datarockets

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🚀 Founded back in 2014, registered in Ontario, Canada - datarockets builds quality software and applications for businesses of any size.

Our recent success stories:

⭐ A Series-E startup launched a new product fully developed by the datarockets team.

⭐ >$1M went through the payment methods we released a couple of months ago for our FinTech client.

⭐We wrote firmware for writing devices that raised over $700k on the crowdfunding platform.

Canada

422 Woodbine Ave, Kitchener, Ontario N2R 0A9

Poland

WrzesiÅ„ska, Warszawa, Mazowieckie 03-713

+48733586412

Service Focus

Focus of Software Development

Javascript - 15%
Node.js - 5%
Ruby on Rails - 55%
ReactJS - 25%

Focus of Mobile App Development

iOS - iPhone - 20%
Android - 20%
Hybrid - 20%
Swift - 20%
Kotlin - 20%

Industry Focus

Advertising & Marketing - 10%
Business Services - 10%
Financial & Payments - 10%
Healthcare & Medical - 10%
Information Technology - 10%
Real Estate - 10%
Transportation & Logistics - 10%
Retail - 10%
Productivity - 10%
Startups - 5%
Oil & Energy - 5%

Client Focus

60% Medium Business

20% Large Business

20% Small Business

Review Analytics of datarockets

8
Total Reviews

5.0/5
Overall Rating

0
Recent Reviews

What Users Say

They showed true interest in our company goals and problems that need to be solved.

Alexandra Menyaylo , Sales manager at MetaProject

Speedy, communicative, and brilliant!

Lannie Le , TitlePartner, Executive Creative Director at Pixel Dreams

An absolute pleasure

Ed Wong , Associate Attorney at at Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson P.S.

Solid service with great results

Alejandro Pérez , CEO at Komet Sales

Great Firm

Gabriel Ferrin , Head of Product & Engineering at American Estate & Trust

What Users Like The Most

The people
I like that the developers feel as if they part of my team and behave like they want the project to succeed as much as I do.
Halacracy. Radical transparency. Communication. Collaboration. Capabilities. Business acumen.

What Users Like The Least

The expertise are so vast, I wish I could get access to more of their team, but alas, it's always a question of time and money.
So far there has not been one concern I've raised or change I've requested that has not been rapidly addressed.
Scale up so you can take on more clients and projects!

Detailed Reviews of datarockets

5.0 8 Reviews

Alexandra Menyaylo , Sales manager at MetaProject

Posted on Aug 16, 2022

They showed true interest in our company goals and problems that need to be solved.

At the start, their main questions were not about the typical "budget/time," but they showed true interest in our company goals and problems that need to be solved. When learning about their approach to development, we couldn't expect SUCH attention to detail and proactiveness in development and product and business questions. They left an impression of an intelligent and smart team, and we plan to continue our collaboration.

What was the project name that you have worked with datarockets?

Web development and IT consulting

What service was provided as part of the project?

Software Development, IT Services

Describe your project in brief

Datarockets became our partner in web project development and consulting on the strategy and promotion. They have a vast experience in many fields that turned out to be beneficial for our company's growth and development. It's a fruitful collaboration for both sides. We plan to grow our partnership in the future and have more projects together with them.

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

Their approach to dealing with project goals and problems, diving into their very essence.

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

I don't think I can feature something here. We discuss everything we face along the way and find solutions with them right away.

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Project Detail

$0 to $10000
In Progress

Lannie Le, TitlePartner, Executive Creative Director at Pixel Dreams

Posted on Aug 13, 2020

Speedy, communicative, and brilliant!

datarockets team is our go-to partner firm for any technical projects that require a fine blend of technology and business acumen. After having worked with more than a handful of different dev shops, we've finally found our THE ONE. datarockets is unlike other dev shops we had worked with. They only build products they truly believe in, and with that belief comes commitment, dedication, ownership (it's refreshing how much the team treats a client's project as their own), and innovation. My personal favourite part of collaborating with datarockets team is their radical transparency, holacracy, and intensive communication. We love datarockets so much we constantly refer them to our clients who need product development.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Mobile App Development, Software Development

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

Halacracy. Radical transparency. Communication. Collaboration. Capabilities. Business acumen.

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

Scale up so you can take on more clients and projects!

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Project Detail

$50001 to $200000

Ed Wong, Associate Attorney at at Hillis Clark Martin & Peterson P.S.

