Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Design and Content : I have offers from India

[fxtrader777]

Hello All

I am going to build social network website. Something like facebook with lots of applications and flash games.


I got offers from Indian webdevelopers the offers vary from 8 000 USD to 34 000 USD

this website offered me 8 000 USD http://vishwatech.com/ and promised all features to be developed in this price and in 2 months. What do you think is it reliable offer? Also this company is An ISO 9001:2008 Certified, STPI Registered Company

Also I contacted US companies and price range was between 20 000 and 150 00 USD

for example this one www.inowweb.com offered me everything in 20 000

I have over 20 offers. What you recommend me. I have heard Indian companies are good and cheap

[VIPoint]

That's the benefit of outsourcing. You get same/good quality of work for almost 1/3 rd the price

[Biju]

Originally Posted by fxtrader777

Hello All

I am going to build social network website. Something like facebook with lots of applications and flash games.


I got offers from Indian webdevelopers the offers vary from 8 000 USD to 34 000 USD

this website offered me 8 000 USD http://vishwatech.com/ and promised all features to be developed in this price and in 2 months. What do you think is it reliable offer? Also this company is An ISO 9001:2008 Certified, STPI Registered Company

Also I contacted US companies and price range was between 20 000 and 150 00 USD

for example this one www.inowweb.com offered me everything in 20 000

I have over 20 offers. What you recommend me. I have heard Indian companies are good and cheap

Choose wisely. Its not that Indian companies are cheap and good, go for one who you think can deliver you the best. Keep up these questions.

1. Is your product more important to get launched than price.
2. Do you have to keep the price in factor as you have limited budget?
3. If both the cases comes into mind, then try to negotiate with the company whom you think can do it the best.

[Dimitrigr]

Developers are developers and you can't gauge potential performance based on location.

Embarking on a project like this requires some due diligence on your part regardless of the developer's location. Here are some basic steps:

• Request references and actually talk to those provided, don't just look at the web sites.
• Check experience & capabilities. Has the developer completed projects of similar magnitude and complexity?
• Sign an agreement that clearly states deliverables, delivery schedule and payment schedule.
• In large projects a 10-20% deposit should be sufficient to get the development rolling. Subsequent payments should be tied to deliverables.

Good luck

.

[the_pm]

The one thing that location does give you is accountability. If something goes wrong with a Web project, and you've contracted it halfway around the world, you're going to have one heck of a time recouping your losses. That goes in any direction - not just U.S.-to-India. One reason we've never worked with any designers in India or and Asian subcontinental region is because if something goes wrong with a subcontractor, I want to be within 12 hours travel distance at the most, so I can show up and correct the problem in-person. It's very rare that we subcontract at all - typically only if a client requests something we know will be outside our expertise (complex 3D Modeling, video production, etc.), but having a location-based policy has kept us out of trouble. Sometimes, I hear the horror stories about company X taking money and delivering an inferior product (or nothing at all), and I'm glad I can't relate!

As far as the project itself is concerned, if the actual scope of your project is "recreate Facebook," 1) the detailed scope on which you are receiving bids should be about 30 pages long (and should have cost more to create by itself than the one company is quoting you for the whole project), and 2) even $150,000 is way too low.

If you compile all the man-hours of development invested into Facebook over the past 5-6 years for all the features it presents, the development time has to be worth at least $500k (that's not the actual value of the property, just the value of the dev time sunk into it - FB is probably worth multi-billions by now).

[CyberSorcerer]

Bottom line is you get what you pay for. Happens all the time in SEO.

For instance, all the bids I make on SEO projects I always keep the ones that chose another provider so I can check on there progress. I have software that automatically does this so I can follow 10-15 sites at a time and the results are what you'd expect. I usually see these same projects getting reposted 2-3 months later stating disappointment with previous bidder and some even stating only U.S providers apply.

Not saying that all foreign providers, or companies, are like this but a big majority do end up along these lines. I would assume Web design, development, application design wouldn't be any different.

CyberSorcerer

[Designstraw]

Mate,

Some of indian companies do provide really good services at really low prices!

Checkout there work and other important things

[Gratis Soft]

I know companies that went broke from using such outsourcing Indians have no Quality Assurance practices, and the ISO certificate doesn't guarantee anything when it comes to software companies (my grandfather has consult company). So, since you are spending REAL 5-figures money, look for quality appearance.

And also: Are you sure about the features you want ? There is the JomSocial application for joomla and so on ready to use for free scripts or even whole sites, that a programmer can set for you in a couple of weeks, probably you need advise from a single developer , not a company that would make you think that big work is done. Most developers just buy other site's code, change it and sell it to people like you for far less than 8000 dollars ...

[activelobby4u]

There are plenty of clone scripts available for all major social networking sites. You should probably consider modifying one of those as well

[Gratis Soft]

Yup,
Any programmer would use such a clone script as I said ...
But why would he do it himself. It may be clone but it is a serious programming work

[ibee]

Yes, some of the companies are good. Just check with other companies as well, prices mentioned seems to be on higher side for me.

[phunknCREATIVE]

Originally Posted by Gratis Soft

I know companies that went broke from using such outsourcing Indians have no Quality Assurance practices, and the ISO certificate doesn't guarantee anything when it comes to software companies (my grandfather has consult company). So, since you are spending REAL 5-figures money, look for quality appearance.

I totally agree... I know it doesn't apply to every single company working out of India, but the majority is like that. You can't really expect to pay 10-25% of what a 'proper/reputable company' would charge and get an identical/similar product of the same quality.

A lot of the companies I design for opt to outsource their development work and I can assure you it will almost certainly turn into a nightmare.

Even from the frontend CSS/XHTML which should come back clean, W3C validated (error free) and supported on multiple browsers seems to be too much for them to accomplish. It's a constant back and forth which will waste a lot of crucial time and the timezone difference does not help.

A good example for coding up a simple 5 page website:
Reputable company would take 1 week
Outsourced company will take 1 day, but you'll end up having them spend another 1 week or more on the project to have it looking identical in quality.

Once again I know it doesn't apply to all outsourced companies, but I personally haven't heard of any good experiences yet!

[eSupun]

I think it is better to take a look at the company's portfolio before you buy a package.
Maybe they are new to this field and have no experience before.

[psybergaming]

Originally Posted by eSupun

I think it is better to take a look at the company's portfolio before you buy a package.
Maybe they are new to this field and have no experience before.

Said and done. A company's real portfolio is everything. You can also contact their past customers and get their opinion on their work also.

[boonchuan]

I had a customer who received a legal letter from one of the image providers a few years after his india design company finished his site asking for thousands in compensation for illegally using their stock photos. The design company is long gone and he had a hard time explaining. India has its good companies but you really need to be careful.