Python Powerhouse - Web & Mobile development teams
We are Europe’s largest Python software house. We have over 400 Python, JavaScript (NodeJS), React Native and full-stack developers ready to supercharge your project with extraordinary code.
Based in Poland, we employ a total of over 500 people including Product Designers, Manual QA and QA Automation, DevOps, Machine Learning, Data Engineers, and business communication experts ensuring smooth cooperation with our partners.
With 17 years of experience under our belt, we can provide full-stack web development and cross-platform mobile app solutions to clients across all industries using Python Django, Flask, FastAPI, NodeJS, Angular, ReactJS, React Native, and more. Moreover, we are proud to work with long-term technology partners throughout the US, Canada, Western Europe, Scandinavia, South Africa, Australia, and the Middle East.
Great software begins long before the first line of code is written. That’s why we start our development process with Discovery workshops, UX/UI, web graphic design, and deep analysis of your business needs.
At STX we can easily translate your ideas into successful digital products. Want to learn more? Contact us.

headquarters
other locations
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ul. Zabrska 20 - Global Office Park C Piętro 1Katowice 40-083Poland
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Routeco Office Park Davy Avenue, KnowlhillMilton Keynes MK58HJUnited Kingdom
Focus
Portfolio
Mastercard, Decathlon, Tiqets, Verisk, Seerene, Verve, Hogarth WW, Pixomondo, Unity Technologies, Blocktrade, IMD Optimad, Google, Wunderman, Vyze, Coras, Realface, BetBright, KNMP, Paze, Decernis, Scurri, Newable, and more.

Tailored cat food service
ABOUT
Launched in 2014, tails.com is a nutritionally tailored pet food service that creates a unique recipe for every single dog it serves from a million combinations, based on his or her age, breed, needs and preferences. The subscription-based product helps dog owners target their pet's specific health improvements through their diet. It offers a complete, balanced nutrition plan that also adjusts with the dogs as they age.
PROJECT DETAILS
Building upon the success of the dog food platform, tails.com decided to launch a parallel service for cats, called Republic of Cats. The company chose STX Next as its software development partner to help build an application suite for the project.
Republic of Cats provides subscription-based feeding plans for felines that have been tailored to each pet’s unique nutritional needs and preferences. Customers can manage their subscriptions using a desktop dashboard and a mobile application.
CHALLENGE
Republic of Cats operates almost as a startup within tails.com. The main challenge facing the project managers was launching the product within a short timeframe and growing it towards a positive ROI that would warrant the continuation of the project. To achieve this goal, they needed an application suite to be built from scratch.
At the start of the cooperation, the project managers had initial product research and business hypotheses, but most branding elements and feature specifications were not yet available.
As a result, tails.com needed flexible, scalable design and development teams to help it refine the requirements and produce the full service in a timely manner.

Blocktrade—a crypto trading platform
ABOUT
Blocktrade is a state-of-the-art crypto trading platform that prioritizes speed, reliability and safety. It allows retail users, brokers, professional traders as well as institutional money managers to trade with crypto assets and indices in a fully audited and highly secure way.
CHALLENGE
Blocktrade’s challenge was to build a top-of-the-line trading portal in the shortest possible time window and build an internal team of experts who will take over the development of the solution provided by STX Next. Working with Blocktrade, we created a web application that will allow retail users, brokers, professional traders as well as institutional money managers to trade with crypto assets and indices in a fully audited, highly secure way, performing similarly to Nasdaq.

Tiqets—a ticket-booking platform
ABOUT
Tiqets is an innovative platform for booking tickets to museums and attractions around the world. Since it was founded in 2014, the company has sold over 10 million tickets to more than 2,000 venues in 60+ countries. Headquartered in Amsterdam, Tiqets employs over 200 people and has offices in various locations globally. It’s raised €54 million in a recent funding round led by Airbnb.
CHALLENGE
The main challenge for STX Next was to find ways to integrate the Tiqets platform with as many ticket providers as possible, so that users would no longer need to register with each of them individually while planning their trip.
We were able to meet the client’s expectations by moving from a monolithic system to a microservice-based architecture, which was able to make direct contact with ticket suppliers via a variety of APIs.
To make sure that the platform was fully integrated with vendors at all times without disruptions, we also delivered round-the-clock, real-time monitoring services. They allowed us to have a full picture of the integrations at any given moment and step in to fix any issues before they escalated. Where vendors didn’t provide any API for us to integrate with, we created web crawlers that went through their pages to purchase tickets.

