Has anyone ever outsourced design work using guru or elance?

[rossmc]

The prices of webdesigners in India, Russia etc is verrry tempting but I'm not sure about the quality of the work, especially in terms of SEO optimisation of the site.

Does anyone have any experience of outsourcing work abroad?

[stephendoyle]

yes i have and have had people working in the philipines, brazil, russia, romania etc..

as long as you check them out and their language skills are good then you will not have a problem.

[rossmc]

What kind of work have you got them to do? If it was web design did you get them to work in conjunction with a UK graphic desginer to get the look right? What kind of saving do you estimate you made?

[ecommerce84]

I also have.

A guy in Brazil, someone in India and someone in a non specified country, though I think it was somewhere in Eastern Europe (didn't feel compelled to ask).

I had the whole database backend of my website created by the brazilian and it was very cheap and very well done (and quickly). A few modifications were done by the others and I also had a logo done on Sitepoint by a foreigner.

Just check them out before and and maybe grant limited access to ftp etc if needed.

[Entire Marketing]

Not tried seo work (for obvious reasons!) but for complicated artwork re draws when the client has little or no budget we have an american run firm based in India and they are very good. If I send artwork at tea time it comes back first thing the next day.

Mark
nb: The obvious reasons are that we have web and graphic designers employed within the business!!!!
www.entiremarketing.co.uk

[Djfreema]

I had some link building done from a company in india who I found through elance. on the whole they were fine. i am now thinking of using elance or getafreelancer.com to have some web design changes done, however I am worried about letting them have access to files of my web site.

Any advice on how to make sure if i do outsource that there will be no problems in regards to them accessing the FTP files.

Thanks,

Darrell

[ken_uk]

Dont allow full access unless you have to, if need be get them to develop it on a second server and have someone transfer it all to your main one when its completed.

If they do have access to main server, delete their logins after completion, and change any passwords if they used one you cant delete.

I personally would recommend having the whole of the code professionally checked, to ensure they have not put in any back-doors, also to ensure its
secure.

There could be a reason the code is cheap, and it may not be down to low wages in that country, it could be lack of experience - its not that hard for people to set up shop as a developer these days, especially if they use existing code from elsewhere - but only a lot of experience and good skills will ensure you are safe in the long run, not just from a security/safety standpoint, but performance issues, scaleability and maintance issues, not to mention support..

Also, if you are paying for someone to update or add to a existing site, dont allow them access to your data!
If you let them loose on your real data, they would have full access to all your customer records, financial info, address details, credit cards etc - maybe even suppliers details etc. Always supply them with a demo set of data in a secondary identical copy (structure wise) of your main database, never the real data.....

[ecommerce84]

I'll second what Ken says.

I have a 'test server' that has all the same versions of PHP and mySql as my main server. I get it built on their and test it and transfer it over to my own server myself. I have allowed them access to the server to make a change, but access was restricted and I don't store any customer details on the server anyway. I do backup my product database before hand though just in case they decide to pull a fast one for some reason. That way I can get everything back in place.

[GNU]

I use them with no problems, but would not contract out SEO or anything to do with security!

[rossmc]

What about getting a good UK graphic designer to do the front-end and getting an outsourced developer to do the back-end? Reckon that would be easy enough?

[matt9b]

I used elance to get a web developer.

The first guy was from romania, he predicted 3 days to complete the job, took over a month, and then quit without completing the work, he said he had spent the money and couldn't refund me 100%.

Then I decided to go with a company instead, so I did my research and went with one called alpswebworld. They predicted a week to complete the job. They took over 2 months, and then told me they couldn't complete the job to the project's requirements/scope. Instead they offered to complete it to a lesser set of requirements. Needless to say, the new scope they suggested defeated the point, and wasn't acceptable. They offered a full refund, but it is 3 months on now and I still have not seen my refund.

The elance process to get your money back is lengthy and I just don't have time.

I think though on balance by reading other people's experience, perhaps my experience with elance is disproportionately unlucky. It is all down to who does the job, but I wouldn't say that checking a company out will guarantee success.

The biggest hurdle seems to be to get them to understand the scope, and to honestly answer whether they can complete it or not. Many companies will just say "yes" and then realise that they can't later. Even in the UK, people skim-read your scope and then when it comes to completing the project, they say "oh... I didn't notice that was in the scope - sorry.". I am very wary of everyone now, but there seems to be very little I can do to protect myself.