Posted on Jul 07, 2020

An absolute pleasure

I've been working in Product Management for a while in Toronto and the PM circle is quite small here. I was first recommended DataRockets by a fellow Product Manager that I was chatting with. She had glowing reviews for them so I decided to try them out for a project that I was working on - a platform to connect the brightest minds in Canada and provide easier access to expertise.

Working with DataRockets was an absolute pleasure. It was incredibly enjoyable - I most appreciated their responsiveness, their quality of work, and most importantly -- collaboratively problem solving with them.

They had tried-and-true processes that kept communication open. Tools and organization that made it easy for us to track work and discuss tasks. It was so effective that I adopted some of those processes in my day-to-day PM role. They are truly entrepreneurial-minded, so it was nice to be able to bounce ideas and have other bright minds thinking ahead on potential challenges or opportunities.

I would highly recommend and would not hesitate to work with them again.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Mobile App Development, Software Development

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

The people

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

The expertise are so vast, I wish I could get access to more of their team, but alas, it's always a question of time and money.

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Project Detail

$10001 to $50000

Alejandro Pérez, CEO at Komet Sales

Posted on Oct 01, 2019

Solid service with great results

We've done a couple of projects with the team at Data Rockets and our experience has been very positive. Communication is great which makes a big difference when running projects with a distributed team in various countries (from our end). Pavel and his team have been always available and reply to emails / requests promptly. When we've had problems they've reacted swiftly and thoroughly.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Software Development

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

Deep technical knowledge in Salesforce.

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Project Detail

$10001 to $50000

Gabriel Ferrin, Head of Product & Engineering at American Estate & Trust

Posted on Sep 27, 2019

Great Firm

We've worked with Datarockets for about 4 years now continuously and have been very happy with our collaboration. We've used them for both frontend and mobile development and they've produced high quality code and satisfied our project needs. They are a strong team and have helped enahce our own developer culture over the years.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Mobile App Development, Software Development

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

Development Culture

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Project Detail

$50001 to $200000

Anonymous

Posted on Aug 23, 2019

Working with DataRockets has been excellent

We have been working with data rockets for 3 months and are very happy with their service. Their communication has been very impressive thus far. I was hesitant to work with an international group given a bad previous experience with another company, but DataRockets has been nothing but exceptional. They have taken over a complex software platform and have even assisted with technical support.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Software Development

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

Communication Management Dev team structure

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

Costs are high compared to competitors.

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Project Detail

$200000+

Robert Osborne, Director Of Engineering at Freckle IoT

Posted on Feb 27, 2019

Reliable and enthusiastic engineers

We have two datarockets' developers working with our mobile team and we are always impressed with their dedication to the project, willingness to go the extra mile and desire to learn and improve.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Mobile App Development

What is it about the company that you appreciate the most?

I like that the developers feel as if they part of my team and behave like they want the project to succeed as much as I do.

What was it about the company that you didn't like which they should do better?

So far there has not been one concern I've raised or change I've requested that has not been rapidly addressed.

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Project Detail

$10001 to $50000

Company Response

datarockets

Thanks, Robert! It's a pleasure working with you!

Posted on Feb 28, 2019

Nivida Manicks

Posted on Oct 30, 2020

Great supportive team!

What service was provided as part of the project?

Software Development, IT Services

Rating Breakdown

Quality
Schedule & Timing
Communication
Overall Rating

Client Portfolio of datarockets

Project Industry

Legal & Compliance - 3.8%
E-commerce - 7.7%
Business Services - 11.5%
Social - 3.8%
Healthcare & Medical - 11.5%
Information Technology - 7.7%
Startups - 19.2%
Gaming - 3.8%
Financial & Payments - 3.8%
Advertising & Marketing - 3.8%
Media - 11.5%
Art, Entertainment & Music - 3.8%
Travel & Lifestyle - 3.8%
Automotive - 3.8%

Major Industry Focus

Startups

Project Cost

$500000+ - 3.8%
$10001 to $50000 - 11.5%
Not Disclosed - 73.1%
$50001 to $100000 - 7.7%
$100001 to $500000 - 3.8%

Common Project Cost

Not Disclosed

Project Timeline

Not Disclosed - 7.7%
1 to 25 Weeks - 42.3%
26 to 50 Weeks - 30.8%
51 to 100 Weeks - 19.2%

Project Timeline

1 to 25 Weeks

Clients: 6

Nike
Holacracy One
DealMaker
Wargaming
American Estate & Trust
Astrohaus

Portfolios: 26

Growing a financial transaction platform to help companies raise capital

Dealmaker is a cloud-based platform for accelerated capital-raising, KYC and Fund Formation. Used and trusted by some of the world’s leading law firms and organizations, DealMaker’s software eliminates friction in the capital-raising process, empowering users to manage, circulate, and track documents swiftly and securely.

