RocketBuild

Code you can trust.

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RocketBuild partners with innovators, entrepreneurs, and creatives to develop stellar web apps, mobile apps, websites, and system integrations of all types. Our team specializes in programming the cleanest code, providing timely technological insights, and developing amazing applications. Frankly, we just love the opportunity to build great things!

$150 - $199/hr
10 - 49
2014
Locations
United States
1054 Virginia Ave, Suite 220, Indianapolis, Indiana 46203
+1-317-759-0768

Focus Areas

Service Focus

35%
35%
30%
  • Mobile App Development
  • Software Development
  • Web Development

Client Focus

80%
10%
10%
  • Medium Business
  • Large Business
  • Small Business

Industry Focus

10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
10%
  • Business Services
  • Education
  • Government

RocketBuild Executive Interview

Jason C Ward
Jason C Ward
President
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Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
RocketBuild is an on-shore team of application developers that partners with entrepreneurs, corporate innovators, creative-types, and marketers. We build custom mobile applications, web-based software, websites, and complex integrations.

In my role, I help our client contacts and companies succeed by ensuring that our company delivers reliable, extensible code on every application or website that we build. Working alongside our clients, I help strategize and architect the best innovative solution. Also, I lend my expertise in building Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) for technology product startups.
What was the idea behind starting this organization?
RocketBuild was founded in 2014 as a top-notch, on-shore, outsourced development partner. Our core drive was to create a company that could help CTOs, CIOs, and CMOs at medium-sized companies with their technology needs. Also, we augment the great creative work of marketing and advertising agencies with tried and true agile development principles. Our founders brought with them years of development experience from creative agencies as well as methods and expertise learned at Fortune 500 companies.
What are your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
RocketBuild is a fully in-house, on-shore (US) application and web development company. We do not outsource any development work, but we do occasionally bring in a design agency to partner for user experience design, as needed.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
There are a number of benefits to our model. First, having our developers on-site, they are very involved in our process from sales through delivery. They offer insights during the sales process that help solve problems even before production begins. Second, because our code is all written in-house, our developers follow a very strict process of checking code into a repository, having it reviewed by another developer, then once the code is approved, it is merged into the main codebase. Lastly, our developers work collaboratively to brainstorm solutions, architect systems, and polish their code, often co-programming in-person.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive? If yes, what ratio of clients has been repetitive to you?
RocketBuild was created initially to cater to creative agencies in order to provide scalable, secure custom website, and application development. We have since branched out considerably and now find a plurality of our work with tech-enabled startups. Our clients run the gamut from higher education to logistics, design agencies to manufacturing. What they tend to have in common is that they are seeking to build technology that will be the core of a new business or business line.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app.
Normally, a mobile app MVP will take about 4 - 6 weeks for design and 10 - 16 weeks for development. This gets extended as new features are added beyond the MVP. We find that our ability to develop a mobile application is highly dependent on how quickly our clients can make decisions about features and design elements, and how likely they are to change those decisions down the road. In general, the process of developing new technology generates a lot of questions that our clients are not prepared to answer, so we can find ourselves in a position to help the client innovate, problem-solve, and iterate even outside of development. This sometimes leads to development taking a little bit longer than would normally be the case, but it leads to better outcomes for the business entity.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile app?
With mobile applications, there isn’t always a distinct difference between the front-end and back-end components, particularly since we tend to work in React Native or other cross-platform development frameworks. That said, if we are building in secure integrations or heavy data handling components, we often build a React Native mobile app, and power it with a Django/Python back-end on top of a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. The time spent is about 75% on the user interface (UI) and about 25% on the database and back-end. Again, thinking in terms of an MVP or version 1.0, one can expect to allot about 40 - 80 hours of discovery and design time and 300 - 600 hours of development time for the overall application.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
First and foremost, one needs to decide which mobile operating systems will be supported. Most often this includes iOS and Android, but in a few rare cases, it will only be one or the other. Even rarer, someone needs a Windows mobile application, but that has not happened in some time. Assuming that users will be on both Apple and Google, we always recommend using React Native because it is very well supported, easy to work with, and has a lot of flexibility for iOS and Android phones and tablets. Building with React Native saves customers money because our developers can build for both operating systems at the same time, and in the long run support will only be needed in a single codebase.
Which platform do you suggest your clients to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
RocketBuild is a firm believer in React Native for mobile app development. It was created by the development team at Facebook, and it is very well supported through that team. Because it is open-source, it also receives a lot of support and augmentation from people outside of Facebook. Primarily, however, we recommend React Native because it does the best job of all of the cross-platform frameworks of generating good native code for both iOS and Android. Even if a client only needs an app for either iOS or Android, we still recommend using React Native because it will allow for building to the other OS more easily down the road, and it doesn’t take any more work to code in React Native than it does for native iOS or Android.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application?
When determining the cost of a mobile application, we have to take into consideration the feature-set, obviously. Specifically, the most important determining factors that can add to the cost are:
i. If it can be used without a data connection (off-line mode)
ii. How many different types of user accounts and access could be offered
iii. If there are integrations with existing systems and APIs
iv. How many different screen layouts are there
v. Which native device features are accessed: camera, geolocation, finger-print verification, voice access, etc.
vi. If it needs to be used on tablets and phones
vii. if there is a payment option included
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.)
In most cases, we structure our contracts as “fixed-bid” with a price range. For example, if we scope a project for a client, and our estimate comes back at $60,000, we will likely tell the client to allow for a “not-to-exceed” budget of $70,000 in case they want to add features or change scope along the way. This saves us all time by eliminating the need for change in orders in the future.
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?
We find that building a version 1.0 of a mobile application will usually fall between $40,000 and $80,000, with some exceptions of course. We do not have a project minimum, but the nature of working in mobile means that we are unlikely to quote anything less than $30,000.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2018?
All of our mobile application projects in 2018 and 2019 have fallen between $35,000 and $90,000, with the exception of one enormous project that had multiple phases and cost about $250,000 over the course of 18 months.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
There is no single revenue model that works for all apps and audiences. For a B2B mobile app product, it might make sense to have a monthly recurring cost to use the platform or cost per transaction, as are standard with SaaS models. If you are building a B2C mobile app, revenue models can vary dramatically based on the service you are providing, the type of audience you serve, and your revenue goals. We usually recommend against invasive advertising to generate revenue because they are bad for the user experience.
Kindly share your feedback on how GoodFirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
GoodFirms has been a great resource for aggregating services like ours and giving us a good ranking in search engine results.

