross-functional technology team serving our Automotive clients from San Francisco, USA. We are a commercially focused organisation and every technology decision we make is evaluated against a clear business case. We needed a partner who understood that context, not just the technical brief.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our existing ERP Development capability had accumulated years of technical debt that was slowing every new feature to a crawl. Incident frequency was rising, developer confidence was falling, and we knew a rebuild was overdue. We needed a partner with the depth to do it properly rather than apply another layer of patches.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Primarily ERP Development, though the scope naturally touched adjacent areas. They handled architecture design, implementation, integration with our existing systems, performance testing under realistic load, and knowledge transfer to our internal team. The breadth of what they covered without requiring us to bring in additional vendors was one of the reasons the project ran efficiently.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We evaluated four vendors in total. Two were eliminated after the technical assessment stage because their proposed architectures showed a surface-level understanding of what we needed. This team's proposal demonstrated genuine depth in ERP Development and specific knowledge of the Automotive sector that the others could not match. The reference calls confirmed a consistent pattern of delivery.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
The requirements understanding was solid from early on, aided by the fact that they had prior experience in the Automotive sector and did not need us to explain domain context that a less experienced team would have required. That background knowledge shortened the discovery phase meaningfully and reduced the volume of clarification questions during sprints.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Outstanding. I have worked with agencies that communicate beautifully during the sales process and go quiet during delivery. This was the opposite — structured, consistent, and genuinely informative throughout. Problems were surfaced early with proposed solutions rather than just problem statements, which made the inevitable mid-project decisions much easier to make.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
The project landed on the agreed delivery date and within the approved budget. We did add scope during the engagement — two features that became apparent as essential during user testing — and those were quoted, approved, and delivered without affecting the original scope timeline. That kind of clean change management is not something you can take for granted.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI case we presented to our board assumed a payback period of eighteen months. Based on current trajectory we will hit that in under a year. The efficiency gains in our Automotive operations have been more significant than the model projected, partly because the quality of the data coming out of the new system is enabling decisions we could not make before.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The intellectual honesty. They told us when something we wanted was a bad idea and explained why. They told us when a timeline was tight and gave us options. They did not tell us what we wanted to hear in order to win work or avoid a difficult conversation. In a long engagement that kind of relationship is far more valuable than an agency that just says yes.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes. The referral I would give comes with context: they are not the cheapest option and they are not the fastest to schedule. If you are optimising purely on price or looking for someone to start tomorrow, there are other choices. If you want the work done properly and a partner you can trust with a complex, high-stakes ERP Development engagement, this team is the answer.
Security posture transformed from a liability to a genuine sales differentiator
Jordan Mills / Director of Operations - Cascade Manufacturing
Verified
Jun 30, 2022
Jun 30, 2022
Project summary: Our existing platform had grown organically over several years and the accumulated technical debt was beginning to affect both performance and our ability to ship new features.
The engagement started with a discovery workshop that immediately signalled this team was different. They pushed back on two of our assumptions in the first session with evidence and a better alternative. That kind of intellectual honesty is rare and it set the tone for the whole project. Deliverables were consistently ahead of schedule, code reviews were taken seriously, and the final product is something we are proud to show enterprise clients during due diligence calls.
PROS
Domain knowledge that went beyond generic expertise into our specific industry, willingness to push back constructively, automated test coverage that gave us deployment confidence
CONS
We underestimated the internal resource commitment required on our side during discovery — the team warned us, we did not listen fully, and the first sprint was slower as a result
Project TypeCybersecurity
IndustryHuman Resources
Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999
DurationJun 2025 – Oct 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Cascade Manufacturing, a mid-sized organisation in the Human Resources sector headquartered in Seattle, USA. My remit as Director of Operations covers everything from infrastructure to product development. We had reached a point where our internal engineering capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap without an experienced external partner.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
The immediate trigger was a performance failure during our peak trading period that cost us measurably in both revenue and client trust. The root cause was architectural and our internal team did not have the Cybersecurity expertise to address it properly. We needed specialists.
What services did the company provide for your project?
End-to-end Cybersecurity delivery with a particular emphasis on the integration layer that connected the new build to our existing Human Resources infrastructure. They also provided UI/UX input that was not in the original scope but which they offered proactively because they could see it would affect adoption. That kind of initiative was characteristic of how they approached the whole engagement.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We evaluated four vendors in total. Two were eliminated after the technical assessment stage because their proposed architectures showed a surface-level understanding of what we needed. This team's proposal demonstrated genuine depth in Cybersecurity and specific knowledge of the Human Resources sector that the others could not match. The reference calls confirmed a consistent pattern of delivery.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thorough and precise. They translated our business language into technical requirements without losing the intent, which is a skill that sounds straightforward but frequently goes wrong. Every user story they wrote was reviewed against the original business objective before it entered the sprint and the acceptance criteria were specific enough to remove subjectivity from QA.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Communication was handled primarily asynchronously given the time zone difference between Seattle, USA and the team's base, but it was managed so well that the gap rarely felt like a constraint. Written updates were clear and timely, escalations were handled promptly, and we never had to chase for a status update. The cadence was exactly right — enough to feel informed, not so much that it created overhead.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and within the agreed budget. They had given us a range estimate at the start, which I had been sceptical of, and they landed within the lower half of that range. Their estimation accuracy came from having broken the work down in genuine detail during discovery rather than giving a rough number and hoping. It showed in every sprint.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI case we presented to our board assumed a payback period of eighteen months. Based on current trajectory we will hit that in under a year. The efficiency gains in our Human Resources operations have been more significant than the model projected, partly because the quality of the data coming out of the new system is enabling decisions we could not make before.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their ability to hold the business objective in mind alongside the technical task. I have worked with technically excellent agencies who lost the thread of what we were actually trying to achieve. This team never did. Every architectural decision, every trade-off conversation, every prioritisation discussion was anchored to the outcome we had agreed at the start.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Unreservedly. We are in active conversation about the next phase of work and I expect this to become a multi-year partnership. For any organisation in the Human Resources space looking for a Cybersecurity partner who combines technical rigour with genuine commercial awareness, I would put this team at the top of the shortlist.
Company Info
Founded
2014
Employees
10 - 49
Hourly Rate
$150 - $199
Client Rating
5.0/5 (4 reviews)