The datarockets team works on application optimization, adding and fixing integrations for making payments (Xero, Stripe Card and ACH payments, FundAmerica, and etc.), participated in designing and implementing new functionality such as whitelabeling, company portals page, KYCs and etc. Worked on the development processes improvement and added test and linter coverage to the project.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, MySql, RSpec, ActiveAdmin, Delayed job, S3, AWS, JQuery, ES6, Haml, SASS, Bootstrap, Stripe SDK, FundAmerica SDK, Xero SDK, HelloSign SDK, K8s

Case study: https://datarockets.com/case-studies/legal-fintech-software/

Web App

Digitizing an in-person measurement taking and ordering experience for remote orders with an app

ZOLES delivers custom-made insoles to consumers. They have a physical kiosk that makes 3D scans, analyzes your feet, and thereafter creates an order for orthotics. Zoles wanted to replace the 3D scanner with the customer’s own smartphone or tablet.

During our project, we ventured into creating a web application that uses a phone’s camera to assist users in taking photos of their feet from three distinct angles: the inner, top, and outer sides. This was crucial for us to accurately measure feet sizes.

We integrated this with a third-party API to generate 3D models of the feet based on these scans.

One of the highlights of this project was achieving an accuracy level of over 95% when comparing our camera scans to those from a physical foot scanner. This was a remarkable accomplishment for our team.

We didn't stop there, though. Our developers added an innovative touch by introducing a dynamic visual gyroscope in the app. This feature turns green when the phone is positioned at just the right angle, guiding users to take perfect photos from the three required angles.

But our work wasn't limited to just scanning. We also integrated the app into a chatbot. It streamlines the process for users to submit orders for custom-made insoles, making it possible without having to visit a physical office.

As we geared up for the release, a significant focus was also placed on polishing the app's UI and UX. We wanted to ensure that every aspect of the user experience was intuitive and engaging.

And to support this, our engineers meticulously crafted comprehensive development documentation. This was done not just for record-keeping, but to provide clear guidelines and insights, ensuring ease of use and future scalability of the application.”

Case study: https://datarockets.com/case-studies/3d-foot-scanning-app/

Web App

WeFindVenues - Venue booking platform in the UK

a UK-based platform that allows finding venues for your events easily. Everything users need to do is to describe their event, venue requirements and the platform will automatically match the best venue options. Users receive proposals from venue administrators, compare them in real-time, and make their choice.

We’ve been working on the last portion of platform updates such as messages, admin panel, venue profile improvements, and many more.

A case study about booking platform development.

Ruby on Rails, Postgresql, Vue.js, Bootstrap, Jquery, Erb, Slim, SCSS

Web App

Apps for local bartering communities - Bunz

Web and mobile applications for local bartering communities in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, New York, and London. The project helps people trade the items they no longer need for the ones they do.

Tech stack:
Mobile: Java, Kotlin, Swift, Objective C, RxSwift, RxCocoa, AFNetworking, Moya, MVVM, Room, Paging, Google Play Services, Firebase (Analytics, Ads, Crashlytics, Dynamic Links), Google Maps & Places SDK, Facebook SDK

Web: Js, React, Redux, ImmutableJs, Sagas, React-Router, Google (Analytics, Ads), Google Maps

Backend:

NodeJs, Artifactlabs Cetus Framework, Nodemailer, Agenda, Mongoose, New Relic, EurekAPI, Sqreen, Slack API, Twillo, Neutrino API, Geocoding API, Papertrail, Google AdMob, Google Auth API, Facebook Auth API, Apple Auth API
AWS: Lambda, SQS, SES, SNS, S3, Elastic Beanstalk, EC2, CloudFront, CloudWatch
DB: MongoDB, Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Amazon Redshift, Memcached, Redis

Web App Play Store App Store

Defining and delivering an easy way to schedule meditation sessions from your workspace

The datarockets team built an MVP of a meditation platform and content management system for admins. In the web app, we developed such features as rooms for meditations with a panel of active participants, a list of courses and practices, and information about the user's progress. Besides, we integrated our app with Slack which allows teams to receive messages about the upcoming session and get a unique link to the room.