RocketBuild Clients & Portfolios

Mirror Care telehealth web application
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Mirror Care telehealth web application
  • Mirror Care telehealth web application screenshot 1
$100001 to $500000
12 weeks
Healthcare & Medical

Mirror Care is a first-ever telehealth video app that enables patients to self-administer neurotox at home under the care and guidance of a healthcare professional. Every session performed on Mirror Care is with an expert, licensed provider that will tailor the treatment to a patient’s needs. The application was custom designed and developed to make the in-home treatment process easy, fast, safe, and personalized. The user interface centers on a real-time, doctor to patient video feed, with all of the important treatment information on the same screen. Importantly, the Mirror Care application is also HIPAA compliant, which means that doctors and patients can feel safe while using it. RocketBuild built the Mirror Care web application with Python/Django and a PostreSQL database, all hosted at a HIPAA compliant AWS server. The result is a stable, secure, and infinitely scalable piece of software.

Jasper Group furniture manufacturing company websites
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Jasper Group furniture manufacturing company websites
  • Jasper Group furniture manufacturing company websites screenshot 1
$100001 to $500000
50 weeks
Manufacturing

Jasper Group is a world-class furniture manufacturing company that produces seating and casegoods products for corporate, institutional, and hospitality clients across the globe. Their voluminous collections of furniture represent a perfection of craft with obsessive attention to detail which has amounted to a time-tested, outstanding reputation in the furniture industry. Their previous websites weren’t portraying their standards of excellence in craft or service, and they were in desperate need of an updated website to showcase their extensive furniture catalog with new modern, intuitive, and flexible technology. After conducting thorough research and assembling insights from analytics, interviews, and competitive analysis, we delivered a custom technology solution suited to their operation that provides a better sales experience and a more user-friendly marketing platform.

Paramount Schools' ActivEval web app
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Paramount Schools' ActivEval web app
  • Paramount Schools' ActivEval web app screenshot 1
$50001 to $100000
16 weeks
Education

Paramount Schools of Excellence has several campuses located in Indianapolis that educate K-8 students in an innovative environment that instills high expectations for success. Established in 2010, the schools are committed to empowering all students to persevere and achieve academic success in a culture of excitement, inclusion, and community collaboration. To help further their mission, Paramount decided to build custom software to digitize their staff evaluation processes.

