Design Master

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Details

Founded:
2000
Hourly Rates:
$100 - $149 / hr
Employees:
10 - 49
Avg. Project Cost:
$25,000+
Ratings:
4.4 8 Reviews

Services

  • Mobile App Development
  • Web Development
  • Web Design
  • Content Management System

Industries Served

Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology Government & Public Sector Travel & Hospitality Education Nonprofit & NGO Healthcare Financial Services Telecommunications

Where We Specialize

15% Bot Development
Bot Development 15%
Software Development 14%
IT Services 13%
Web Development 12%
Blockchain Development 11%
AI Development 9%
Mobile App Development 7%
Tokenization Platform 6%
IT Support & Maintenance 6%
Game Development 3%
Virtual Reality 3%
Ruby on Rails 1%

Industry Expertise

Real Estate76% Manufacturing16% Entertainment8%

Typical Project Size

46% Small Business
45% Midmarket Business
9% Enterprise

About

Design Master is a technology company founded in 2000. The company's main offerings are Mobile App Development and Digital Marketing. Its team includes 10 - 49 specialists working across design, development, and delivery. Typical hourly rates run around $100 - $149 / hr/hr, with an average project cost near $45,000. Design Master operates out of Salmiya, Kuwait. Overall, Design Master is one of the options worth shortlisting for a technology project.

Design Master Reviews

4.4 8 Reviews
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Positive ROAS by the end of the very first full campaign cycle

Bartosz Nowicki / Head of Development | Jun 06, 2026

This was our fourth agency in three years, and I say that with some embarrassment. Every previous engagement had looked promising on paper and fallen apart somewhere in delivery. What was different here was the sequencing: they spent real time understanding the actual problem before proposing anything, rather than pattern-matching to a solution they already knew how to sell. The build ran to schedule, our own engineers had genuinely positive things to say during handover, and four months into live operation we haven't had a single critical incident. We're already talking about the next phase with them.

Project summary

New traceability legislation brought a hard serialization deadline. Our supply chain system needed targeted, specialist development to meet it — general-purpose expertise wasn't going to cut it.

  • Overall Rating 4.0
  • Quality 4.0
  • Schedule 4.0
  • Project Cost 3.5
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
Digital Marketing
Project Cost:
$10,000 to $49,999
Project Duration:
Oct 2025 - May 2026
Business Type:
Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology
Location:
Kraków, Poland

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I run technology for Wełna Software Sp zoo, a growth-stage Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology company based in Kraków, Poland. My role as Head of Development covers product engineering, platform operations, and our vendor relationships. We'd hit a point where our internal capacity just couldn't keep pace with what the roadmap demanded.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our Digital Marketing capability had become the thing slowing everything else down. New feature requests, client asks, internal initiatives — all of it kept queuing up behind a platform that had been stretched way past what it was originally built for. We needed a proper rebuild, not another patch.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope ran the full Digital Marketing lifecycle — discovery, requirements, architecture, development across roughly a dozen sprints, integration testing, performance validation, deployment, and a four-week hypercare window afterward. They also handed over full documentation and ran a knowledge transfer session for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The questions they asked during the briefing stage told us most of what we needed to know. Vendors who ask sharp questions during sales tend to bring that same rigor into delivery, and that held up. The technical proposal had real substance, the team was senior from the start, and the pricing was straightforward.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Very well. The discovery phase was more thorough than anything we'd been through with prior vendors. They pushed back on requirements that were vague or contradictory, suggested better alternatives where our own thinking was limited, and produced a spec our internal stakeholders agreed was the clearest version of the product they'd ever seen written down.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Proactive and well-calibrated. Technical detail for the engineering side, plain summaries for the steering group, and risk flags that came with a proposed fix attached rather than just a problem statement. The biweekly sprint reviews kept our stakeholders in the loop without requiring them to sit in on every working session.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and inside the approved budget. Their estimating was notably accurate — they'd broken the work down in enough detail during discovery that the forecast held up the whole way through, instead of drifting with every small change. We had exactly one change request, and it was for scope we added ourselves.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The clearest measure is how the system's actually performing in production. In the four months since go-live we've had zero major incidents, our page performance scores improved across every Core Web Vitals metric, and two enterprise clients who'd previously flagged our old platform's limits during renewal talks signed again without raising it.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their instinct for never losing the business goal in the middle of technical decisions. I've worked with technically strong teams before who lose that thread once things get complicated. This team kept every architectural call tied back to the outcome we'd actually agreed to, which made the harder trade-off conversations a lot easier.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Without reservation. We're already in early conversations about a second engagement, and I expect this to turn into a multi-year relationship. Anyone in Pharmaceuticals & Biotechnology looking for real Digital Marketing depth paired with actual delivery discipline should have this team near the top of their list.

