About Small Planet Digital
It helps all kinds of clients change their businesses by digital experiences. They start with objectives and needs, then design and develop excellent products for connected devices. They design and develop unique mobile & web applications that your users will love. They purchase their name & reputation and so will ever give an efficient app that correctly matches your needs.
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Small Planet Digital Reviews
Write a ReviewIT partner embedded deeply enough to understand our business, not just our ticket queue
Declan Hartley / Chief Digital Officer - Southern Cross TechnologyJun 06, 2026
Project summary: Our connected vehicle platform needed to handle telemetry data from an expanding EV fleet while supporting over-the-air update orchestration. No off-the-shelf platform handled both requirements well.
The technical quality of the final deliverable is the easiest thing to point to. The automated test coverage is thorough, the deployment pipeline is reliable, the documentation is genuinely useful rather than ceremonially produced. But the metric I keep returning to is the number of post-launch conversations we have not had to have. No incident calls at two in the morning. No emergency patches. No retrospective discussions about what went wrong. The absence of those events is the evidence I would show to someone considering this vendor.
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
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
Questions & Answers
Delivered on scope, on time, and with code quality that passed our strictest review
Matthieu Renard / Directeur Technique - Lumière Technologies SASJun 05, 2026
Project summary: Time-to-market for new tariff structures had become a direct competitive disadvantage. Our product configuration layer was the bottleneck and it needed to be modernised as a priority.
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.
Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery
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
Questions & Answers
The outcome we specified, delivered the way we needed it, by people we would hire again
Fatima Al-Suwaidi / Head of Digital Strategy - Gulf FinTech HoldingsMay 07, 2026
Project summary: Our audience data was fragmented across eight tools with no single identity layer. Personalisation had become impossible without first solving the data foundation.
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.
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
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
Questions & Answers
DevOps toolchain that compressed our two-week release cycle to same-day deployments
Rupert Ashford / Director of eCommerce - Hargrove Retail PLCMay 03, 2026
Project summary: Our engineering capacity was committed to maintaining existing systems and could not absorb a net-new build of this complexity. An external partner with the right skills was the only viable option.
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.
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
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
Questions & Answers
Blockchain expertise that came with clear explanations, not just technical jargon
Reuben Loh / CTO - Marina Bay Ventures Pte LtdApr 30, 2026
Project summary: A content deal had given us the rights to a major catalogue but our delivery infrastructure could not stream it reliably at scale. We needed a cloud-native video platform in under six months.
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.
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
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
Questions & Answers
Compliance programme delivered on time and approved by the regulator without remediation
Abdullah Al-Shehri / Head of Innovation - Desert Tech VenturesMar 18, 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.
What made the most difference in practice was the quality of the engineering judgment on this team. Not the ability to execute a specification — that is a baseline expectation. The ability to recognise when a specification was suboptimal, explain why, propose an alternative, and support the client in making a decision about it. That consultative dimension elevated the output beyond what the brief described and resulted in a product that is more fit for purpose than the one we had originally specified.
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
Their discovery process is more rigorous than we were accustomed to and required more preparation from our side than we had initially allocated — but the quality of what followed justified every hour of it
Questions & Answers
A technology investment that delivered returns ahead of the business case we approved
Fatima Al-Suwaidi / Head of Digital Strategy - Gulf FinTech HoldingsMar 16, 2026
Project summary: Track-and-trace capability had gone from a differentiator to a table-stakes requirement and our platform had neither. We needed to close the gap before our next enterprise tender cycle.
The technical quality of the final deliverable is the easiest thing to point to. The automated test coverage is thorough, the deployment pipeline is reliable, the documentation is genuinely useful rather than ceremonially produced. But the metric I keep returning to is the number of post-launch conversations we have not had to have. No incident calls at two in the morning. No emergency patches. No retrospective discussions about what went wrong. The absence of those events is the evidence I would show to someone considering this vendor.
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
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
Questions & Answers
Performance testing that identified a latency issue three weeks before our biggest traffic event
Gustavo Ferreira / VP of Technology - Amazônia Digital LtdaMar 13, 2026
Project summary: Unplanned downtime had become our single largest cost driver and our data showed that predictive maintenance could address the majority of it — if we had the right infrastructure to act on it.
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.
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
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
Questions & Answers
Technology strategy that aligned our board, our CTO, and our engineering team for the first time
Jia Hui Tan / VP of Engineering - RedDot Technologies Pte LtdMar 08, 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.
What made the most difference in practice was the quality of the engineering judgment on this team. Not the ability to execute a specification — that is a baseline expectation. The ability to recognise when a specification was suboptimal, explain why, propose an alternative, and support the client in making a decision about it. That consultative dimension elevated the output beyond what the brief described and resulted in a product that is more fit for purpose than the one we had originally specified.
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
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
Questions & Answers
Web3 architecture designed for the real world, not just for the pitch deck
Cameron Aldrich / Head of Digital Operations - Northstar Logistics CorpFeb 18, 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.
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.
Deep domain knowledge that reduced the discovery overhead significantly, proactive risk identification before issues became incidents, delivery cadence that our stakeholders found reassuring
Their discovery process is more rigorous than we were accustomed to and required more preparation from our side than we had initially allocated — but the quality of what followed justified every hour of it
Questions & Answers
Design work that measurably improved every conversion metric on our platform
Bram de Vries / Chief Technology Officer - Windmill Tech BVFeb 17, 2026
Project summary: Evolving open banking obligations required us to rebuild our API layer from the ground up. The architecture needed to be compliant by default, not bolted on after the fact.
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.
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
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
Questions & Answers
Content platform our editorial team adopted without a single escalated support request
Clémentine Aubert / Head of Digital Products - Arc-en-Ciel Digital SASFeb 16, 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.
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.
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
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
Questions & Answers
A digital marketing partner who optimised for business outcomes, not vanity metrics
Maja Söderström / Head of Product Engineering - Scandia Digital ABFeb 05, 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.
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.
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
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
Questions & Answers
A studio team who played the game obsessively and built it accordingly
Aarav Mehta / Chief Data Officer - Zenith FinServ LtdJan 31, 2026
Project summary: An international expansion required multi-currency, multi-language, and multi-warehouse capabilities that our existing platform could not support without a fundamental re-architecture.
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.
Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery
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
Questions & Answers
The outcome we specified, delivered the way we needed it, by people we would hire again
Kelsey Drummond / Director of Digital Health - Crestline Health PartnersJan 12, 2026
Project summary: Matter management had become a significant overhead for our fee earners. Every hour spent on administration was an hour not spent on billable advisory work — the business case was straightforward.
What made the most difference in practice was the quality of the engineering judgment on this team. Not the ability to execute a specification — that is a baseline expectation. The ability to recognise when a specification was suboptimal, explain why, propose an alternative, and support the client in making a decision about it. That consultative dimension elevated the output beyond what the brief described and resulted in a product that is more fit for purpose than the one we had originally specified.
Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery
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
Questions & Answers
Design system that brought consistency to a product that had accrued four years of visual debt
Théo Beaumont / VP of Innovation - Laurentian Tech PartnersJan 06, 2026
Project summary: Matter management had become a significant overhead for our fee earners. Every hour spent on administration was an hour not spent on billable advisory work — the business case was straightforward.
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.
Architectural decisions designed for longevity rather than just the current brief, thorough automated test coverage, post-launch stability that validated every technical choice made during discovery
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