Lamden—Python Blockchain Development
ABOUT
Lamden is a suite of developer tools that speed up the process of creating new and custom blockchains and apps. The Lamden Tau token connects these new projects together to create the first ever blockchain enterprise solution. The Tau token has a more general use as a universal swap token between most existing cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others. This will allow TAU to exchange seamlessly between endless cryptocurrency pairs.
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
Clove, which we are working on, is a decentralized application that makes atomic swaps between chains easy. Most Bitcoin-based and Ethereum-based chains, including ERC20 tokens, are compatible with the protocol. Clove enables decentralized payment channel swaps and facilitates trustless communication between compatible blockchains on the network.

NOTA NOTA—personal fragrance-mixing system
ABOUT
NOTA NOTA allows designers and creators from all over the world to design and share perfumes. It’s a new concept of mixing perfumes as part of your daily routine, just like using your coffee machine. NOTA NOTA received the iF Design Award in the Product category in 2018.
CHALLENGE
NOTA NOTA wanted to build an app that would streamline the user flows and interface, as well as expand the social functionalities.
STX Next worked in continuous feedback mode, adjusting features and screens to the client’s needs as quickly as possible. We put a great deal of effort into making the product easy to develop and maintain by using automation and containerization, static typing and static code analysis support, and automated unit testing.
To reduce the costs both during and after development, we built the new NOTA NOTA app from scratch using React Native for cross-platform mobile development. We also used tried-and-tested, out-of-the-box solutions to limit the cost of features such as analytics, push notifications, or crash and error reporting.
Product Design played a key role in the development process, working hand in hand with the development team to create a seamless experience. All the core app functionalities were redesigned by applying new user flows and interactions for designing, producing, and sharing perfumes.

Newable—easy business loans
ABOUT
Newable Limited is a leading SME lender in the UK. Newable Limited and Liberis Limited. Newable Business Finance is focused on enabling growth of UK SMEs through the provision of finance to those who feel they are unable to access finance through mainstream providers (such as banks).
CHALLENGES
Newable reached out to us with a complete idea for the product’s MVP and a very short deadline. They were faced with the task of transferring their whole loan application process from paper printed documents to the Internet. The system had to be easy to understand and use and reduce application time for end-customers while still including several levels of approval.
STX Next delivered the entire platform along with automatic payments/payouts, integration with external tools, and additional mentoring services.

CAS, visa, and arrival automation platform
ABOUT
Enroly provides the first CAS, visa and arrival automation platform. It makes post-acceptance administration simple and secure, allowing universities to easily implement the solutions into their existing systems. Not only does it help improve enrolment systems, but it also automatically detects risk factors to help higher education institutions to prevent mistakes that would otherwise become deferrals, withdrawals and refusals. Enroly's range of products are used by universities, students, agents, and regional offices in more than 100 countries around the world.
PROJECT DETAILS
Enroly CAS SHIELD, one of the company's three core services, helps university staff manage applications from prospective students. By offering functionalities such as smart prioritization of large applicant volumes, student interview booking system, and automated reading and assessing of documents, the company helps improve enrolment numbers.
The platform also automatically detects risk factors and assigns enrolment confidence scores to applications. STX Next collaborated with Enroly to increase efficiency and effectiveness with machine learning solutions, including by automating document processing and information extraction.
CHALLENGE
Since Enroly's platform hosts large volumes of documents, the company was looking for ways to make their processing more efficient, free up their clients' employee time, as well as speed up the verification of documents and the application for the CAS statement.
The first challenge, therefore, was to identify the specific areas that would benefit from the introduction of machine learning, and create a workable project scope.
Once the scope was established, Enroly needed the right tools to help it process and extract the relevant information from the huge range of documents it receives from all over the world (for instance birth certificates, bank statements, and handwritten notes) in varying quality and formats (for instance scans and photos).