Post-release incidents dropped by half within three months of this program starting

Femke Visser / Head of Platform Engineering | May 18, 2026

We had proposals in hand ranging from roughly half to well over double what we eventually paid this team. What set their proposal apart wasn't the price — it was that the number matched what they actually delivered, almost line for line. I've been burned before by proposals that were really just opening offers in a negotiation that continues throughout the project. That wasn't the case here, and I don't say that lightly.

Project summary

Cross-agency data sharing had been stuck for years because of incompatible systems. A secure integration layer was the prerequisite for nearly everything else on our roadmap.

  • Overall Rating 4.5
  • Quality 4.5
  • Schedule 4.5
  • Project Cost 4.0
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
Quality Assurance & Testing
Project Cost:
$10,000 to $49,999
Project Duration:
Nov 2025 - Apr 2026
Business Type:
Government & Public Sector
Location:
The Hague, Netherlands

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As Head of Platform Engineering at Polder Digital BV I oversee technology spend and delivery across our Government & Public Sector operations out of The Hague, Netherlands. We're a commercially minded business, so every technology decision gets judged on what it actually contributes to the bottom line, not on how elegant it looks on paper.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our previous vendor had maintained this platform for a few years, and the technical debt had piled up to the point where our delivery speed had dropped to a fraction of what it used to be. We needed fresh engineering eyes and an actual plan to deal with the underlying mess.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core of it was Quality Assurance & Testing, though their involvement grew to include technical consulting during discovery that meaningfully sharpened our own requirements. They also took full ownership of the third-party integration work, which had been a coordination headache on past projects, and just handled it themselves.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We shortlisted five vendors through a structured process. The technical review knocked two out right away. Of the remaining three, this team stood out because their Quality Assurance & Testing approach was specific rather than generic, backed by actual reference projects in Government & Public Sector — not just case studies pulled off a website. The reference calls confirmed everything the proposal claimed.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thoroughly. The requirements document was detailed enough that our own QA team used it directly to build acceptance criteria. Every user story had a clear business reason attached, and nothing was left open to interpretation. That discipline early on paid off through the rest of development and testing.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Genuinely excellent, especially given the time difference between The Hague, Netherlands and the delivery team. Written updates were consistent and specific, anything needing a decision got same-day turnaround, and nothing slipped through the cracks across the whole engagement.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
The project came in on schedule. Budget stayed within the agreed ceiling, including one scope addition we asked for ourselves, which was quoted fairly and handled without disturbing the rest of the timeline. Nothing about the invoice came as a surprise.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
We went live about three months ago. User adoption beat the target we'd set by roughly 20 percent in the first month, and support ticket volume has dropped noticeably since. Features we'd shelved because the old architecture made them too expensive to build are now back on the roadmap.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their willingness to just be direct. If our requirements were unclear, they said so. If our priorities contradicted each other, they explained why. If an approach we'd assumed was right actually had real downsides, they told us before we'd committed to it. That kind of honesty is exactly what I look for in a long-term partner.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes, no hesitation. I've already referred them twice within my own Government & Public Sector network, both times to people facing Quality Assurance & Testing problems similar to ours. I made those referrals confidently because I know the experience I had was repeatable, not a one-off stroke of luck on our project.