Case study: https://datarockets.com/case-studies/web-slack-app-mental-health-startup/

Web App

G-plans - Fitness and health tracking application

The application that allows users to lead healthy lifestyles under professional supervision. In the G-plans app users can manage their food and water intake, count calories, follow customized nutrition programs with suggested recipes, and appoint calls with nutrition experts.

datarockets team worked on optimizing the codebase, fixing bugs, setting up video streaming services, implementing push notifications, on-boarding flow for new users, and other features.

The case study about health app development.

Tech stack: React Native, RN Navigation, RN Config, Redux, MobX, IAP, Intercom, Async Storage, Facebook SDK, Firebase, Google Fit, Apple Health, MixPanel, Appsflyer, Bitrise

App Store Play Store Web App

Ad-supported Digital Signage Platform

A complex of web applications and hardware devices (terminals) that help businesses to generate passive income from their digital screens. The product turns businesses’ TVs or digital screens into advertising platforms that can show different kinds of content (images, videos, and RSS feeds) mixed with ads.

Our team was automating routine business processes, resolving technical issues as customer support, stabilized the application and prepared it for a high load, and improved the codebase by covering it with tests.

A case study about advertising platform development.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, Postgre SQL and Redis DBs, Delayed job, Que and Sidekiq job schedulers, AWS (EC2, S3, Route53, Elasticache, ELB, OpsWorks, RDS, AutoScaling), Terraform, Raspberry Pi 3, Python, C

Web App

Toronto Experts - On-demand business coaching platform

A web platform that connects startup founders and IT experts in Toronto, Canada. With this platform, you can select your startup stage, book a mentorship session, pay for it and have a conference call with your mentor.

datarockets team helped the client to run an experiment and implement an MVP solution to validate their idea. We have built the web application from scratch, implemented a booking feature and integrations with calendar, email and Google Hangouts.

A case study about on-demand platform development.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, RSpec, Mandrill API, React, Bootstrap3

Web App

GlassFrog - SaaS empowering Holacracy in organizations

a SaaS platform that helps organizations to implement Holacracy. Holacracy itself is an agile organization structure that works perfectly for startups and modern companies. GlassFrog makes it possible to manage employees, their roles and responsibilities in a simple and visual-rich way. We’ve been working on GlassFrog for a few years already and implemented a variety of features: from UX improvements to complex integrations with tools like Asana and Slack.

The case study about SaaS app development.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, ElasticSearch, Webpack, ES6, CSS Modules, React, D3, Jest, GraphQL, React Relay, Flow types, Docker, Kubernetes

App Store Play Store Web App

Vital - Human analytics platform for teams

A human analytics platform, currently in MVP stage. With beVital you can track your personal data such as book readings, time spent, daily vices and rituals. The platform makes data tracking social with teams and comments. It also provides a simple visualization of your data.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, Rspec, Mandrill API, Google oAuth, React.js, Chart.js, Redux, Postgres

Web App

Level counter for Munchkin (board game)

Applications for Android & iOS for the Munchkin card game. It helps gamers count their levels and strengths and shows simple game analytics. The application has open source code.

That was a pet project for our team and we invested only 2 months into the apps’ development in total but had beaten our competitors with zero investment into marketing.

The case study about mobile app development with open-sourced code.

Tech stack: Java, Kotlin, Swift, MPAndroidChart, MagicalRecord, Charts, Swinject

App Store Play Store

Shift - Fitness and health tracking application

The application that allows users to lead healthy lifestyles under professional supervision. Shift with Erin application offers custom workouts and exercises, progress tracking, and diet monitoring.

datarockets team worked on optimizing the codebase, fixing bugs, setting up video streaming services, implementing push notifications, on-boarding flow for new users, and other features.

The case study about health app development.

Tech stack: React Native, RN Navigation, RN Config, Redux, MobX, IAP, Intercom, Async Storage, Facebook SDK, Firebase, Google Fit, Apple Health, MixPanel, Appsflyer, Bitrise

Play Store App Store Web App

Coins.live - platform for crypto trading

A web and mobile app that helps users in the crypto trading market. It provides live and historic cryptocurrency prices, crypto portfolio tracking, alerts, news, charts, and detailed coin data.

datarockets team worked on rebuilding the web application from scratch using Node.js and React stack and optimizing it for GoNative environment. We were doing SSR (server-side rendering) with authentication, including Facebook auth and added Google ReCaptcha-v2 integration. Later we built mobile apps on React Native and supported the GoNative app while a new one was under development.