Quality-focused IPR&D solutions
ABOUT
Evalueserve is the largest service provider of quality-focused IPR&D (In-Process Research & Development) search, intelligence, and IP prosecution solutions that brings together first-rate data analysis with cutting-edge technologies.
Evalueserve uses their proprietary methodology to help organizations across various industries achieve better performance, become more connected, and generate more value. They combine the insights emerging from data and research with the efficiency of digital tools and platforms to design impactful solutions, tailored for their clients’ business needs.
PROJECT DETAILS
The client initially wanted to speed up the development of their product Insightloupe™ by extending their team with Python specialists. That was the original reason they had picked STX Next, the largest Python software vendor in Europe, as their outsourcing partner.
Being a Dutch subsidiary of a large Indian company, their in-house team had already been working with a mixed team of developers from both India and the Netherlands, but they were looking for backend support closer to the Netherlands. Teaming up with a Python shop based out of Poland made sense for Evalueserve.
CHALLENGE
Evaluserve’s product Insightloupe™ was created predominantly for large corporations with internal R&D departments.
The goal of Insightloupe™ is to help analysts research patent data, which is then presented to Evalueserve’s clients—such as managers, R&D specialists, or patent attorneys—helping them decide whether to invest in a particular technological domain. Simply put, it means that Evalueserve supports and facilitates making high-stakes business decisions within the field of data analysis.

Single-molecule scripting platform
ABOUT
LUMICKS arms life science researchers and drug development professionals with Nobel Prize-winning technology to uncover how single-molecule and single-cell level processes work. With LUMICKS’ solutions, researchers can quickly perform large amounts of automated single-molecule experiments with more accuracy. As a result, researchers can improve human health and answer life science questions that people couldn’t answer before.
PROJECT DETAILS
Harbor is a platform created specifically for researchers which enables them to make experiments easier, more reproducible and faster than ever before.
On this platform, researchers can easily publish, download, review and cite automation scripts and data analysis methods used for dynamic single-molecule research.
Joining the platform means that researchers can also benefit from becoming part of a community based around single-molecule experimentation where they can share knowledge and talk about their experiences.
CHALLENGE
At the moment when they approached STX Next, LUMICKS had a big picture idea of what Harbor would be.
But the devil was in the details, and in the many unanswered questions LUMICKS faced:
- How should the platform look and feel?
- What features should be included in the MVP?
- What should the tech stack be?
- What team size and budget are needed to deliver the MVP, and how quickly can it happen?
Lumicks needed not just to answer these questions, but to actually get the work done:
- create the design;
- get aligned around one common product idea;
- present that product idea to potential users at an upcoming science fair only one month away;
- actually build the MVP of the product within four months.

BuildFax—property intelligence solutions
ABOUT
BuildFax provides business-critical property condition and history data to the largest insurance and financial institutions in the world. Based in Austin, Texas, the company delivers detailed data on remodeling, solar installations, major systems, new construction, maintenance history, and more. Their database encompasses over 84 billion data points on commercial and residential structures. In 2019, BuildFax was acquired by Verisk—a leading data analytics provider in the US.
CHALLENGE
Our goal was to provide BuildFax with modern tools for handling big data. Before working with STX Next, their speed of receiving data sometimes took up to four times longer than the maximum time business logic allowed.
Our solution to BuildFax’s challenge was using the Spark technology; or, more specifically, its Python implementation: the PySpark and Databricks tools.
To accomplish this, STX Next provided a team of three developers whose task was supporting the BuildFax team throughout that difficult and trying process.
BuildFax were very happy with our services and expanded their team as time went by, most notably with 24/7 maintenance and monitoring.

Vyze—financing platform for retailers
ABOUT
Vyze is a leading financial technology company for retailers and manufacturers, acquired by Mastercard in 2019 and then Ally Lending in 2021. By combining a comprehensive lending supply, technology, and support under one roof, Vyze is able to deliver businesses simpler, more satisfying financing experiences for their customers, wherever and whenever they shop. Formerly known as NewComLink, Vyze raised $13 million in series B funding in 2016, bringing the total funding to $35 million.
CHALLENGE
The main challenge for Vyze was scaling up their internal development team—bringing resources on board with the right skill set, who could hit the ground running and be able to execute on their strategy. They required qualified developers with extensive knowledge and prior experience.
STX Next is meeting the challenges of the project head-on. Firstly, simultaneous dedication to two platforms alone is quite demanding. Secondly, certain solutions implemented in these products could not be found in other financing platforms, meaning the developers had to design the solutions from scratch. Finally, as the project progresses, the team is not only developing a cutting-edge fintech application, but also working together with Vyze to implement the best Scrum practices.
STX Next Delivered
- On-site financing platform for retailers
- Fulfilling eCommerce financing experience
- Advanced and robust API
- Full automatic test coverage with Behave and Selenium
- Secure online credit applications and payments
- Quick credit assessment
- Intuitive front-end design

