About Pen Publishing Interactive
They work primarily with small and medium businesses who demand more from their Internet presence and realize the unique value a veteran web services company can provide. Their clients are located in Kansas, the Midwest, across the United States, and around the world, in multiple industries and markets. They have an established track record of developing perfect-fit software applications and websites in even the most highly-regulated industries.
Services
Mobile App Development
Web Development
Crypto Exchange Development
Pen Publishing Interactive Reviews
Write a ReviewMulti-cloud architecture that gave us resilience and cut our hosting bill
Jisoo Kwon / CTO - HanRiver Tech Co Ltd
Verified
Feb 01, 2026
Feb 01, 2026
Project summary: Streaming demand had grown beyond what our monolithic video delivery infrastructure could handle and we needed a cloud-native rebuild before the next content release cycle.
We ran a structured RFP with seven vendors. Three made it to the technical evaluation stage. This team won on the strength of their technical proposal, their domain knowledge, and frankly on the quality of the questions they asked us during the process. A vendor who asks good questions in the sales phase tends to ask good questions during delivery too. That hypothesis proved correct. The project is now live, performing above the KPIs we agreed, and our stakeholders are genuinely impressed.
PROS
Consistent delivery against milestones, code quality that passed our internal review without major findings, post-launch support that felt like a partnership not a ticket queue
CONS
Honestly nothing worth documenting — we went in with high expectations and they were met on every measure
Project TypeCloud Services
IndustryMedia & Entertainment
Project CostLess than $10,000
DurationMay 2025 – Apr 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at HanRiver Tech Co Ltd, a mid-sized organisation in the Media & Entertainment sector headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. My remit as CTO 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?
Growth into new markets had exposed serious limitations in our platform. What had worked for our original user base in Seoul, South Korea was not going to scale internationally, and the Cloud Services requirements for those new markets were meaningfully different. We needed a partner who had solved that kind of problem before.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core engagement was Cloud Services 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?
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 Cloud Services and specific knowledge of the Media & Entertainment 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 Media & Entertainment 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?
Professional and efficient. We used a shared project management tool that gave our stakeholders visibility without requiring them to attend every meeting. The project manager had a clear escalation path and used it appropriately. The only time I needed to intervene directly was when I chose to, not because something had been missed.
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?
Hard to isolate precisely because several factors changed simultaneously, but the data we can attribute directly to the new Cloud Services platform shows a meaningful improvement in the metrics that matter to our Media & Entertainment business. Our account managers report that the new capability is coming up positively in client conversations, which was one of the strategic objectives we started with.
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?
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 Media & Entertainment space looking for a Cloud Services partner who combines technical rigour with genuine commercial awareness, I would put this team at the top of the shortlist.
Our most downloaded release ever, built by a team that truly listened
Jordan Mills / Director of Operations - Cascade Manufacturing
Verified
Sep 03, 2024
Sep 03, 2024
Project summary: Our growth into new markets required a multi-currency, multi-language commerce platform that our previous vendor had promised but never delivered.
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
Architectural decisions that will serve us for years rather than just solving the immediate problem, knowledge transfer that left our team genuinely capable, no scope creep at all
CONS
Honestly nothing worth documenting — we went in with high expectations and they were met on every measure
Project TypeMobile App Development
IndustryRetail & E-commerce
Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999
DurationMay 2025 – Jun 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 Retail & E-commerce 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 Mobile App Development expertise to address it properly. We needed specialists.
What services did the company provide for your project?
End-to-end Mobile App Development delivery with a particular emphasis on the integration layer that connected the new build to our existing Retail & E-commerce 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?
Their portfolio included two projects that were sufficiently close to our own brief in terms of complexity, Mobile App Development scope, and Retail & E-commerce context that we felt confident they understood what we were asking. The proposal was technically rigorous, the pricing was transparent, and the proposed team structure gave us senior engineers throughout rather than just for the pitch.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Better than we did at the start, which sounds like an exaggeration but is genuinely accurate. The discovery workshop they ran surfaced assumptions we had not examined and contradictions in our requirements that would have caused real problems mid-development. The functional specification they produced was the clearest articulation of our product that we had seen written down.
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?
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?
The most direct measure is that the problem we hired them to solve no longer exists. Beyond that, the new Mobile App Development platform has reduced our operational overhead measurably, our team spends less time managing incidents and more time on product development, and we have been able to onboard two new enterprise clients who had previously cited our technical limitations as a barrier.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The post-launch behaviour. Some agencies disappear the moment the final invoice is paid. This team maintained the same level of responsiveness during the hypercare period as during development, handed over thorough documentation without being asked twice, and checked in proactively a month after go-live to review performance metrics with us. That last part was entirely unprompted.
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.