Tech stack: Node.js, Next.js, React, Redux, Pug, Highcharts, AWS (Cloudflare, ElasticBeanstalk),React Native, RN Navigation, Detox, Facebook SDK, Firebase, Fastlane, Bitrise

App Store Play Store Web App

ActiveDemand - marketing automation platform

A HubSpot alternative for businesses to automate their marketing activities. The platform combines email marketing tools, social media management tools, call tracking software, landing page builders, and integrates with popular CRMs and other marketing tools.

datarockets team was focused on improving the project infrastructure, managed CRM integrations, and integrated some new based on Rest API, SOAP, Facebook Graph AI, created several specific features like Content Moderation process, Social Media Multi-Post, and custom Task Management subsystem.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Webpack, ES6, JQuery, Kibana

Web App

KometSales - B2B software platform for floral companies

KometSales is a CRM system for the floral industry in the USA. We have built an integration between KometSales and Salesforce, automated some business processes using Apex, Visualforce, and Salesforce workflow rules.

Tech stack: Java 8, Groovy, Salesforce, Spring, Web Services

Web App

EasyKicks

a Nike Inc. owned project for kids. The platform allows to rent a pair of kicks for a certain period of time and swap the kicks when the kid outgrew them. We created a user-friendly web and mobile apps on React Native for parents with signing for a membership, ability to search for items, choose a color/size and buy them via the apps.

Tech stack: React, React Native, Lottie, Bootstrap, Jest

API: Nodejs (+ Hapi), Postgres, Firebase, Stripe

Web App

Killi

an application on Android & iOS which allows consumers to earn money every time someone wants to purchase their personal data. Personal data trading market is huge, brands pay companies like Facebook insane amounts of money to get their user data and use it for their marketing purposes. Killi aims to make this whole market transparent and return personal data possession back to people.

Our major challenge on Killi was its stabilization. When we started working on the project it suffered from bugs and performance issues. We’ve improved the code quality iteratively, migrated to a new API and increased user data security. For better user experience, we improved location tracking accuracy.

Tech stack: JavaScript, React, React Native, Redux, React Navigation, Jest, Styled Components, ES6, Firebase, Intercom, Crypto JS

Web App

accuBITZ

a platform that allows to buy and sell cryptocurrencies for a retirement or personal cash account in a simple and safe way. Users can buy, sell and track bitcoin transactions in the app. There’s an ability to create an account in the app, top it up via regular bank transfers or bank API, and get money back on a bank account or crypto wallet. Our team has been working on authentication / authorization, notifications, accounts support, bank accounts management.

Tech stack: React, Pug, Redux-Saga, Styled-Components, Jest (+Enzyme), Flow, Storybook

Web App

dev.by - media resource for IT in Belarus

The most popular IT resource in Belarus. Here you can find any information about the Belarusian IT community lifestyle, interesting events, jobs in leading companies and more.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Elasticsearch, JavaScript, LinkedIn API

Web App

Evetab

Mobile apps for Android & iOS, that helps people access the hottest nightclubs in Toronto, Canada. The app allows you to plan your nightlife, make payments via Bluetooth, and get VIP access to partnering nightclubs.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, Sinatra, MongoDB, ROM, RSpec, Java, Swift

Web App

Yement Portal - news portal in Yemen

A non-profit initiative helping people of Yemen to access objective and proven information about events related to their country. It became a huge problem for People in Yemen and we built a solution that implies machine learning and data clusterization algorithms to analyze information from different sources.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, Javascript, Postgres, Sidekiq, NMatrix, Lucene, React Native

Play Store Web App

Bikepics

a social network for bikers with more than 1 million audience. There bikers can share their bike's photos & videos, comment on them, vote, follow each other and much more.

Tech stack: Node.js, Sails.js, MySQL, SCSS, Jade

Web App

Carvanro

An online platform where passengers and drivers going the same direction can meet and arrange travel plans. The platform has a number of features like driver profile verification, messaging, user ratings, handy rides search.