Unity—BuildBot-based continuous integration tool
ABOUT
Unity Technologies is the creator of a flexible and high-performance end-to-end development platform used to create rich, interactive 2D, 3D, VR, and AR experiences. Unity’s powerful graphics engine and full-featured editor serve as the foundation to develop beautiful games or apps and easily bring them to multiple platforms: mobile devices, home entertainment systems, personal computers, and embedded systems.
CHALLENGE
Due to their large scale of operations and specific needs, Unity Technologies decided to create in-house tools for software development. Unity Technologies asked STX Next for assistance in maintaining and steadily improving one such tool called Katana.
Katana is a fork of BuildBot—a continuous integration tool written in Python using the Twisted framework. With one master server, Katana is able to use an unlimited number of slave machines to perform builds.
STX Next helped create Katana to meet the demand of more than 10,000 builds per day. With its scale, Katana is crucial for Unity’s daily operations, as any downtime would affect hundreds of Unity’s developers. Challenges included resolving memory leaks, dealing with race conditions, and adding new features to the highly sensitive system.

Fleet Command mobile strategy game
ABOUT
DIGIT Game Studios is the largest game developer in Ireland, founded in 2012. With their vastly talented team of over 70 people, DIGIT makes free-to-play mobile strategy games. Released in 2014, the studio’s first game, Kings of the Realm, became a worldwide hit and the highest-grossing strategy game in over 50 countries. DIGIT followed up on their successful debut in 2018 with the release of Star Trek Fleet Command.
PROJECT DETAILS
STX Next supported DIGIT Game Studios in the final phases of getting ready for the worldwide launch of the free-to-play strategy mobile game set in the marvelous world of one of pop culture’s largest and greatest phenomena: Star Trek.
Star Trek Fleet Command is one of the biggest strategy games on mobile. Getting into the skin of a bone fide fleet commander, you assemble a crew, forge alliances, and set out on an epic adventure to rule over the galaxy with your armada. The game allows you to pick a side in the galactic war and fight arm in arm with the Federation, Klingons, or Romulans. Alternatively, you can be your own man or woman and walk a path of your choosing in the power struggle for galactic conquest. The choice is yours.
CHALLENGE
DIGIT Game Studios came to us for support in finalizing the mobile game they were building with Python on the server-side. At the time, development was already well underway and in the late stages. In order to deliver the product in time and of the highest possible quality, DIGIT decided they could use an extra pair of hands to help them out.

Decernis—regulatory and safety compliance
ABOUT
Based in Washington DC, Decernis provides regulatory expertise and systems to manage food, consumer, and industrial product safety compliance across more than 180 countries. Decernis gives clients a complete regulatory intelligence on the market through unique, fully integrated, patented technology platforms covering over 80,000 regulations.
CHALLENGE
Decernis’ application was based on a fairly old technological stack. Supporting the technology was a growing challenge, and Decernis saw the need to push the project into a direction where they could switch to newer technologies with better support. Another challenge for Decernis was finding a partner who could work with their multiple offices in various locations around the globe and across multiple time zones.

Seerene—a code and people management platform
ABOUT
Seerene is a code+people management platform that sets a new standard for how CIOs manage their most important resources – their codebase and engineering capacity. The company is based in Germany with additional offices in Hong Kong and the US.
CHALLENGE
The biggest challenge for the multiple product teams in this project has been finding the right way to implement deep analytics algorithms that transform low-level code-related metrics into KPIs and insights for C-Level users, Seerene’s target group. The team is constantly developing new features and machine learning capabilities into the product to make the raw data more consumable and full of value for decision makers of large corporates.
STX Next tackled the challenge by providing 2 full Scrum teams (+ Product Design support) and integrating their work with Seerene’s internal teams.