Handled twelve times normal traffic on our biggest sale day without a hiccup

Marc-Antoine Girard / VP of Innovation | May 13, 2026

We handed this team an aggressive deadline, a genuinely complicated scope, and a client-side team on our end that was stretched thin and slow to respond at times. They handled all of it without complaint. When they needed something from us they asked precisely and on time. When they didn't, they just kept moving. The project still landed on schedule despite our side being the weaker link for a good chunk of it, which tells you something about how they operate under pressure.

Project summary

Dynamic pricing had been run manually for years. We knew the revenue upside was real but had no in-house way to build the models and wire them into the booking engine.

  • Overall Rating 4.5
  • Quality 5.0
  • Schedule 4.5
  • Project Cost 4.5
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
E-commerce Development
Project Cost:
Less than $10,000
Project Duration:
Jul 2025 - Mar 2026
Business Type:
Travel & Hospitality
Location:
Montreal, Canada

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I run technology for Laurier Tech Partners, a growth-stage Travel & Hospitality company based in Montreal, Canada. My role as VP of Innovation covers product engineering, platform operations, and our vendor relationships. We'd hit a point where our internal capacity just couldn't keep pace with what the roadmap demanded.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our E-commerce Development capability had become the thing slowing everything else down. New feature requests, client asks, internal initiatives — all of it kept queuing up behind a platform that had been stretched way past what it was originally built for. We needed a proper rebuild, not another patch.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core of it was E-commerce Development, though their involvement grew to include technical consulting during discovery that meaningfully sharpened our own requirements. They also took full ownership of the third-party integration work, which had been a coordination headache on past projects, and just handled it themselves.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The questions they asked during the briefing stage told us most of what we needed to know. Vendors who ask sharp questions during sales tend to bring that same rigor into delivery, and that held up. The technical proposal had real substance, the team was senior from the start, and the pricing was straightforward.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Really well, partly because they already had Travel & Hospitality experience that cut down on the amount of context we had to provide. They knew the terminology, asked the right questions, and translated our business requirements into technical specs accurately enough that development barely needed any clarification cycles.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Proactive and well-calibrated. Technical detail for the engineering side, plain summaries for the steering group, and risk flags that came with a proposed fix attached rather than just a problem statement. The biweekly sprint reviews kept our stakeholders in the loop without requiring them to sit in on every working session.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
On time and inside the approved budget. Their estimating was notably accurate — they'd broken the work down in enough detail during discovery that the forecast held up the whole way through, instead of drifting with every small change. We had exactly one change request, and it was for scope we added ourselves.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI model we took to the board was deliberately conservative. Current performance against that model puts us on track to hit payback well ahead of the eighteen-month target we set. The operational efficiency gains in particular have outpaced the model, partly because the new platform's data quality supports decisions the old system simply couldn't.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The team stayed the same the whole way through. The engineers in the discovery sessions were the same ones who built the system. That continuity matters more than people expect, and you really only notice it when it's missing. Every conversation picked up where the last one left off.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes — though I'll add that they're not the cheapest option out there and they're selective about what they take on. If price is your main filter, look elsewhere. If you need a partner you can trust with a serious E-commerce Development program in Travel & Hospitality and expect them to actually deliver against the brief, this is the team.

The rebuilt site went from something we apologized for to something our sales team leads with

Delphine Rousseau / Director of Platform Engineering | Apr 09, 2026

I went into this engagement genuinely skeptical. A previous vendor had left us with a system that technically worked but that nobody trusted, and I wasn't interested in repeating that experience. This team earned trust the slow way — solid discovery documentation, technical proposals that held up under scrutiny, sprints that landed when promised, and ultimately a production system that has simply behaved. I don't open conversations about them with caveats anymore.

