"Their technical skills in accomplishing all the front and backend work have lived up to our expectations."
In search of capable developers to help build an app (iOS/Android), which connects real estate agents with contractors, an entrepreneur outsourced specific action items to Hidden Brains.
"Their technical skills in accomplishing all the front and backend work have lived up to our expectations."
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Our app is like Uber for real estate agents. We connect agents with contractors such as electricians or handymen.
What challenge were you trying to address with Hidden Brains?
We had our app developed locally, here in Virginia Beach, but we weren’t happy with the development firm we had used. We wanted to find another agency to complete the work.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We sent them our code that the prior agency had done. They combed through the code to see how the app worked. They worked on both the front and backend. The app has third-party integration and payment processing. We had specific action items we wanted them to do such as hiding some details on the app screen and adding and removing things from the web services side. We’ve recently added some pop-up screens and a rating system. They’re currently working on the Android version of the app.
We initially had a quote-based model and an on-demand model, but we asked them to hide the quote-based model. We had a feature that would send the tradesmen a text every day, asking them to update their availability. We asked Hidden Brains to hide that as well, as it was too taxing for the contractors to keep updating their schedule every day. Instead, we asked them to add a feature in which the real estate agent could pick a day and time. That lead would then be blasted out to all the tradesmen in a given category. The tradesmen would get a job description and contact information for the agent. In addition, Hidden Brains worked on the geo-location for the jobs and a lot of smaller features, like putting a notes section to the job description. They also added a feature that allows people to upload pictures to share with the contractors.
How did you come to work with Hidden Brains?
We found them on Upwork. We chose them because their response time was quick, their pricing was fair, and their job description was good. It also helped that their English was very easy to understand. If we didn’t understand someone on the team, they found someone who could speak better English for us, which was great.
How much have you invested with Hidden Brains?
We’ve spent in the range of $5,000–$6,000 to date.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with them in November of 2016, and the relationship is ongoing.
Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate the productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?
The iOS version was launched in November. We’ve had a lot of people signing up, but only a handful of transactions. Our main focus right now is getting more transactions, and we’re limited right now because the Android version isn’t launched yet. I think we’ll have better metrics within the next couple months when that is out. Their technical skills in accomplishing all the front and backend work have lived up to our expectations.
How did Hidden Brains perform from a project management standpoint?
The work has been great and communication is awesome. They’ve been flexible with payment because we wanted to pay as we go. We use Basecamp, which is very easy to follow, as well as Skype and email. They update us on what they’ve done each day. Meeting the timelines has been great. We talk to one developer on a daily basis and another guy on the support side for questions or concerns. There’s also a team leader who gets issues resolved quickly. We had problems with bugs, but they seemed to jump on it.
What did you find most impressive about Hidden Brains?
Their communication is good. It’s affordable to work with them directly, as opposed to someone here in the States who will farm the work out to them anyway.
Are there any areas Hidden Brains could improve?
I wish they had more access over the weekend because if we have an issue, we need it resolved quickly. They need a way to accommodate customers in emergency situations.
What tips or recommendations could you share that might increase the likelihood of success with Hidden Brains?
It’s vital to be in charge of your own project and know who’s working on it. I think direct communication with the developers is key.
"Their response time has been excellent, and they’re very well managed from a project perspective."
Hidden Brains InfoTech built an iOS application for a gaming company and then was tasked with doing design and integrations with their eCommerce website.
"Their response time has been excellent, and they’re very well managed from a project perspective."
Hidden Brains InfoTech delivered good quality code on time for a fair price. They are strong at project management and pushing the project to completion.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the owner of Energy SCP, a game company. We manufacture games for families to enjoy during tailgate parties and similar outdoor events.
What challenge were you trying to address with Hidden Brains InfoTech?
We needed someone to build an app and website for us.
What was the scope of their involvement?
After they built the iOS app, I was pleased with their work and decided to have them build our website from scratch. Aside from our e-commerce website, they also did some graphic design work. Hidden Brains then did the integration with our third-party service providers, including Tapjoy and social media. The app is linked to our website so we can do push notifications there as well.
How did you come to work with Hidden Brains InfoTech?