Tech stack: Python, Flask, Postgres, SQLAlchemy, API Blueprint, Elasticsearch, React.js

Web App

KyKy.org - online magazine and news portal

A popular news portal for Belarusian youth, business people, and hipsters. It has a cool and simple interface, powerful search, and a modern CMS system.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, frontrockets

Web App

Metalyfe

a blockchain-based platform in the gaming industry with its own cryptocurrency allowing to connect various third-party applications into one ecosystem. Our team was responsible for creating its API from scratch and Ethereum blockchain integration. Also, we have built mobile wallet applications on top of React Native with two-factor authentication, ability to transfer tokens and track transaction history.

Tech stack: Ethereum, React Native, MobX, OneSignal, Detox, Objective-C, Java

Web App

Abw.by - local automotive directory

Directory website for automotive products. We redesigned the old application, added new sections to the website. It had a lot of users and we did hard work on performance optimization.

It worked based on complex filter logic and dynamic DB structure. One of our latest optimizations was to switch filters from MongoDB to Elasticsearch queries.

Tech stack: Ruby on Rails, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, Redis, Sidekiq, Memcached, Varnish, Nginx

Web App

Executive Interview of datarockets

Pavel Demeshchik

Owner & CEO

Visit Profile

Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?

datarockets is an experienced team of product developers with offices in Toronto, Canada and Minsk, Belarus.

We know how to build successful web & mobile applications and do our best to share that experience with our clients. I believe we have a very special approach, when building relationships with our customers which results in productive partnerships that last for years.

At datarockets, we use Holacracy to distribute roles between people, so my roles are constantly evolving. In short, I have the pleasure to:

Define the future of the company by researching new business opportunities
Give product strategy advice to our customers
Try to share our knowledge writing articles about startups and product development

What was the idea behind starting this organization?

The idea behind starting datarockets was to create an intellectual hub where engineers come to learn product development skills from one hand, and clients come to create products for their businesses and startups from another hand.

Together with Dmitry Zhlobo (the CTO and co-founder at datarockets), we had been working for leading outsourcing companies in the industry and seen their processes from the inside. We didn’t like many things, such as:

the lack of transparency. Typical outsourcing companies were trying to “build a fence” between their developers and clients with the help of project managers.
indifferent attitude towards the success of their projects. Our managers were more concerned about clients paying their bills rather than our ideas on how to improve things around.
unwillingness to invest in the personal growth of their engineering teams. We were working in a typical corporate culture embracing overtimes and trying to squeeze as much as possible from their employees.

We couldn’t find a place for ourselves, and that’s why we started datarockets. We were lucky to find 20 more like-minded individuals who joined our team and now:

We integrate closely with our clients and work with them as a single team using extremely transparent development process
We communicate a lot and share our ideas on how to make things faster/better.

Our company organizes tech conferences across Europe, and our engineers perform there as speakers.

What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?

Our business model is called “Dedicated Team”. We don’t outsource and prefer to rely on our own resources.

Working as dedicated teams means a close integration into our clients’ businesses and their teams. We bring our communication and development processes, automate routine work, and exchange best practices. This way, we create a productive environment where we grow together with our customers.

How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?

Apart from actual coding, we bring our own ideas to the table. Writing high-quality code is what we do by default, but there are many good engineers out there, and we go the extra mile to stand out. We contribute to our projects by sharing our culture, bringing our processes, and providing our ideas on how to make things faster/better.

Our major strength is transparency and simplicity. datarockets’ clients don’t worry about the technical part of their products anymore - we handle that. We set up clear work and communication processes, so our clients can see what we discuss, how we make decisions, and what issues we experience in real time. We let our customers focus on what really matters to them: overall product strategy, finances, and marketing.

We try to automate as much routine work as possible. Our engineers don’t really enjoy the work that can be done by robots/scripts, and that always turns out to be very beneficial for our customers.

What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?

We don’t stick to a specific industry. Our team consists of people who are fond of complex architectures, like to resolve complex problems and create something really useful. We never stop learning. The best way to use all this knowledge and learn more is to take different kinds of projects.

For the last 6 years, we have been building products for the following industries:

FinTech
Ride Sharing
Entertainment
Social Media
Social Network
Real Estate
Human Resources
SaaS
Marketing
IoT

Almost all of our clients come back to us with new projects and refer their business partners/friends to us.

Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing web and mobile apps.