Project summary

Our LMS had been designed for a classroom-only world, and two years of declining satisfaction scores made the hybrid-delivery gaps impossible to ignore any longer.

  • Overall Rating 4.5
  • Quality 4.0
  • Schedule 5.0
  • Project Cost 4.5
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
Web Development
Project Cost:
Less than $10,000
Project Duration:
May 2025 - Jan 2026
Business Type:
Education
Location:
Vancouver, Canada

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Pacific Crest Ventures is a Education business headquartered in Vancouver, Canada. As Director of Platform Engineering I'm responsible for the whole technology agenda — infrastructure, product, and how we pick vendors. Every decision we make on the technology side has to tie back to a clear business case before it gets approved.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our previous vendor had maintained this platform for a few years, and the technical debt had piled up to the point where our delivery speed had dropped to a fraction of what it used to be. We needed fresh engineering eyes and an actual plan to deal with the underlying mess.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope ran the full Web Development lifecycle — discovery, requirements, architecture, development across roughly a dozen sprints, integration testing, performance validation, deployment, and a four-week hypercare window afterward. They also handed over full documentation and ran a knowledge transfer session for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A peer in the Education space had used them for something similar in Web Development and recommended them without hesitation. Our own due diligence backed that up. Domain knowledge, Web Development depth, and a track record of actually delivering — that combination made the decision easy.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Better than we understood them ourselves, honestly. The workshops they ran surfaced assumptions we'd never questioned and exposed a few requirements that flatly contradicted each other. Sorting that out before development started saved us from what would have been serious rework later.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
The most structured project management I've dealt with from any outside vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, and retrospectives actually led to changes rather than just being a box to tick. The backlog and risk register were both treated as live tools, not paperwork. I never once had to chase a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. I'd quietly built in some contingency given the complexity and the number of integrations involved, and none of it ended up being needed. Delivery landed on the agreed date and the final invoice was within a rounding error of the approved budget — rarer than most people in this industry would admit.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI model we took to the board was deliberately conservative. Current performance against that model puts us on track to hit payback well ahead of the eighteen-month target we set. The operational efficiency gains in particular have outpaced the model, partly because the new platform's data quality supports decisions the old system simply couldn't.
What did you like most about working with this company?
What they did after launch. A lot of vendors treat go-live as the finish line. This team treated it as the start of a different phase — the hypercare period was substantial, the documentation held up in practice, and they checked back in at the thirty and ninety day marks to go over production metrics with us unprompted.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely, with one caveat worth mentioning: the value really starts in discovery, so clients who take that phase seriously will get the most out of it. We put real effort in upfront and it clearly paid off in what got delivered.

Gameplay feel matched the original design intent — harder to nail than most people assume

Nicolas Fontaine / Directeur Technique | Mar 17, 2026

Our stakeholder list for this project included board members, operations leads, compliance, and end users, all with wildly different levels of technical fluency and different definitions of success. Managing that mix well is genuinely hard, and this team did it better than any vendor we've worked with. They shifted register depending on who they were talking to without ever dumbing down the substance, kept expectations honest the whole way through, and delivered something each group could point to as meeting their own bar. That range is rare.

Project summary

A previous project had worked fine in staging and fallen apart in production. We approached vendor selection this time with a lot more scrutiny as a direct result.

