Project Background and Scope
I'm also a co-founder of another startup and Shrine does a lot of work for that company. They've done a great job, so I decided to bring them on for this project.
We've spent between $10,000–$15,000. We pay them about $3,000–$4,000 a month for the ongoing maintenance and new feature development.
We started working with them in July 2018 and the relationship is ongoing.
They help me with my web development and frontend design needs. We have a lot of legacy features on our platform, so they've been updating a lot of settings and features. In addition, they're analyzing third-party APIs to see if there are different ways for us to do things. They mostly work with Ruby, MongoDB, and Backbone.js.
Shrine provides consulting and development services, updating legacy settings and designing new features for a web platform. They also analyze third-party APIs and help come up with cost-effective solutions.
Project Outcomes and Feedback
They're helping us find cost-effective and reasonable solutions, without me having to dictate to them what to do. They're like an outsourced CTO for us and help us spend our money wisely.
They work quickly and stay on top of everything. They use Basecamp on their end, and I have everything in Asana, so they've been able to use my existing tools. They're very proactive and always ask me if there are other things I need. I get very busy with other projects, so I appreciate that. I've been working with their junior developer on smaller things and their senior developer always jumps in if there is a big decision we need to make, so it's been a good balance of talent and budget.
They're very thoughtful and look at all the pros and cons, helping us figure out the best plan. Also, they're direct and honest, which is the key to a long-term engagement.
More thorough code review by senior staff would be helpful to ensure consistency of high-quality code. But, overall, the project is going smoothly, and they've exceeded all of my expectations.