Technically excellent, commercially aware, and genuinely pleasant to work with
Natalie Tremblay / Director of Engineering - Boreal Digital Inc
Verified
Jun 03, 2024
Jun 03, 2024
Project summary: Our hospital network required a unified patient data platform that could integrate with existing EMR systems while meeting all relevant data protection obligations.
Project governance was one of the things that impressed me most. We had a dedicated project manager who ran tight fortnightly sprints with clear acceptance criteria, a shared backlog that gave us full visibility at all times, and a change request process that was fair and transparent. Nothing slipped through the cracks, no bill shock at the end, and the final delivery matched the original scope document almost perfectly. In my experience that kind of discipline is genuinely uncommon.
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
Their calendar books up quickly which made scheduling the initial kickoff slightly challenging — a good problem for them to have and not one that affected our delivery
Project TypeLow-Code / No-Code Development
IndustryHealthcare
Project Cost$150,000 to $499,999
DurationMar 2025 – Mar 2026
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As Director of Engineering at Boreal Digital Inc, I manage a cross-functional technology team serving our Healthcare clients from Montreal, Canada. 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 Healthcare regulatory environment had changed and the compliance timeline was non-negotiable. We needed to rebuild specific components of our system to meet the new requirements and our internal team was already fully committed to the core product roadmap. Bringing in a specialist Low-Code / No-Code Development partner was the only realistic path.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The full Low-Code / No-Code 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?
A direct referral from a peer who had used them for a comparable Low-Code / No-Code Development engagement in the Healthcare 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?
Extremely well. They asked detailed questions, challenged vague requirements until they were specific, and proposed sensible defaults for decisions we had not yet made rather than just leaving them open. By the time development started there was no ambiguity in the backlog, which is a rare starting position.
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?
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?
We went live three months ago. In that time we have not had a single P1 incident, our page performance scores have improved across every measure, and the feature we had deprioritised for years because the old architecture made it too complex to implement is now in our next sprint. The platform they built has opened up our roadmap in a way we had not anticipated.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The continuity of the team. The engineers who scoped the work were the engineers who built it. That sounds like it should be standard practice but in my experience it often is not. The institutional knowledge that comes from that continuity pays dividends at every stage, particularly when you are dealing with a complex Healthcare domain where context takes time to build.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes, without qualification. I have already made two direct referrals to peers in the Healthcare sector who were facing similar Low-Code / No-Code Development challenges. In both cases I gave the recommendation specifically because I was confident the experience would match what I described — which is a level of confidence I do not extend lightly.
Smart contracts delivered with the rigour and security our compliance team demanded
Khalid Al-Mansoori / Chief Digital Officer - Emirates Digital Group
Verified
Sep 14, 2022
Sep 14, 2022
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.
Our industry has specific compliance requirements that many generalist agencies struggle with. This team came with working knowledge of the relevant frameworks, asked pointed questions about our obligations, and built controls into the architecture rather than bolting them on at the end. Our compliance team reviewed the delivered system and had only minor observations, which is genuinely unusual for a first-pass review. That domain awareness saved us significant remediation cost.
PROS
Engineering quality that our internal team can maintain without calling the vendor, thorough documentation, proactive risk identification throughout the project
CONS
Their calendar books up quickly which made scheduling the initial kickoff slightly challenging — a good problem for them to have and not one that affected our delivery
Project TypeBlockchain Development
IndustryFood & Beverage
Project Cost$10,000 to $49,999
DurationMar 2025 – Sep 2025
Questions & Answers
Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I lead technology at Emirates Digital Group, a mid-sized organisation in the Food & Beverage sector headquartered in Dubai, UAE. My remit as Chief Digital Officer 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?
Growth into new markets had exposed serious limitations in our platform. What had worked for our original user base in Dubai, UAE was not going to scale internationally, and the Blockchain Development requirements for those new markets were meaningfully different. We needed a partner who had solved that kind of problem before.
What services did the company provide for your project?
End-to-end Blockchain Development delivery with a particular emphasis on the integration layer that connected the new build to our existing Food & Beverage 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?
Honestly, the quality of the questions they asked during the briefing process set them apart. Most vendors listen to the brief and come back with a solution to exactly what you described. This team came back with a solution to what we actually needed, which turned out to be somewhat different. That kind of consultative instinct is what we were looking for.
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 Food & Beverage 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 Dubai, UAE 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?
We went live three months ago. In that time we have not had a single P1 incident, our page performance scores have improved across every measure, and the feature we had deprioritised for years because the old architecture made it too complex to implement is now in our next sprint. The platform they built has opened up our roadmap in a way we had not anticipated.
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?
Yes, without qualification. I have already made two direct referrals to peers in the Food & Beverage sector who were facing similar Blockchain Development challenges. In both cases I gave the recommendation specifically because I was confident the experience would match what I described — which is a level of confidence I do not extend lightly.
Company Info
Founded
1994
Employees
2 - 9
Hourly Rate
N/A
Client Rating
5.0/5 (4 reviews)