  • Overall Rating 4.5
  • Quality 4.5
  • Schedule 4.5
  • Project Cost 4.5
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
Game Development
Project Cost:
$150,000 to $499,999
Project Duration:
Jun 2025 - Feb 2026
Business Type:
Nonprofit & NGO
Location:
Lyon, France

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Étoile Technologies SAS has been operating in Nonprofit & NGO for a while now, headquartered in Lyon, France. As Directeur Technique I sit across both strategic planning and day-to-day technology delivery. We hold our vendors to a high bar because our own clients hold us to one — it's only fair to expect the same discipline from partners.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our previous vendor had maintained this platform for a few years, and the technical debt had piled up to the point where our delivery speed had dropped to a fraction of what it used to be. We needed fresh engineering eyes and an actual plan to deal with the underlying mess.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Mainly Game Development, with some adjacent architecture and QA work folded in. They owned the whole thing from requirements to go-live, including hooking it into four of our existing systems. Not needing a second vendor to cover that ground was genuinely useful, both cost-wise and logistically.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We were coming off a failed engagement and went into vendor selection this time with a lot more scrutiny. We asked pointed questions about how they handle scope changes, how they estimate, how they communicate bad news. The answers were specific and consistent across everyone we spoke to on their team, which gave us confidence it wasn't a rehearsed pitch.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Really well, partly because they already had Nonprofit & NGO experience that cut down on the amount of context we had to provide. They knew the terminology, asked the right questions, and translated our business requirements into technical specs accurately enough that development barely needed any clarification cycles.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Professional throughout. The project manager always had a clear view of the critical path and flagged changes to it honestly, without spin. The one significant scope change we made mid-project went through a clean process — fairly priced, clearly documented, and absorbed without knocking the rest of the timeline off course.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
The project came in on schedule. Budget stayed within the agreed ceiling, including one scope addition we asked for ourselves, which was quoted fairly and handled without disturbing the rest of the timeline. Nothing about the invoice came as a surprise.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI model we took to the board was deliberately conservative. Current performance against that model puts us on track to hit payback well ahead of the eighteen-month target we set. The operational efficiency gains in particular have outpaced the model, partly because the new platform's data quality supports decisions the old system simply couldn't.
What did you like most about working with this company?
What they did after launch. A lot of vendors treat go-live as the finish line. This team treated it as the start of a different phase — the hypercare period was substantial, the documentation held up in practice, and they checked back in at the thirty and ninety day marks to go over production metrics with us unprompted.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes — though I'll add that they're not the cheapest option out there and they're selective about what they take on. If price is your main filter, look elsewhere. If you need a partner you can trust with a serious Game Development program in Nonprofit & NGO and expect them to actually deliver against the brief, this is the team.

Built for real-world constraints, not just for how it would read in a pitch deck

Ananya Raman / Director of Engineering | Mar 17, 2026

Our stakeholder list for this project included board members, operations leads, compliance, and end users, all with wildly different levels of technical fluency and different definitions of success. Managing that mix well is genuinely hard, and this team did it better than any vendor we've worked with. They shifted register depending on who they were talking to without ever dumbing down the substance, kept expectations honest the whole way through, and delivered something each group could point to as meeting their own bar. That range is rare.

Project summary

Remote care had gone from a pilot program to a core part of our business, and our technology hadn't caught up. We needed a compliant telehealth platform on a timeline the market wasn't going to wait for.

  • Overall Rating 4.5
  • Quality 4.5
  • Schedule 4.0
  • Project Cost 4.5
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
Blockchain Development
Project Cost:
$150,000 to $499,999
Project Duration:
Apr 2025 - Jan 2026
Business Type:
Healthcare
Location:
Kochi, India

