Icicle Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Having used Icicle for a technically complex application, they started fairly strong but once we started to get into deeper engineering challenges, they fell short. The attention to detail was low (layouts not conforming to specifications as well as issues with edge cases.) While their planning process is extremely complete, there was a frequent hand-off to low-experienced developers. Their top talent is strong, but after a project gets “started,” it resulted in lower skilled developers taking over projects. They have great communication but high overhead — too many layers of people involved and slow-moving progress and a general weakness when it comes to automated testing and best practices. Several years later, we have essentially had to rewrite our code because they didn’t anticipate problems related to scaling — their code “works” but quickly cracks under pressure.

Recommended for an MVP or prototypes, but not recommended for anything beyond that. Also, they can quickly burn up a budget since basic fixes take multiple times as long as it should. Getting deliverables on time is a difficult process. Whatever timeline you expect — double it and be prepared to supervise work closely with your own engineering team or you’ll have pain when you try to extend or improve the code later.

Also be prepared that if you choose a tech stack, they might claim experience and competence, but often there is considerable learning that happens on your dime.

Avoid if you are building anything for which scaling or high stability is critical to your business.