Hidden Brains was recommended to me by a friend who had just launched an application. We gave them a chance to give us a quote and then compared them to other companies in terms of price, project planning, and overall commitment. They met all three of our criteria, so they won the bid.
How much have you invested with Hidden Brains InfoTech?
We’ve spent between $10,000 and $50,000 on this project.
What is the status of this engagement?
We began working with them in December 2016, and the work is ongoing.
Could you share any evidence that would demonstrate productivity, quality of work, or the impact of the engagement?
We don’t have any metrics yet.
How did Hidden Brains InfoTech perform from a project management standpoint?
The project management is all done through Basecamp.
What did you find most impressive about Hidden Brains InfoTech?
Their response time has been excellent, and they’re very well managed from a project perspective. It’s good to have soft reminders that are not annoying. The specs were very documented and there was never a question as to what I was getting.
Are there any areas Hidden Brains InfoTech could improve?
We have now switched to using Skype to communicate. That could’ve been suggested earlier in the project, as it would’ve helped us get to know each other better.
"They've been attentive to detail and adept to suggesting fixes and improvements."
Hidden Brains InfoTech provides supplementary app development resources. They build iOS and Android apps, provide UI designs and branding guides, and manage development timelines and requirements.
"They've been attentive to detail and adept to suggesting fixes and improvements."
Hidden Brains InfoTech always impresses with their fast deliveries, business-savvy mindset, and creative approach to ideation. The team identifies each app's objectives and customizes their designs to suit the target audience. Their wide, adaptive WordPress expertise is a particularly helpful asset.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Please describe your organization.
We're a small to medium-sized web agency in London, primarily focusing on the design of websites and online marketing like search engine optimization [SEO] and social media.
What is your position?
I'm the Director of the company.
What business challenge were you trying to address with Hidden Brains?
We've recently expanded our services to the mobile app space, which is where our work with Hidden Brains came in. We approached them in order to help out with the resourcing requirements we had as a small company which is just starting out. We've recently picked up a lot of clients who are interested in the mobile app space. We are not resourced enough to take on this volume of work and decided to outsource one of the projects to Hidden Brains.
Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.
Hidden Brains has been in charge of development for iOS and Android. They also took care of project management in terms of keeping track of timelines and milestones. They came up with a user interface design based on our requirements for coloring and branding. Our role was more as a mediator. After working with them for a couple of months, we became confident in the fact that they knew what they were doing and were quite good in terms of agendas and time keeping. My role is simply to make sure that invoices are up-to-date and that Hidden Brains has received the client's feed-back.
How did you come to work with Hidden Brains?
We originally found them on oDesk.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
This is confidential.
What is the status of this engagement?
We've been working with them for four to five months. Our project is due to be launched within the second week of April, 2016.
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
Our client has been happy with all the demos and wireframes we've sent through. Hidden Brains has done good work. They were pragmatic in coming up with app ideas and understanding who the target audience was. They paid attention to elements of business analysis, which made them very good to work with.
How did Hidden Brains perform from a project management standpoint?
Their turnaround time has been quite fast. Hidden Brains has met all of the timelines they've set for themselves, and has also been proactive in identifying bugs and areas in which the app could be improved from a business continuity sense. They've been attentive to detail and adept to suggesting fixes and improvements, which took a lot of pressure off of my team.
What distinguishes Hidden Brains from other providers?
Their integration with WordPress particularly sets them aside. We've only used Hidden Brains for one project but we know that they develop web services and APIs for the platform. This can be quite challenging, as it's not quite as open-sourced as Drupal. They've found ways around this and developed certain API services themselves. This branch of their work has been quite good.
Is there anything Hidden Brains could have improved or done differently?
When working across time zones and with different cultures and languages, there can be a communication issue. I wouldn't put this down to Hidden Brains. A lot of the time, we receive bad signals from a language point of view. This is definitely an obstacle in this type of relationship.
"They were a good team, delivering what they promised in a cost-efficient way."
Hidden Brains InfoTech used WordPress to build a mobile-friendly legal encyclopedia. The site is composed of a homepage and a database of articles with citations and footnotes.