RocketBuild has a history of developing applications for nonprofits and educational institutions — aligning software needs with mission-critical organization goals. The new technology for Paramount saves their team lots of time and money over the long run. It helps manage their processes more efficiently and effectively, so they can spend even more time making a positive impact on students’ lives.

Beyond the ability to create custom assessments and evaluations for all staff, the software helps with year-over-year record keeping and custom reporting. The new technology supports all of their current needs and is built to be able to serve other educational institutions and industries down the road as a flexible and scalable SaaS product.

Teamsters Local Union 357 internal communication mobile app for flight deck crews
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Teamsters Local Union 357 internal communication mobile app for flight deck crews
  • Teamsters Local Union 357 internal communication mobile app for flight deck crews screenshot 1
$100001 to $500000
20 weeks
Business Services

Teamsters Local Union 357 provides representation, assistance, and security for flight deck crew members employed by Republic Airline. Headquartered in Plainfield, Indiana, they support over 2,000 pilots based in cities across the country. With a mission to protect and enhance the careers of their members, they decided to partner with RocketBuild to design and develop a mobile application to improve workplace communication. Local 357 had a need to communicate frequently with crew members about job critical information. In the past, their internal communication strategy revolved around a blog with low-readership. That communication plan was draining time and energy without having much impact. The decision to move towards mobile app technology for internal communications was made to more effectively reach pilots that are constantly on the go.

Kinetrex Energy mobile app for utilities management
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Kinetrex Energy mobile app for utilities management
  • Kinetrex Energy mobile app for utilities management screenshot 1
  • Kinetrex Energy mobile app for utilities management screenshot 2
$50001 to $100000
16 weeks
Oil & Energy

Kinetrex Energy, the #1 supplier of liquefied natural gas in the US Midwest, knew that documentation and reporting are critical to their own business and that of their customers. In order to provide key insights faster and with greater accuracy, they decided to build a mobile app that puts real time information into the palm of their customers’ hands. With a mission to revolutionize the delivery of energy, they needed technology to match their bold ambitions, and selected RocketBuild to design and engineer their first customer-facing mobile application. After completing the design system and architecture of the app, RocketBuild developed a cross platform native mobile app for utility mangers to download via the App Store and Google Play. The dashboards show an unprecedented level of information that is typically unseen in the energy sector and allows plant operators to make timely and critical business decisions where and when it matters most — in the field.

Earlham College higher education web development
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Earlham College higher education web development
  • Earlham College higher education web development screenshot 1
$50001 to $100000
20 weeks
Education

Earlham is a national liberal arts college with a reputation for excellent teaching and preparing students to make a profound positive difference in the world. Since 1874 they’ve been providing education of the highest quality while building a reputation for open, cooperative learning. In order to continue to deliver on this promise, Earlham needed to develop a website that supports their community of users and over-arching organizational goals. RocketBuild worked closely with the Earlham team and marketing partner, Pathfinders, to engineer a modern frontend experience that utilizes content in the most impactful way and tells a great story. To engineer a scaleable, secure, and extensible site, WordPress was selected as the CMS to make updating website content easy for administrators.

Aunt Millie's bread and bakery products database
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Aunt Millie's bread and bakery products database
  • Aunt Millie's bread and bakery products database screenshot 1
$10001 to $50000
24 weeks
Food & Beverages

Aunt Millie's is a family-owned-and-operated bread company headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana that operates bakeries across the Midwest and distributes their products for sale in stores nationwide. RocketBuild developed an application to easily search, sort, and filter their food products database. We engineered and optimized a secure database that displays all pertinent product information. Products are easily searchable by brand, type, variety, nutritional data, and availability.

Tymphany catalog management software for audio systems
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Tymphany catalog management software for audio systems
  • Tymphany catalog management software for audio systems screenshot 1
$100001 to $500000
24 weeks
Manufacturing

Tymphany HK Limited is one of the world’s premiere manufacturers of audio output devices including headphones, acoustic modules, and drivers. Tymphany has a database of thousands of manufactured parts, each with hundreds of data points related to performance and physical specifications. They needed an application to help manage all of their product data.

