REVIEW
I made a purchase back around mid November for a flat-fee project, and finally got my final delivery a day or two ago, so here's my review for what I purchased. I suppose I'll start off with the negative, since a good portion of my experience was relatively negative, but I will also mention the positives and upsides later on as well.
For my specific project, I asked for a college registration application (scrape my available classes, then immediately register me in when it opens). I wanted to be in either a web or desktop application, but since they told me it couldn't be done, I settled for a browser application. The given TAT was November 27th, but it was extremely overdue, seeing as I didn't receive the final application until yesterday, January 15th. I allowed a reasonable deadline extension since the site I needed it done for has a lot of downtime, but I think two months over the given TAT is ridiculous. Especially more so since they did an "in-depth analysis" of what I required, they should've known about the working hours of the site. It also took many reworks since they left out a few of the features I asked for, and a couple parts of the application was buggy. I'm also not sure if this was due to a language barrier of some sort, but it took me a VERY long time and required multiple explanations as towards what I wanted. The actual sum I paid was higher than what I was quoted for by others, but I decided to just go with them by sheer reputation.
However, aside from paying a higher price for something that took very, very long to finish, the only thing that didn't make me want to just quit and demand a refund altogether was due to their EXCELLENT support. Due to our time zone difference it was difficult to communicate since we were off by 12 hours, but whenever they had office hours and I managed to catch them, they usually had an immediate response. On top of that, they offered Teamviewer sessions to make sure my application was running properly since I had so many issues with it. The support they offered to make sure I'm satisfied is without a doubt, the sole redeeming quality of their service.
My biggest issue though, is that the application was delivered so ridiculously late, I no longer had a use for it, since I ended up having to do it manually over the last two months anyway. Essentially, I actually ended up paying for an application that I no longer had a use for.
TL;DR :
Pros
- Incredible support
Cons
- Extremely long TAT
- Huge language barrier
- Many, many reworks and bug testings
All in all, I would not recommend hiring them on a hourly/monthly basis, but on a flat-fee pricing. It's a waste of money to pay monthly, but on a flat-fee they will definitely do their best to satisfy whatever you need, especially if it's going to take quite some time.
Would I use this specific service ever again? Probably not. It was an incredibly frustrating experience. I've been very interested in their forum/Q&A service for quite some time now, but I'm leaning towards not going with them anymore. Even though they offer excellent support, this does not make up for the lack of results.
I suppose all in all, I would give this service a 4 out of 10. Maybe a 5 out of 10 at most. Mediocre at best honestly.