Zappi—a platform supporting supply teaching
ABOUT
Zappi is a new company on the UK supply teaching market. They come with 20 years of experience in recruitment and education and a strong focus on positive user experience and employee happiness. Their new app effortlessly connects teaching and support staff with local schools for supply work—making the process faster, easier and more transparent. Zappi teachers lead to happy kids!
CHALLENGE
Zappi approached us with the need to design and build their application almost from scratch. But they knew they wanted Python, as they were well-versed in its advantages. They emphasized developing the application following good practices. We used the design thinking process to shape the solution and agile methodology to implement it. Thanks to our joint efforts, the Zappi idea of creating freedom of choice for schools and supply staff is live.

Signal Kit—smart communication tools for the K-12
Signal Kit is a complete communication suite for the K-12 community. With cloud-based mass communication, internal collaboration, business intelligence and industry leading oversight.
STX Next delivered:
- Discovery workshops followed by a UX Audit of the existing web system to understand the potential risks, test usability and accessibility, find friction points, and recommend improvements.
- A full-featured React Native mobile app.
- Web App Improvements. We took an existing system and improved its design coherency to create or adjust the features that met the requirements of the users and business partners. We also prepared the product for future improvements.
- Product recognition support through various design tasks, from product marketing materials, through motion and interaction designs and vision, to small interface tweaks.

meet.mba—an MBA social networking platform
ABOUT
meet.mba is an online networking and communication tool designed for MBA admits, students, and alumni. It was created by Matthew Brooke-Hitching, an MBA who noticed the need to improve communication and collaboration throughout the business school journey. The resulting online platform now connects almost 4,000 MBAs and Executive MBAs around the world.
CHALLENGE
The reason to create the meet.mba platform was the lack of an appropriate tool that would allow MBA students and alumni to effectively communicate with each other.
Matthew Brooke-Hitching chose STX Next on account of the knowledge, tools and experience we could provide. We had a tight deadline for completing the product, but managed to stand up to the challenge.
STX Next delivered a full Scrum team with support from a PO, advised on the scope of the MVP, and helped prioritize tasks. Our tech stack included Django, React, PostgreSQL, Docker, and more.
The MVP allowed meet.mba to gain 500 users in the first 3 months from launch. Its features include intuitive private and group chat, user profiles with deep privacy customization, and a global board for requests for help, all tailored specifically to the MBA experience.

Online B2B fish and seafood marketplace
ABOUT
Procsea is the first online B2B fish and seafood marketplace. It simplifies and optimizes seafood purchases by putting buyers in direct contact with fishermen, suppliers, and fish merchants across Europe. Procsea has revolutionized the previously overly complex maritime industry by removing the need for intermediaries and promoting short supply chains. The platform’s innovative approach, which focuses on sustainable and traceable fishing, is free to use for both buyers and sellers.
PROJECT DETAILS
Procsea was looking to give an overall upgrade to its fish-selling platform to make it more efficient and user-friendly.
CHALLENGE
To achieve this objective, the company needed to migrate its website to the latest version of Python, make improvements to the code, integrate with a new CRM, and fix some of its databases.

Data analytics platform for debt securities
ABOUT
Credit Rubric is a UK based data analytics platform for European debt securities. They provide independent quantitative analysis combining financial performance, credit metrics and market pricing. Credit Rubric is also a part of the financial information group, Acuris. Their main goal is to store and share information regarding High Yield Bonds, the issuing companies, all details of the bonds, as well as up to date information.
PROJECT DETAILS
Credit Rubric is a tool that will help traders make better decisions.
The platform will provide the traders the necessary support by collecting and displaying data regarding High Yield Bonds and performing complex calculations.
CHALLENGE
Our challenge was to prepare an MVP of a system that will allow users to query for high yield bonds and display their details including financial performance statistics and yield calculations.

System for financing the lease of vehicles
ABOUT
VB Leasing Poland SA is part of VB-Leasing International Holding GmbH. It is a member of the Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken association of banks. Today it is one of the leading leasing companies in Central and Eastern Europe and the leading company on the Polish market.
PROJECT DETAILS
The system allows for intuitive negotiation of financial parameters, comparison between multiple variants of hundreds of offers and simplification of this procedure by issuing automated decisions and compliance reports.