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
Bridgeway Ventures has been operating in Healthcare for a while now, headquartered in Kochi, India. As Director of Engineering I sit across both strategic planning and day-to-day technology delivery. We hold our vendors to a high bar because our own clients hold us to one — it's only fair to expect the same discipline from partners.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
A competitor move forced our hand and compressed a roadmap item we'd planned for the following year. The Blockchain Development investment we'd scheduled twelve months out suddenly needed to happen in six, and building it internally in that window wasn't realistic.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The scope ran the full Blockchain Development lifecycle — discovery, requirements, architecture, development across roughly a dozen sprints, integration testing, performance validation, deployment, and a four-week hypercare window afterward. They also handed over full documentation and ran a knowledge transfer session for our internal team.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
The questions they asked during the briefing stage told us most of what we needed to know. Vendors who ask sharp questions during sales tend to bring that same rigor into delivery, and that held up. The technical proposal had real substance, the team was senior from the start, and the pricing was straightforward.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Very well. The discovery phase was more thorough than anything we'd been through with prior vendors. They pushed back on requirements that were vague or contradictory, suggested better alternatives where our own thinking was limited, and produced a spec our internal stakeholders agreed was the clearest version of the product they'd ever seen written down.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
The most structured project management I've dealt with from any outside vendor. Sprint planning was tight, acceptance criteria were specific, and retrospectives actually led to changes rather than just being a box to tick. The backlog and risk register were both treated as live tools, not paperwork. I never once had to chase a status update.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. I'd quietly built in some contingency given the complexity and the number of integrations involved, and none of it ended up being needed. Delivery landed on the agreed date and the final invoice was within a rounding error of the approved budget — rarer than most people in this industry would admit.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
Hard to isolate perfectly given everything else going on in the business, but the numbers we can attribute directly to the Blockchain Development work are solid: session duration up, conversion up, error rate down, and our NPS for that touchpoint has moved noticeably. Our account managers say it's coming up positively in client conversations now too.
What did you like most about working with this company?
The team stayed the same the whole way through. The engineers in the discovery sessions were the same ones who built the system. That continuity matters more than people expect, and you really only notice it when it's missing. Every conversation picked up where the last one left off.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Yes — though I'll add that they're not the cheapest option out there and they're selective about what they take on. If price is your main filter, look elsewhere. If you need a partner you can trust with a serious Blockchain Development program in Healthcare and expect them to actually deliver against the brief, this is the team.

Test automation got adopted by developers as a genuine tool, not a box-ticking exercise

Étienne Marchand / CTO | Jan 30, 2026

I went into this engagement genuinely skeptical. A previous vendor had left us with a system that technically worked but that nobody trusted, and I wasn't interested in repeating that experience. This team earned trust the slow way — solid discovery documentation, technical proposals that held up under scrutiny, sprints that landed when promised, and ultimately a production system that has simply behaved. I don't open conversations about them with caveats anymore.

Project summary

New open banking rules meant our API layer needed rebuilding from scratch, with compliance designed in from the start rather than patched on afterward.

  • Overall Rating 4.5
  • Quality 4.5
  • Schedule 5.0
  • Project Cost 4.5
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
Quality Assurance & Testing
Project Cost:
Less than $10,000
Project Duration:
Mar 2025 - Oct 2025
Business Type:
Financial Services
Location:
Ottawa, Canada

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
As CTO at Aurora Systems Inc I oversee technology spend and delivery across our Financial Services operations out of Ottawa, Canada. We're a commercially minded business, so every technology decision gets judged on what it actually contributes to the bottom line, not on how elegant it looks on paper.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
Our Quality Assurance & Testing capability had become the thing slowing everything else down. New feature requests, client asks, internal initiatives — all of it kept queuing up behind a platform that had been stretched way past what it was originally built for. We needed a proper rebuild, not another patch.
What services did the company provide for your project?
Full Quality Assurance & Testing delivery, with particular depth on the integration and data migration pieces — the riskiest parts of the whole program. On top of that, they kept a dedicated QA person on the project throughout and left our operations team with a proper runbook at handover.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
A peer in the Financial Services space had used them for something similar in Quality Assurance & Testing and recommended them without hesitation. Our own due diligence backed that up. Domain knowledge, Quality Assurance & Testing depth, and a track record of actually delivering — that combination made the decision easy.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Thoroughly. The requirements document was detailed enough that our own QA team used it directly to build acceptance criteria. Every user story had a clear business reason attached, and nothing was left open to interpretation. That discipline early on paid off through the rest of development and testing.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Proactive and well-calibrated. Technical detail for the engineering side, plain summaries for the steering group, and risk flags that came with a proposed fix attached rather than just a problem statement. The biweekly sprint reviews kept our stakeholders in the loop without requiring them to sit in on every working session.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Yes to both. I'd quietly built in some contingency given the complexity and the number of integrations involved, and none of it ended up being needed. Delivery landed on the agreed date and the final invoice was within a rounding error of the approved budget — rarer than most people in this industry would admit.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI model we took to the board was deliberately conservative. Current performance against that model puts us on track to hit payback well ahead of the eighteen-month target we set. The operational efficiency gains in particular have outpaced the model, partly because the new platform's data quality supports decisions the old system simply couldn't.
What did you like most about working with this company?
Their instinct for never losing the business goal in the middle of technical decisions. I've worked with technically strong teams before who lose that thread once things get complicated. This team kept every architectural call tied back to the outcome we'd actually agreed to, which made the harder trade-off conversations a lot easier.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Without reservation. We're already in early conversations about a second engagement, and I expect this to turn into a multi-year relationship. Anyone in Financial Services looking for real Quality Assurance & Testing depth paired with actual delivery discipline should have this team near the top of their list.

