Web development from india and other countries

[learnster]

Hi, Has anyone had experience getting fairly complex web development done from developers found through freelancer and upwork etc? In particular development companies from India that are active on freelancer etc?

I've been quoted in the region of £3000-£5000 (2 month estimate) for a large and fairly complicated project from a number of development companies. They sound like they know what they are talking about and are knowledgeable about the different development frameworks.

They seem to be set up with teams of project managers and developers.

Just wondering if anyone has used any of these companies. They seem to be around a quarter or less of the cost of a UK developer.

 

[fisicx]

They are ok at sausage factory development but as soon as you ask for bespoke code it all unwravels.

Their culture is to always say yes even when they know they can't deliver. So the chances are you will end up with a half finished project that they are unable to complete.

 

[JoaoPereira]

Hi Learnster,

I've been building software for more than 15 years. Both coding and managing projects. Worked for companies like Sky, Telegraph, Nokia, Siemens and many others building really, really complex software. I have experience working with indian developers, both in the same team and managing offshore development. I cannot assess if the proposal is right or not, I don't know your requirements. What is complex to you may be built using open source components (very likely and recommended) and not that complex... I don't know and you'll never know either.

Software development is a fair complex endeavour, sadly many people think otherwise and get burned...good for them... Is not only the coding part, but the hard part is communicating...And if the software is complex and needs to scale, that amount seems ridiculous low....

The only recommendation I can give to you is that, find a trustable and senior developer here in UK and work with him on your project, he'll give you some guidance. Maybe he can be your "CTO" here in UK and managed the offshore work in india, but for that case, expect that amount just to have someone experienced managing and overseeing the offshore working. If someone tell you otherwise, the project is not that complex or... run away.

Good luck

 

[antropy]

large and fairly complicated project from a number of development companies

If they've been able to give you quotes and there's any chance of success, you'll have a detailed proposal document.

Perhaps paste some of it here so the developers here can get an idea of the size and complexity of the project?

 

[susanhiggscreative]

All I would say about freelancer and upwork etc is you get what you pay for...

Are you getting it a lot cheaper... sure
You will find once the job is paid that's you done with them, anything goes wrong they won't be on hand to help.

In the long run it could end up costing you much more and a lot of the work I've seen on these sites is just rehashed old projects rather than something tailored specifically for you.

That goes with web design, graphic design, any of it. Get it right from the start and it will profit you in the long run.

 

[Mark_Taylor_]

I would be cautious, my company outsourced a project to India and it didn't go too well at all.

We had issues contacting the developers working on our project due to timezones and the fact they never seemed to be available, we kept getting new devs working on the project so we had no continuity on code or quality.

The end result was nowhere near good enough for my company to release to the client so we had to spend a lot of time and money internally to get it up to the required / agreed standard.

There are of course good dev's the world over but you generally get what you pay for in life.

We've never contemplated doing it again.

 

[Alan]

The facts of life are that a decent IT professional in India earns approx 25% of what a person with the same skills in the UK. Just different cost of living.

In theory this is great, but having the same experiences as @johnpear it is not as simple as that.

Remote development requires a degree of process and quality management by both the onshore and offshore party. The offshore element ( their project managers & QA ) brings the cost up to around 33%.

But then there is the onshore element where rigour needs in terms of project management requirements, acceptance and communication, if you add the onshore element this brings the total cost up to around 50-60% of a full onshore project.

Now that makes total sense when you are dealing with £10million projects ( as I did in my corporate life ) - as bringing in a £4million saving more than paid for my executive decision making.

But I'm afraid the model doesn't translate into a £3k-5k project, simply because you don't have the scale to employ the onshore PM, onshore QA, onshore CTO. If you wanted me to direct / project manage / provide communication over a 2 month project the minimum I would be quoting would be £10k for my time. So if your offshore element is £4k and that is 25% of UK quote = £16k versus £3k+£10k = £13k - potential saving £3k but high risk - in my opinion not worth the risk.

You could of course manage the project yourself if you felt you had the skills and understanding, so then it is down to how you value your time and risk.

 

[Ameen]

Basically hiring from India is a good idea but while hiring we need to consider so many things not only money, managing work from other country is very difficult but as per my knowledge, Indian people provides best services work wise, payment wise and time management.

 

[fisicx]

Indian people provides best services work wise, payment wise and time management.

No they don't. Culturally, Indians have a big problem saying no. This means they will say yes to projects they know they cannot complete.

 

[susanhiggscreative]

Basically hiring from India is a good idea but while hiring we need to consider so many things not only money, managing work from other country is very difficult but as per my knowledge, Indian people provides best services work wise, payment wise and time management.