Cashback and Rewards
ABOUT
TBSeen is a startup run by 12 British female celebrities, including the founder Kate Thornton. TBSeen.com brings together money-saving deals, offers, and rewards from 500 carefully-curated brands, blended with original, entertaining and helpful content.
CHALLENGE
TBSeen is a unique start-up case. Due to celebrities bringing in followers that immediately converted to sales, the site is making money from day one. The problem was scaling up: with a London agency of just a few devs, TBSeen could not keep up with the pace of their business growth. The need to scale rapidly and within budget brought TBseen and STX Next together.
STX Next provided TBSeen with discovery workshops, a full Scrum team, full-stack development, automated testing, business analysis, continuous integration and product design services.

Sales & Marketing software for live entertainment
ABOUT
Verve (Formerly known as StreetTeam) is the world’s leading peer-to-peer sales and marketing software for live entertainment. Verve enables its customers to turn their most influential fans into ambassadors who promote their events, selling more than 300,000 tickets in 14 countries since 2012.
CHALLENGE
Verve came to us with an original product built in PHP and a long list of reasons why they wanted to switch to Python going forward, referring to it as a more modern solution. Their current development team is well-versed in PHP but not Python, so they were looking for a provider to manage development in the midterm while their own developers got up to speed on using Python.
STX Next Delivered
- A global platform that enables advocates to experience the products that they love with their friends
- A unique SaaS application for brands, campaign managers and ambassadors
- A system that builds a strong relationship between events and their fans
- Advocacy driven model that can work in almost any vertical that has a shared experience at its core

Ticket distribution platform
ABOUT
Connecting the world to tickets. Based out of Dublin, Coras allows customers to purchase tickets for any event or activity, through whatever online channel they choose.
CHALLENGE
For Coras, the challenge was releasing a working MVP of their product in a short period of time in order to secure another advance of their financing. They were looking to create an app from scratch to serve as a ticket distribution platform for cultural and entertainment events from many content providers. One of the main issues was finding a common solution for all stakeholders of the project and integrating it with one of the major European airlines.
STX Next Delivered
- 2 Full Scrum teams to meet the designated goals of the project.
- Manage the mark back of tickets from one seller to the other for both general admission and seated events
- Track ticket sales across all allocated sellers with a complete audit trail from allocation to sale
- Create events and allocate tickets to ticketing agents or through user’s ticketing system
- API that allows any ticketing system to integrate with Coras, helping to adjust the process to meet specific needs

Preprocessing automation for a visual effects
Pixomondo is an international visual effects company with a global network of studios in Los Angeles, Toronto, Stuttgart, Beijing, Vancouver, Frankfurt and Shanghai. The company is revolutionizing its industry offering visual effects production and supervision, CG character creation, 3D animation and pre-visualization for the feature film, television, and commercial industries. Among their projects are Game of Thrones, Star Trek Discovery, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., X-Men, Fast and Furious and Wonder Woman.
CHALLENGE:
Pixomondo receives video frames from their clients in different formats with different naming conventions and file structures. Each asset requires specific preprocessing which until now was done semi-automatically with console tools. Their challenge was to create a configurable desktop application with a UI for automating the preprocessing step, allowing Pixomondo to implement further image processing.
SOLUTION:
To achieve this goal, STX Next used sophisticated logic combined with regular expressions. It led the team to create a variety of unique processors dedicated to transforming the required files. All of the logic is easily configurable through a dedicated desktop application. This allowed us to retain the flexibility of console tools, but also greatly speed up batch operations and minimize the manual work behind repeatable tasks.

Transportation dispatch system
ABOUT
T Dispatch was a progressive software development company which has built a unique dispatch system for passenger transport fleets.
CHALLENGE
Due to T Dispatch’s diverse, global customer base, there was a demand for localized customer features and payment service provider integrations. The development team also had to focus on improving the performance of the overall system in order to handle an increasing number of end-users.
STX Next Delivered
- New search engine, over 10 times faster than the previous one
- Increased performance which eliminated system outages
- Security improvements related to booking and payment processes
- Integration with payment providers in 7 countries

