About Design States
Design States works with clients to plan, build, and ship digital products. The company's main offerings are Web Development and Mobile App Development. Its team includes 10 - 49 specialists working across design, development, and delivery. Typical hourly rates run around $25 - $49 / hr/hr. Overall, Design States is one of the options worth shortlisting for a technology project.
Where We Specialize
7%
Business Analysis & Consulting
Business Analysis & Consulting
7%
Mobile App Design
7%
SAP Solution
7%
Hyperledger
6%
Crypto Exchange Development
6%
Virtual Reality
6%
Mobile App Development
5%
Agile Web Development
5%
AI Development
5%
Enterprise App Modernization
5%
Data Analytics
5%
SEO
4%
Ruby on Rails Development
4%
Platform Development
4%
Social Media Marketing
3%
Web Development
3%
Game Development
3%
iOS App Development
3%
3D & Interior Design
3%
IoT App Development
3%
VR App Development
2%
Agile Coaching
2%
Branding
1%
Xamarin App Development
1%
Industry Expertise
FinTech100%
Typical Project Size
77%
Small Business
13%
Enterprise
10%
Midmarket Business
Design States Reviews
Write a ReviewDesign work that measurably improved every conversion metric on our platform
Kelsey Drummond / Director of Digital Health - Crestline Health Partners
Verified
Jun 07, 2026
Jun 07, 2026
Project summary: Our internal product thinking was strong but our execution capability in this specific technology domain was limited. We needed depth, not generalism.
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
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
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 TypeUI/UX Design
IndustryAgriculture
Project Cost$50,000 to $149,999
DurationAug 2025 – May 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Crestline Health Partners, a growth-stage Agriculture business based in Houston, USA. As Director of Digital Health my remit spans product engineering, platform operations, and strategic vendor partnerships. We had reached an inflection point where our internal capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap at the pace our market required.
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?
End-to-end UI/UX Design delivery with particular depth in the integration and data migration components, which were the highest-risk elements of the programme. They supplemented this with a dedicated QA resource throughout development and a documented runbook for our operations team at handover.
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?
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?
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?
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 UI/UX Design 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?
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, without reservation. I have already made two direct referrals within my Agriculture network — in both cases to peers facing UI/UX Design challenges similar to ours. I gave those referrals with confidence because I knew the experience I described was reproducible, not the result of exceptional circumstances on our engagement.
Checkout redesign that improved completed transaction rate from the first day in production
Priya Chandrasekaran / VP of Data & AI - Wavefront Analytics Inc
Verified
May 19, 2026
May 19, 2026
Project summary: Our client portal had been built in 2017 and had not received meaningful investment since. Clients were contrasting it unfavourably with the portals of our competitors in pitches.
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
Delivery timeline that proved achievable rather than optimistic, estimation accuracy that reflected real analysis rather than competitive bidding, scope discipline that prevented the feature creep we had experienced before
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
IndustryLegal Services
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationSep 2025 – Apr 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As VP of Data & AI at Wavefront Analytics Inc I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Legal Services operations in Seattle, USA. 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 Legal Services 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 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 E-commerce Development approach and the evidence base they provided — reference projects in Legal Services 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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
Yes, without reservation. I have already made two direct referrals within my Legal Services network — in both cases to peers facing E-commerce Development challenges similar to ours. I gave those referrals with confidence because I knew the experience I described was reproducible, not the result of exceptional circumstances on our engagement.
ERP rollout that went live on the agreed date — we know how significant that is
Omar Al-Farsi / Chief Technology Officer - Falcon Digital Ventures
Verified
May 05, 2026
May 05, 2026
Project summary: A previous engagement had delivered something that worked in staging and struggled in production. We approached this project with greater rigour in vendor selection as a result.
The integration layer was the part of the project I was most concerned about going in. Our system landscape is complex, several of the upstream APIs we relied on were poorly documented, and two third-party vendors had a history of unpredictable response times on integration questions. This team managed all of that. They documented what the upstream vendors could not, built resilience into the integration architecture where the upstream behaviour was unreliable, and delivered a solution that works as specified in production. I could not have asked for more.
PROS
Clear and consistent communication adapted appropriately for both technical and non-technical stakeholders, shared tooling that gave our team real-time visibility, reliable sprint delivery throughout
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 TypeERP Development
IndustryEnvironmental Services
Project Cost$500,000+
DurationNov 2025 – Mar 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Falcon Digital Ventures, a growth-stage Environmental Services business based in Dubai, UAE. As Chief Technology Officer my remit spans product engineering, platform operations, and strategic vendor partnerships. We had reached an inflection point where our internal capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap at the pace our market required.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Regulatory requirements in our Environmental Services segment had changed and the compliance timeline was set by our regulator, not by us. The ERP 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?
End-to-end ERP Development delivery with particular depth in the integration and data migration components, which were the highest-risk elements of the programme. They supplemented this with a dedicated QA resource throughout development and a documented runbook for our operations team at handover.
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 Environmental Services 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?
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?
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?