Franklin College higher education website for better marketing results
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Franklin College higher education website for better marketing results
  • Franklin College higher education website for better marketing results screenshot 1
  • Franklin College higher education website for better marketing results screenshot 2
$50001 to $100000
8 weeks
Education

Franklin College selected RocketBuild as their development partner to help launch their new website design. The site was developed using WordPress for reliability and customization options. The resulting site developed by RocketBuild has extensive content depth, containing literally hundreds of pages, but at the same time, the navigation manages to be simple and not overwhelming.

Birge & Held real estate company website
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Birge & Held real estate company website
  • Birge & Held real estate company website screenshot 1
$10001 to $50000
12 weeks
Real Estate

Birge and Held, a comprehensive real estate company, was looking to overhaul their website to better align with their modern, progressive approach to real estate. One of Birge and Held’s core values in real estate is to deliver results, not only to their investment partners, but the communities they serve while renovating and building infrastructure. RocketBuild was selected and tasked with the creation of content that would speak to Birge and Held’s users, site design that would impress and capture attention, and of course development of a stable, fast and secure website. The new Birge and Held real estate company website aligns their online presence with the work they have been providing for communities for years. A sleek, modern, and progressive approach to talking with customers and communities about how investing in real estate and infrastructure can benefit properties of all sizes and income levels. The new site allows users to see the results of Birge and Held’s work, and behold the awesome transformation properties undergo once they are adopted in the Birge and Held system.

Auto Sales & Service car sales application
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Auto Sales & Service car sales application
  • Auto Sales & Service car sales application screenshot 1
$10001 to $50000
10 weeks
Automotive

Auto Sales and Service, a pre-owned car dealer, wished for a more streamlined process for their customers to acquire wholesale inventory. They knew there had to be a better way to operate that would save time and facilitate the buying process through the innovative use of technology. They wanted to evolve while maintaining their dedication to quality customer service. The solution was to provide the easiest way to acquire wholesale inventory through a new car sales application. To stay ahead of the competition and improve sales processes, Auto Sales and Service engaged RocketBuild to architect, design, and code their car sales application, Auto Sales Direct. All of their inventory is now on the web with a simple interface for searching, sorting, and filtering hundreds of vehicle listings. Vehicles can be saved for quick reference and buyers can track their purchase history. The progressive web app makes it easy for potential buyers to use the app in the office or on the go.

RocketBuild Reviews

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Michael Hawryluk

Mirror Care MVP Build-out

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  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
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Project Detail

$50001 to $200000

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Review Summary

We had and continue to have a great experience with Rocketbuild. They are a true partner firm, helping us build out our platform and then anticipate our needs as we launched. Great developers and a great team to work with!

What service was provided as part of the project?

Software Development

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

Their developers do a great job of anticipating our needs and building features that solve the problems we don't know we have yet.

Tina Turro, PHR, SHRM-CP

Excellent resource for mobile app needs

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  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

Project Detail

$10001 to $50000

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We partnered with RocketBuild to develop our Kinetrex Energy customer mobile app. From the conception phase, to UI design, to full development and deployment; RocketBuild was an excellent partner and resource for us to work with. We highly recommend their team.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Software Development

Kristin Scharnowske Coyne

Excellent Experience Building New Corporate Website with RocketBuild

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RocketBuild recently helped my firm build a new, more user and mobile friendly website. They were responsive, friendly, professional and easy to work with. Connor, our main contact, was one of the best vendor partners I've worked with. Always quick to respond and very helpful. You can tell they really care about their clients and the projects. Highly recommend!

What service was provided as part of the project?

Web Development

Catherine Gillespie

Great coordination

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Working with RocketBuild as a subcontractor, I have been impressed with the company's ability to coordinate complex projects and deliver functionality tailored to client needs. RocketBuild's expertise in development serves clients with a wide range of digital products, so internal- and external-facing projects complement one another.

What service was provided as part of the project?

Web Development, Software Development, Web Designing (UI/UX)

Morgan Rolens

AMAZING Company

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  • Schedule & Timing
  • Communication
  • Overall Rating

Project Detail

$0 to $10000

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We had RocketBuild rework our website for a variety of reasons. Connor was our main point of contact. He was so helpful in laying out the plans, designs, and launching the site. They created a brand new updated look and feel that helped optimize our SEO and was aesthetically beautiful. Since we launched, we have gotten so many compliments on the design. Working with RocketBuild was great and they made the whole process so easy. Highly recommend!

What service was provided as part of the project?

Web Designing (UI/UX)

Resources

Building an MVP Application
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Building an MVP App
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