To provide an accurate estimate, we need to know as much as possible. Usually, before we give an estimate, we try to determine:

Functional business requirements. What kind of features we need to build and how they actually help the users.
Technical business requirements. For example, if we need Internet Explorer browser support, it can add some extra work.
Product strategy. Before taking on a project, we need to believe in the idea behind it as well as its strategy. We need to know why exactly we build a certain feature to share our insights and suggest improvements.
Marketing strategy. Nowadays, marketing matters even more than development, and we need to ensure that our prospective clients are aware of that. We need to know their marketing strategy to suggest our own ideas and share relevant experience.
Budget. Depending on the budget, we can offer alternative technology stack or suggest our vision on the scope of work/priorities.
Legacy Code. If a project is not from scratch, we need to perform an initial code review to assess its current state and provide estimates based on what has been done already.

Our estimation process is collaborative and transparent. Our prospect clients see how much time we plan to spend on each feature/change and free to share their questions/concerns during the process.

How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a web application?

It really depends. In our portfolio, we have some API-only projects that didn’t involve any frontend and at the same time, some frontend-only projects without any backend.

What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right framework for developing software?

Common use cases. Every framework/technology is aimed to resolve a particular class of tasks, and you need to be aware of that. For example, it’s possible to develop a simple website & blog with C++, but with Wordpress, it’s gonna be 1000 times faster.
Technical limitations. Each framework has its own limits and they need to match your technical business requirements. Otherwise, at some point, you will need to switch to another framework, which can be extremely expensive.
Flexibility. At some point, you may need to make a strategic pivot and be sure your current framework can handle that.
Ecosystem. When using a popular framework with a highly developed ecosystem, you almost always can find an open source library that does exactly what you need. For example, the Ruby ecosystem has thousands of open-source libraries that you can plug & play. That significantly cuts down the total cost and timeline.
License. Not every framework is free, and some of them are authorized to be used in certain conditions.
- Community. Your development team should be able to find the necessary information fairly easy. Moreover, there should be a community behind the framework which is able to answer questions, fix bugs, and patch security breaches as they get discovered.

Which languages & frameworks do you prefer to use in development of web and mobile applications?

For the backend we prefer to use:

Ruby / Rails
Javascript / Node.js

For the frontend, it’s usually JavaScript:

React.js
Vue.js.

Talking about mobile apps, we use:

React Native
Kotlin
Swift

There are 2 reasons why we use these technologies:

They fit our needs the best. The technologies listed above give enough flexibility and at the same time, speed up web/mobile app development.
Our team has the most experience with them and enjoy using those languages/frameworks.

What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients? Is it Pay per Feature, Fixed Cost, Pay per Milestone (could be in phases, months, versions etc.)

We bill for our time only. When a project needs to be done in a certain budget and time, we usually apply the FFF approach (Fixed Price, Fixed Time, Flexible Scope). What we actually do in this case:

We break down the scope of work into User Stories and sort them based on their priorities
We work on the User Stories iteratively based on their priority.
We release new functionality as soon as it’s ready, sometimes we make multiple releases per week.

This way, at any time, we have a working version of the product. When we get closer to the deadline, we can just stop and skip some minor features, but deliver the most crucial functionality under the budget.

We don’t like fixing the overall project/milestone cost for the following reasons:

Providing estimates on fixed price projects development teams have to lie. If they provide positive estimates - their companies inevitably lose money. If negative - they kinda lie to their clients.
After a fixed price project is signed, the client has no flexibility as the scope of work is fixed for that price. Requesting even a minor feature turns into the bureaucracy hell when project managers need to re-assess the scope of work, get updated estimates from the team, and re-sign the budget agreement. We strongly believe that it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
There is not enough freedom for teams working on fixed price projects. Engineers don’t have time to suggest their ideas, improve processes and automate routine work. Such atmosphere embraces poor productivity, low-quality code, and reluctant attitude to the project in general.

Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement? If yes, what is the minimum requirement? If no, on what minimum budget you have worked for?

In practice, the minimum budget we can work with is $20k. The reason is that we don’t build simple websites that can be done with CMS like Wordpress, we take on the projects that require custom solutions. Having a budget less than $20k is pretty challenging to kick off something like that, even an MVP.

What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?

$30k - $220k

I have to note here that we always build long-term relationships with our clients. The medium project duration with us is approximately 12 months. Our clients work with us for years; for some of them, we become their exclusive software development partners.

Kindly share your feedback on how GoodFirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.

Since our company created a profile on GoodFirms, datarockets visibility has grown significantly. Goodfirms helped us to meet motivated clients. At the same time, with the help of such platforms, businesses can find the right team for their applications and software development needs.