"They were a good team, delivering what they promised in a cost-efficient way."
Beta testers were impressed by the site's attractive visuals and functional interface, which includes every element that was initially requested. Hidden Brains InfoTech impressed with their impeccable organization, dependable communication, and knowledgeable input.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Please describe your organization.
Our company is an online legal encyclopedia and research website.
What is your position?
I am the founder.
What business challenge were you trying to address with Hidden Brains?
I needed to set up a website that would serve as a database in which I could enter articles and that would also provide all the other features necessary for interfacing with a consumer. The database was the main focus.
The website would essentially be the beginning point of my company. The first part of my plan was reaching out to Hidden Brains. My biggest challenge was basically that we were starting from zero.
Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.
Hidden Brains developed my website using Wordpress. We chose this platform due to budget constraints, but they also gave me the option of creating it from a blank slate.
Wordpress presents a few challenges in terms of what can be done through the platform. Hidden Brains was very good at making sure that everything I wanted could be done. Our collaboration was a back-and-forth process.
My website is more or less typical, consisting of a homepage and a database (which was the most important part for me). The site is mobile-friendly, but otherwise there aren't a ton of features on it, e-commerce or otherwise. The elements which are important to me may not have been important to many other people interested in web development. While a regular site would simply have posts and a comment section, I wanted to easily add citations and footnotes for the information on it, since this is a legal site. I learned that it was actually a bit complicated to implement these features, but Hidden Brains was able to do it successfully.
They offered me search engine optimization [SEO] services, but this wasn't something I could have started before uploading the actual content on it. When it went live, I only had a few articles available. It wouldn't have made sense to start any SEO work on it before I could have the chance to add some articles.
How did you come to work with Hidden Brains?
I put up an ad on Elance. I had interviewed a lot of people already and came to the conclusion that I could either pay a lot of money for a US developer, or choose a company abroad, where there could be a communication barrier. I often explained the idea behind my project four times before making myself understood.
One of the sales people from Hidden Brains called me. They spoke perfect English and were able to understand what I wanted. They also have a project manager who has some engineering experience. She was my main point of contact, also speaking perfect English and perfectly understanding what I wanted. I did speak to the engineers themselves once in a while, but she was my main contact person. The engineers spoke good English, but the project manager made the biggest difference.
I had three reference calls with previous companies Hidden Brains had worked for. They proved to be the best option in terms of cost per value.
I drafted some wireframes for what I wanted the website to feature. I had a few phone conversations with Hidden Brains and thought that they were adept in understanding what my needs were and asked the right questions, which was the main reason for hiring them. Initially, I wasn't sure I'd want to work with a team outside the US, but Hidden Brains changed my mind.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
The total development cost was under $10,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
I started working with Hidden Brains in November of 2015. The project was completed at the beginning of January of 2016, despite a two-week period in which I was on vacation.
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
I thought that Hidden Brains did a great job. I'm still in the process of building the site's content, so I'm not currently showing it to a lot of people. It's a legal encyclopedia, so even 30 articles would be too little content for it. It needs a base of hundreds of articles before it can be marketed. The site is randomly accessed each day, but traffic isn't yet relevant.
Overall, everyone who has seen it has thought that it's a high quality site and said that it looks nice. The homepage was built from a basic wireframe of features. Hidden Brains was very good in making the site's design. Everything that I requested through my original wireframe was included.
How did Hidden Brains perform from a project management standpoint?
They have a good team that is broken up into different roles, which makes them efficient. I received daily reports showing me the current progress. They answered any of my questions, and vice versa. Hidden Brains is very good in terms of communication.
What distinguishes Hidden Brains from other providers?
There were some features which they initially thought couldn't be implemented through Wordpress, but they pushed hard to deliver them nonetheless. They were a good team, delivering what they promised in a cost-efficient way.
Is there anything Hidden Brains could have improved or done differently?
My only issue was with their time zone. They're based in India, so their work cycle was exactly opposed to mine. By the time I could respond to an email, they'd be unavailable and, by the time they responded to my emails, I was about to go to bed. I raised this issue with Hidden Brains and they offered to make resources available on flip hours in the future.