'Web Development India'....so you would say that. It's a bit of a rude and sweeping statement to say "Indian people provide the best services..."

 

[dev99]

learnster

You need to give a bit more information about what it is you are getting for your money. It may be that someone here might be able to throw some light and point you in the right direction.

I remember when freelancer the site first started they had some very good developers on there, and I have used many in the past but unfortunately most of them are now multi -millionaires with 100's of developers working for them and they are charging anything from $25-$50/hour.

Unless you have an existing relationship with a software house in India you will be wasting your time. In India time has no value and if you have been quoted 2 months then be prepared to wait for 6 months and their estimate will rise with the time. They will always want an advance and once you have put down a large chunk then they have got you by the ****, so to speak.

As fisicx point out they will say yes when they mean no.

Whilst it is true that a developer with 2-3 years experience in India will cost you 25% of what we would pay in the UK for the same experience, you should also note that he/she will need a lot of guidance and direction. I know of many, many good developer that are able to think on their own and are able to command the same rate as UK if not more.

I say the above from experience as well as having an office there.

 

[vindico]

I have used Upwork a lot. Originally hired a software developer to build a bespoke web app for our internal business use and he has been pretty much full time for 6 years since. Also hired developers for specific short term projects.

In my experience it works well and is a very cost effective way to get development resource. However it can be difficult at times - language barriers, time zone differences, lack of control (some days you think 'where are they?' as they are not online). Also, to an extent you do get what you pay for and we have spent a lot of time with developers fixing bugs they have created by not building and testing fully to begin with, which obviously reduces the saving as you are paying for unecessary development time. However, we find this to still be cheaper than a UK developer based in our office.

If you can afford it I would say that a UK office based developer is still preferable. Being able to communicate easily, have quick chats in the office, iterate quickly, know they are around 9-5 and contactable or to fix urgent issues, are all valuable. Also a good UK dev, while costing more, ought to be able to operate more formally to spec, build and test and so avoid bugs and unecessary development time later on.

So one has to weigh the pros and cons. But I think for a small business with limited resources platforms like Upwork are invaluable. For sure my business would not have been able to get to where we are now (10x bigger in 6 years) without the affordable development enabled by using a cheap foreign developer. A UK developer was out of the question and way beyond our budget. Now we are bigger we are looking at in house developers.

 

[Sumita]

Dear All, I have been reading this thread. I am an Indian living in Finland. Past 1 year i am helping Finnish and Indian companies in their business development. I can say it's challenging task to handle everything from remote due to time,cultural and business process gap. Depending on product and their complexity a right process needs to be evaluated if you are planning to hire freelancer from India or outsource to India.

 

[Rickden]

Mostly people want development at cheap price so they prefer indian developer, Ex. That same app is 10x less expensive to develop in India, the study notes. Actually in mentality they understand indian developer as cheap price developer, if they (developers) asking some more price for good quality work, than people starting to blaming as they have set in their mentality or what profit they have thought and not getting like.
>Cheap Price Developer.
>Quality same as compare high cost developers made it.
>Minimum time to develop it.

 

[Alan]

Are you using google translator or something? Your post makes no sense.

 

[Free.stockphoto.com]

Apart from the initial launch of my ecommerce business (which I contracted out to a local Australian web agency), over the last four years I have almost solely relied on outsourcing all my dev work via most of the online services sites mentioned above. I've no personal preference on whom the work is allocated but have found it to be more than satisfactory in terms of quality, timeliness and cost.

My tips:
- Break the job up into small chunks
- Allocate the small chunks appropriately (no use getting a developer to do solution architecture work - get an IT architect to design the solution and beware of the constraints)
- Scope the work properly (i.e. include systems testing, regression testing and post-implementation support)
- Project manage it (or get someone who knows how to PM a software dev project - see 'Scope the work propertly')

Wow - I think there's a blog post in there! I run an ecommerce business selling stock photos. We have over 50 million images for sale. Our clients include Sony, Uber, Harvard and Intel. I work from home or coworking spaces depending on where I am. My two other co-founders have other projects and jobs. I don't have any full-time staff. I rely on a handful of freelancers that I have on my virtual team. I can't code. I can't project manage. I'm a CPA but I can't bear to be held to coming up with and sticking to forecasts and budgets.

TLDR; I rely on good people to do what I need them to do (wherever they're based) but they can only work as well as I manage them. Don't outsource thinking and decision making that you should be doing yourself and they will be great for you too.

 

[quikshop]

I have had mixed results sub-contracting work overseas, but generally I've found Indian IT services more willing to correct mis-understandings or quality issues retrospectively than many UK firms.

Modern SDLC processes mean you should be engaging with the IT service company frequently throughout your product development rather than giving them a brief up front and waiting until they say 'finished'.