Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
Rocketech is an analytics-driven technology partner for companies that are launching new software products or entering the market. Our team provided strategic vision and technical skills for more than 100 released products for 70 companies worldwide. Our work was recognized as New Apps We Love in the App Store, appraised by Grammy awards and recognized the fastest-growing startups by GMIC, and received positive reviews from GQ, HuffPost, Forbes, Mashable, etc.
Our team provides valuable insights into software development processes, encouraging clients to incorporate our experience into their inner processes. As a CEO, I am responsible for communicating with clients and partners and nurturing long-term relationships. I talk to each client personally and get direct feedback - this personalized approach gives our clients more clarity on cooperation and helps our team to grow all the time.
What is your company’s business model–in house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
We offer outsourcing development services, helping our clients to reduce development costs by cutting off the expenses associated with maintaining an in-house team (renting an office space, social packages, onboarding costs).
However, as a company, we work as a single in-house unit, typically without collaborating with third-party vendors. There are exceptions, however - sometimes we cooperate with trusted marketing providers to assist our clients with promotion and content management. Overall, we need to take full responsibility for the project to ensure the project results fully.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
We focus on delivering tangible business value - the metrics for the success of our development projects are actual revenue, cost reduction, and increasing businesses’ growth rates. For us, a great product isn’t defined by perfect code - although it’s always implied - but rather a product with a successful business model that drives profit to the company.
We won’t join a product just “for the sake of it”. We must see that a business model is viable, and the project has real chances of succeeding in the market. If we are not sure that a product can deliver such results, we communicate these concerns right away.
What industries do you generally cater to? Are your customers repetitive?
Social networks, services, factories, construction & real estate, FMCG, FinTech, and FoodTech. Mainly these are startups, but also SMEs and corporations that introduce new products to the market.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a web app.
The main criteria are the client’s final objectives - what will a product bring to the owner and company? Then, we define an MVP, research user personas, and do detailed story mapping. In a typical project, an MVP development takes about a month. If a client has an urgent task, we rely on senior developers or increase the team’s size - although, it’s not a universal solution. If the project can’t possibly be completed in the short term, we directly tell this to a client.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the frontend and back end of a web app?
It depends on what kind of system needs to be developed. Usually, we work on complex custom systems with rich functionality, which is why backend and business logic are a priority. However, in some projects, a product requires a complicated interface or animation - these are trickier to implement than regular frontend solutions (so the proportion would be 50:50). Typically, though, 60-70% of the time goes to develop backend with 30-40% for frontend solutions.
But again, it’s a generalized estimate. The actual ratios heavily depend on the number of screens, implemented algorithms, and the nature of the project.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a web application?
Again, it depends on the project. I can say for sure, though, that we won’t ever write a custom admin panel for corporate sites that serve only as an additional communication channel. We start our choice from user characteristics and project ROIs to offer the most optimal tech stack, as well as offering alternatives.
Generally speaking, the main parameters are the platform’s safety, comfort, scalability, and optimizations for high traffic loads.
Which platform and technologies do you prefer to use in the development of your web apps?
We choose technologies that are easy to maintain and scale in the long run. We want to make sure that our clients can easily support a product on their own. For big projects, we choose Angular, for medium and small ones - React.js. If we work in Node.js, our top choice is Nest.js - it’s a great framework that solves many Node’s problems and works well for enterprise-level solutions. For smaller-scale projects with no multi-threads, we use PHP7 and Symphony.
Do you offer website design templates or customized website design, and do you have a responsive website design?
If there is a specific request from a client, we can use a design template - especially if we see that it’s the best solution cost-wise. Usually, however, we prefer to make custom designs because it allows us to have more control over the end interface. End users are demanding, and we can’t be restricted by template limitations. All of our websites are responsive because this forms the user’s trust in the product.
Which Content Management System do you prefer to use (Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.)?
Wordpress, but we always make sure to implement additional security, Spotify for e-commerce, or custom development.
Do you provide website maintenance services?
Yes, we continuously detect and solve issues, analyze user behavior, and release new versions of the product. Also, our team signs a service-level agreement where we define our responsibilities for website maintenance, mean time between features (MTBF), data storage, and processing details. Overall, we make sure that the maintenance is just as well defined as the pre-release stages are.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a web application?
We define the project scope first, clear out deliverables, and analyze the efforts that are required to deploy the end solution. After we are done with the evaluation, we proceed to determine the defined tech stack and base the cost on that.
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 use Time and Materials because it’s an agile cooperation model that allows clients and our team to introduce continuous improvements to the project. As an Agile development team, we think it’s important to have the freedom to adapt the workflow to changing project requirements. However, we do provide clients with estimates for each project stage, as well as a detailed risk evaluation. We also share our experiences from our similar completed projects - so, at the end of the day, a client still has a clear idea of the realistic cost.
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?
The minimal cost of a project is $1000, typically for discovery stages. Usually, the project doesn’t finish here - clients want to prolong the cooperation.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2019?
Kindly share your feedback on how Goodfirms has been doing so far in increasing your visibility among potential clients.
We often see our potential clients mentioning Goodfirms as the source of information about our company. We have attracted quite a lot of partnerships from the website. Generally, being represented as a part of a top international development community increases clients’ trust - so we’d like to thank Goodfirms for their work. We are looking forward to being a part of this rewarding community.