Quantifying the impact precisely is complicated by other variables in our business, but the metrics we can attribute directly to the ERP Development 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 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 ERP Development programme in the Environmental Services space and will deliver against a serious brief, this is the team.
Data platform that turned five years of siloed records into a unified analytical asset
Ji-Woo Park / VP of Engineering - Seoul Digital Corp
Verified
Apr 22, 2026
Apr 22, 2026
Project summary: A previous engagement had delivered something that worked in staging and struggled in production. We approached this project with greater rigour in vendor selection as a result.
Our stakeholder group included board members, clinical leads, compliance officers, and end users — each with different technical literacy and different success criteria. This team navigated that stakeholder landscape as well as any vendor I have seen. They adjusted their communication register depending on the audience without losing the substance. They managed expectations honestly throughout. And they delivered a system that each group can point to as meeting their requirements. That breadth is genuinely uncommon.
PROS
Deep domain knowledge that reduced the discovery overhead significantly, proactive risk identification before issues became incidents, delivery cadence that our stakeholders found reassuring
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 TypeData & Analytics
IndustryConstruction
Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999
DurationAug 2025 – Feb 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Seoul Digital Corp operates in the Construction sector with headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. In my role as VP of 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?
The immediate problem was that our Data & Analytics 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 Data & Analytics 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?
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 Data & Analytics approach and the evidence base they provided — reference projects in Construction 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?
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?
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?
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?
Yes, without reservation. I have already made two direct referrals within my Construction network — in both cases to peers facing Data & Analytics challenges similar to ours. I gave those referrals with confidence because I knew the experience I described was reproducible, not the result of exceptional circumstances on our engagement.
A partnership that began with a single project and earned a place on our preferred vendor list
Lars Pfeiffer / VP of Technology - NordTech Logistik GmbH
Verified
Mar 06, 2026
Mar 06, 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
Delivery timeline that proved achievable rather than optimistic, estimation accuracy that reflected real analysis rather than competitive bidding, scope discipline that prevented the feature creep we had experienced before
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 TypeLow-Code / No-Code Development
IndustryEnvironmental Services
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationSep 2025 – Feb 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As VP of Technology at NordTech Logistik GmbH I oversee technology investment and delivery across our Environmental Services operations in Hamburg, Germany. 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 Low-Code / No-Code 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?
Primarily Low-Code / No-Code 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?
A trusted peer in the Environmental Services sector had used them for a comparable Low-Code / No-Code Development engagement and their recommendation was unequivocal. Our own due diligence confirmed the pattern they described. The combination of domain knowledge, Low-Code / No-Code Development depth, and demonstrated delivery discipline was the deciding factor.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Extremely well, in part because they had relevant Environmental Services 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?
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 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.
Online store that our fulfilment and finance teams are as happy with as our customers are
Hyun-Su Lim / Director of Platform - Hanam Tech Solutions
Verified
Feb 16, 2026
Feb 16, 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.
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 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 TypeE-commerce Development
IndustryHuman Resources
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationFeb 2025 – Nov 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Hanam Tech Solutions, a growth-stage Human Resources business based in Incheon, South Korea. As Director of Platform my remit spans product engineering, platform operations, and strategic vendor partnerships. We had reached an inflection point where our internal capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap at the pace our market required.
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 Human Resources market but lacked the engineering depth internally to execute it. The E-commerce Development 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?
The scope covered the full E-commerce 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?
A trusted peer in the Human Resources sector had used them for a comparable E-commerce Development engagement and their recommendation was unequivocal. Our own due diligence confirmed the pattern they described. The combination of domain knowledge, E-commerce Development 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?
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?
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?
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?
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 Human Resources sector looking for E-commerce Development expertise combined with genuine delivery discipline, I would put this team at the top of the evaluation list.
Cloud architecture that reduced our monthly infrastructure spend by over a third
Takashi Morimoto / Director of IT Strategy - Sakura Digital KK
Verified
Jan 14, 2026
Jan 14, 2026
Project summary: Our mobile app had a 2.9-star average review score. The two themes in every negative review were speed and booking flow complexity — both were solvable with the right engineering partner.
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
Delivery timeline that proved achievable rather than optimistic, estimation accuracy that reflected real analysis rather than competitive bidding, scope discipline that prevented the feature creep we had experienced before
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 TypeCloud Services
IndustryTravel & Hospitality
Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999
DurationJul 2025 – Nov 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Sakura Digital KK, a growth-stage Travel & Hospitality business based in Tokyo, Japan. As Director of IT Strategy my remit spans product engineering, platform operations, and strategic vendor partnerships. We had reached an inflection point where our internal capacity was not sufficient to execute our roadmap at the pace our market required.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
The immediate problem was that our Cloud 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 scope covered the full Cloud Services 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 Cloud Services approach and the evidence base they provided — reference projects in Travel & Hospitality 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?
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?
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?
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?
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 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?
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 Travel & Hospitality sector looking for Cloud Services expertise combined with genuine delivery discipline, I would put this team at the top of the evaluation list.
Company Info
Founded
2021
Employees
10 - 49
Hourly Rate
$25 - $49 / hr
Client Rating
4.7/5 (7 reviews)