Online cookery platform
ABOUT
Founded in 2005, Key Ingredient is based in Austin, Texas, and features more than 2 million recipes that have been shared by cooks over the years. With about 3,000,000 unique visitors per month, their largest demographic segment consists of millennial home cooks.
CHALLENGE
The website, despite its long existence, was poorly optimized for SEO and the design required some refreshment, especially on the mobile site, because the majority of the users access the website from a mobile device. Another issue was that the page loading time was highly insufficient. The code itself contained a lot of legacy code, with outdated libraries and unused features.
STX Next Delivered
- Site speed improvement (4-5x faster)
- The highest SEO ratings due to front-end, back-end, and sitemaps improvements
- Streamlined technical stack by moving categories to elastic search (removing Oracle), moving pages to site (removing Unbounce)
- Moved ad code to site for better targeting, and higher revenue (managing ads and vendor in Doubleclick)
- 4,5 TB of unused stored data cleaned
- Secure https protocol, instead of previously used http
- Fully responsive web design (still in progress)
- Food industry articles available to users
- Admin Panel, redesigned and upgraded with new tools (such as image management)
- Automated tests (Selenium, Behave) to increase site quality

Realface (Acquired by Apple in 2017)
ABOUT
RealFace was a company whose mission was to revolutionize the way people are recognized. They were creating A.I software with the aim of bringing back human perception to digital process, delivering to customers the technologies needed to connect with their consumers in the digital era. Acquired by Apple in 2017.
CHALLENGE
RealFace was looking for a tech partner who could integrate their library written in C and take over development from a previous company. Their real challenge, however, was to find developers who could understand the logic of the AI face recognition system and deal with GPUImage and the dlib face detector.
STX Next Delivered
Using the most advanced technologies in A.I, developed in-house, STX Next created a user centered authentication service. Meet the first anti-spoof application tailored for everyday use on your device.
FEATURES
- iOS and Android
- Face detection functionality
- Libraries: OpenCV, dlib
- Mp4 with av-Foundation
- Connections with Amazon S3

Fintech consulting services
ABOUT
finstreet GmbH provides consulting services to banking and financial services organizations in Germany. Their focus is on the conceptual design, as well as the development and distribution of digital products and business models.
CHALLENGE
finstreet’s biggest challenge was the race against time. They needed to create a banking application in less than 4 months. The app required fully responsive web design while providing the highest quality of user experience. At the same time, server-side app security was a top priority for this banking project.
STX Next Delivered
- 1 Full Scrum team
- Backend Development
- Frontend Development
- UI Design
- Automated Testing
- Automation of deployment processes

Strategic partner for digital commerce brands
ABOUT
FusePump is a strategic partner for brands, helping them understand and apply technology to succeed in digital commerce. Established in 2009, FusePump started by offering technology that scrapes websites and returns organized, high-quality, real-time data. In 2011, the company launched the first ever BuyNow solution which uses the same data-retrieving expertise to connect customers with live retailer prices.
CHALLENGE
The client came to us with an idea for the product’s MVP. The system needed to be easy to use and flexible enough to build different types of advertisements. The biggest challenge for FusePump was to provide a common solution for all clients who had different needs.
STX Next Delivered
- One permanent and one temporary Scrum Team available exclusively to the client
- A set of features and tools extending the basic functionalities of the platform (e.g. providing a data validation tool and a data mapping tool)
- Analysis and ideas for improvements to the development process – delivered as a workshop in the spirit of Lean process management

Online media marketing
ABOUT
Analytics, DMP and DSP solutions based on cookie-less technology. Myntelligence helps companies put their customers first, to transform these customer’s digital model into a user-centric business and manage audience buying independently.
CHALLENGE
TheOutplay was looking for a tech partner to create an MVP of their product. Their goal was to present the MVP to potential clients and investors and secure further rounds of funding. They were looking for a quick and cost-effective solution to have a presentable prototype as soon as possible.
STX Next Delivered
- User’s data visualization with interactive charts
- Ability to group unique users into segments
- Online campaigns management module
- Campaign efficiency analysis module
- Admin panel for platform management (creating accounts, managing permissions, etc.)
- “Demo account” for sales presentations purposes
- Marketplace functionality for trading the segments