Turned marketing spend from a cost debate into a revenue conversation with leadership

Fiona McAllister / Chief Technology Officer | Jan 25, 2026

Looking back, the thing that stands out most is how uneventful the whole project was. Technology projects of this size tend to generate their share of fire drills and awkward escalation calls. This one really didn't. Issues got flagged early enough that they never became incidents, scope changes went through an actual process instead of a tense phone call, and risks were tracked rather than just hoped away. That kind of quiet competence is unusual in my experience, and it made the whole thing feel easier on our end than I know it was on theirs.

Project summary

Portal usability complaints were showing up disproportionately among the B2B accounts we were about to lose at renewal. The self-service experience needed a full rebuild before that cycle hit.

  • Overall Rating 4.0
  • Quality 4.0
  • Schedule 4.5
  • Project Cost 3.5
  • Willing To Refer 5.0
Project Type:
Digital Marketing
Project Cost:
$150,000 to $499,999
Project Duration:
Aug 2025 - Dec 2025
Business Type:
Telecommunications
Location:
Glasgow, UK

Questions & Answers

Please describe your company, your role, and the industry you operate in.
I run technology for Highland FinTech Ltd, a growth-stage Telecommunications company based in Glasgow, UK. My role as Chief Technology Officer covers product engineering, platform operations, and our vendor relationships. We'd hit a point where our internal capacity just couldn't keep pace with what the roadmap demanded.
What specific problem or business challenge led you to hire this company?
A competitor move forced our hand and compressed a roadmap item we'd planned for the following year. The Digital Marketing investment we'd scheduled twelve months out suddenly needed to happen in six, and building it internally in that window wasn't realistic.
What services did the company provide for your project?
The core of it was Digital Marketing, though their involvement grew to include technical consulting during discovery that meaningfully sharpened our own requirements. They also took full ownership of the third-party integration work, which had been a coordination headache on past projects, and just handled it themselves.
Why did you choose this company over other providers you considered?
We were coming off a failed engagement and went into vendor selection this time with a lot more scrutiny. We asked pointed questions about how they handle scope changes, how they estimate, how they communicate bad news. The answers were specific and consistent across everyone we spoke to on their team, which gave us confidence it wasn't a rehearsed pitch.
How clearly did the company understand your requirements and business goals?
Better than we understood them ourselves, honestly. The workshops they ran surfaced assumptions we'd never questioned and exposed a few requirements that flatly contradicted each other. Sorting that out before development started saved us from what would have been serious rework later.
How was your overall experience with their communication and project management?
Proactive and well-calibrated. Technical detail for the engineering side, plain summaries for the steering group, and risk flags that came with a proposed fix attached rather than just a problem statement. The biweekly sprint reviews kept our stakeholders in the loop without requiring them to sit in on every working session.
Did the company deliver the project on time and within your expected budget?
Both, yes. One sprint hit a one-week delay from a third-party API dependency outside anyone's control. The team flagged it three weeks ahead of time, laid out two options, and we picked an approach that clawed the schedule back within the same sprint. That's the kind of foresight that separates real project management from just reacting to problems.
What tangible results or business impact have you seen since the project was completed?
The ROI model we took to the board was deliberately conservative. Current performance against that model puts us on track to hit payback well ahead of the eighteen-month target we set. The operational efficiency gains in particular have outpaced the model, partly because the new platform's data quality supports decisions the old system simply couldn't.
What did you like most about working with this company?
What they did after launch. A lot of vendors treat go-live as the finish line. This team treated it as the start of a different phase — the hypercare period was substantial, the documentation held up in practice, and they checked back in at the thirty and ninety day marks to go over production metrics with us unprompted.
Would you recommend this company to others, and would you work with them again?
Absolutely, with one caveat worth mentioning: the value really starts in discovery, so clients who take that phase seriously will get the most out of it. We put real effort in upfront and it clearly paid off in what got delivered.
FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions

Got questions about our specialized technology solutions? We have the answers to help you make informed decisions.

Design Master typically covers the standard range of software development work — mobile apps, web platforms, custom internal tools, UI/UX design, cloud infrastructure, AI integrations, and larger enterprise builds. Its core focus areas include Content Management System, Mobile App Development, Web Design and Web Development.

The exact stack shifts by project, but Design Master commonly works across things like React, Angular, Vue.js, Node.js, Python, .NET, Java, PHP, Flutter, React Native, native iOS and Android, and cloud platforms like AWS and Azure. For context, it has experience across industries such as Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Events & Event Management, Automotive, Legal Services and Construction, and its listed capabilities span Content Management System, Mobile App Development, Web Design and Web Development.

Most businesses reach Design Master through its website, a direct email, or a contact form — any of which works for discussing what you need, booking an initial conversation, or asking for a rough estimate. For context, it has experience across industries such as Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Events & Event Management, Automotive, Legal Services and Construction, and it reports a team size of N/A professionals.

When you're weighing up a software partner such as Design Master, it's worth looking past the pitch and checking the portfolio, what past clients say, relevant industry background, technical range, how they communicate, pricing structure, project management style, and what support looks like after launch. For context, its listed capabilities span Content Management System, Mobile App Development, Web Design and Web Development, and it has experience across industries such as Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Events & Event Management, Automotive, Legal Services and Construction.

That depends on where Design Master is based and who they primarily serve — some firms like this operate fully offshore, some are local-first, and plenty run a hybrid model that mixes both. For context, it has experience across industries such as Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Events & Event Management, Automotive, Legal Services and Construction, and its listed capabilities span Content Management System, Mobile App Development, Web Design and Web Development.

Plenty of modern software teams, Design Master included, now build real AI and machine learning features — chatbots, predictive models, computer vision, and automation that goes beyond simple rule-based scripts. For context, its listed capabilities span Content Management System, Mobile App Development, Web Design and Web Development, and its typical hourly rate is around N/A.

Most professional shops, including Design Master, expect to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement before getting into specifics — it's a fairly standard ask and a reasonable one to make before sharing anything sensitive. For context, its listed capabilities span Content Management System, Mobile App Development, Web Design and Web Development, and it reports a team size of N/A professionals.

Design Master isn't necessarily limited to one region and may take on clients across several countries, depending on market demand and business partnerships.

It's a common line of work for a company like Design Master — multi-tenant architecture, subscription billing hooked up properly, and cloud-native deployment built for a product meant to scale as a service rather than a one-off build. For context, its listed capabilities span Content Management System, Mobile App Development, Web Design and Web Development, and it has experience across industries such as Manufacturing, Aerospace & Defense, Events & Event Management, Automotive, Legal Services and Construction.
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