Otherwise, they delivered what they promised. They were on time and their quality of work was high.
"There was good continuity in terms of how they communicate."
Hidden Brains InfoTech built a website for a platform that allows businesses to collect digital marketing data. The site ia responsive and mobile-friendly, and integrates e-commerce features.
"There was good continuity in terms of how they communicate."
Hidden Brains InfoTech's talented developers and straightforward project managers produced a high-quality product on a very affordable budget. The site rarely presents bugs. Although some aspects of the process lacked adequate documentation, the finished product fulfilled every expectation.
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Please describe your organization.
Clickin.com is a marketing relationship enabling website that helps agents and businesses collect digital contact information in ways that are currently not possible for them.
What is your position?
I am the owner of Clickin.com.
What business challenge were you trying to address with Hidden Brains?
I hired them to create a website for my project.
Please describe the scope of their involvement in greater detail.
I had initially hired another developer who came up against something he couldn't accomplish. Basic pages and coding had been made for the site, and Hidden Brains took over from there. The site is mobile-responsive right now, working on various device sizes. The next step of the work will involve building e-commerce capabilities.
How did you come to work with Hidden Brains?
I posted a job on a specialized platform, possibly Fiverr, to which they responded.
Could you provide a sense of the size of this initiative in financial terms?
The total development cost has been under $10,000. Their pricing was one tenth of what I would have paid for a local firm.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in August of 2015. The first build of the project was completed recently. The e-commerce portion of the site remains to be built.
Could you share any statistics or metrics from this engagement?
Hidden Brains produced exactly what I was looking for, down to the letter. It hasn't been released on the market yet, so I have no user metrics.
I can say that the bug count during the development phase has been better than the average output I've encountered from other developers.
How did Hidden Brains perform from a project management standpoint?
There seems to be something missing in the working method of most developers. They tend to trust their code more than they should, which leads to lack of rigorous testing. This sometimes created delays, due to having to send the work back.
Another issue I've encountered is lack of information from the developers. They might create a log-in, but not send the data for it every time, or they might create a new feature and not explain how it ties in with other features connected to it. Projects are not documented in a way that would help a non-developer save time and not have to figure things out for themselves. This is something I've told Hidden Brains: they should consider employing someone to go through their work orders, compare that information to the outcome, and create documentation stating how features work. This kind of approach would elevate any developer's quality of output.
What distinguishes Hidden Brains from other providers?
I've operated websites since 2006. Back then, they were simpler, of course. I've worked with a few developers for them. I had the opportunity to hire someone from India in 2010, but didn't do it because I perceived a lack of accountability on their part (both in charging me for incomplete work and fixing issues that could come up), and the time differences could be difficult to work with. It was a leap of trust for me to work with someone that far away.
The current site was brand-new, and wasn't worth anything before I had it built. I was able to take a chance with it, and I'm overall happy that I did. First of all, I was able to save a lot of money. Secondly, the outcome was generally less problematic than normal in terms of bugs found.
I worked with one developer from Hidden Brains. They didn't hand me off to whoever was cheaper, which is a real possibility with other firms. I also worked with the same coordinator. She sent work orders out to the developer and to the designer. There was good continuity in terms of how they communicate. There was one person I could go to, whether I needed to add something new, needed to check the work being done, or wanted to do some design work.
Is there anything Hidden Brains could have improved or done differently?
Even though they charged very little for what they did, I would have preferred the development hours spent to have been better accounted for. They communicated tasks in terms of something taking 2-3 days and costing $400. I have enough knowledge about programming to know that no task takes that long. Working an 8-hour day, you can achieve a lot. Again, they charged me $400 for a particular feature that I knew would cost me thousands locally, so I couldn't complain.
If they really wanted to up their accountability, they could use freelancing services that actually show screenshots of the person working, along with time stamps. Even though a good programmer could circumvent that easily, it would give the person paying the bill some sense of value for their money.
Since the Android version has not launched yet, there are no strong metrics to report. Nevertheless, Hidden Brains' technical ability is strong, and the client is hopeful that transactions will increase. While they could be quicker to respond at certain points, they've mainly met all major deadlines. Â