Consumer finance company
ABOUT
Paze was founded on the premise of eliminating the dependency on short-term credit and encourage working people to save. It is a next-generation consumer finance company that lets customers get the money they’ve already earned without waiting for payday. Paze does this by paying customers their salary on a daily, weekly, or on-demand basis and collecting from the employer at the end of the month.
CHALLENGE
Paze needed to scale up their development team quickly while ensuring that they bring software engineers with the right skills on board. They were about to launch their service and needed more resources for support and future development.
STX Next Delivered
- Every day reports about reconciliation
- Tab for checking statuses of disbursements
- Using cards for paying installments after opt-out
- Tab for employers to manage their employees

Closed captions and video intelligence service
ABOUT
Cielo24 delivers searchable captions, media data and media intelligence for large media platform partners in the online education, enterprise, news, and entertainment markets. Their clients turn to Cielo24 to meet the growing demands on their multimedia including compliance laws, discoverability, reach and user engagement.
CHALLENGE
Due to limited internal bandwidth, Cielo24 sought a qualified technology partner to support their inhouse development team on a series of complex projects. They were looking for skilled developers who could develop and maintain their product.
STX Next Delivered
- User requirements validation
- Project scoping
- Data preparation and migration
- Custom functional development
- User Interface/User Experience
- Performance testing, maintenance and support

Pharmaceutical organization
ABOUT
KNMP (The Royal Dutch Pharmacists Association) is a Dutch umbrella organization for both professional pharmacists and the pharmacy in general. It promotes both the interests of its members and the interests of the pharmaceutical sector in the Netherlands.
CHALLENGE
The goal was to create a viable product that would help KNMP manage shortages and inform specialists about supply forecasts. The ambitious goal was to be completed within a fixed price/fixed scope project. Despite very thorough documentation, the final product needed to evolve to fit the needs of the end users.
STX Next Delivered
- A custom Content Management System that allows the management of medicine shortages
- An application design that enables the user to easily update content
- A system that quickly notifies doctors, pharmacists, and patients of the availability of a particular medicine

Online casino and sports betting
ABOUT
Based in Dublin and founded in 2012, BetBright is an online UK sports betting and gaming operator. BetBright takes an innovative and disruptive technology-based approach to winning on the product, which delivers the very best user experience possible.
CHALLENGE
With three internal teams already working on their project, BetBright found themselves with a need to scale up their development rapidly. In order to do so, they were looking for capable and affordable developers with the ability to make an immediate impact.
STX Next Delivered
- Casino “Quick Deposit” allows users to continue to deposit money during the game without interruption
- Mobile page redesign including Blog & Widgetisation allows BetBright customers to stay updated with current events
- “Recall” adds personalized bet recommendations based on the customers’ bet history. (15+% conversion)
- “Automated Bonus” feature potentially adds 10% to every new customer LTV
- Live Casino for Mobile enables users to place bets using mobile devices
Reviews
the project
Software Programming for K12 Communication Platform
"They’ve been very helpful in formalizing our processes."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the COO at Signal Kit. We provide communication services for the K–12 education space in the United States. We allow them to do mass communication for their entire school, class, students, or parents.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We wanted to expand our development capacity for software programming, at a lower cost than what we could get with resources here in the U.S. We didn’t want to hire in-house because our needs were fluctuating pretty widely at the time.
What was the scope of their involvement?
STX Next helped us better define and develop additional software features for our platform.
We have another effort with them, and they're developing our iOS and Android mobile applications. This is another option for our end users as opposed to just accessing our site. One additional feature they implemented is a performance enhancement, and another is for social media posts. For example, we can push out information and school updates via voice, SMS text, and email, as well as into the web app and on social media platforms. Their team provides software testing as well.
What is the team composition?
I worked with a salesperson, a project owner who helps secure the resources, a project manager, three developers, a UI/UX person, an auxiliary resource, and a programmer on the mobile app. We’re bringing on a dev ops resource in two weeks and another developer.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We were looking for a company that would help us bring in experienced resources, was readily available, and had a good track record at delivering on their word. We stumbled across them online. We did some research, found a lot of glowing reviews of their work, and reached out to them.
How much have you invested with them?
$75,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in June 2018 and the work is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Our team is very impressed with their work process and enjoys working with them, having developed a good sense of confidence in their work. The first piece of work they did for us was around performance. They got the job done and identified other opportunities, rather than just doing specifically what they were asked. We liked how they acted as if they were part of the team.
We had gotten kind of lazy on our process of how we develop our software. They’ve been very helpful in formalizing our processes, so we’re very happy with that.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
We’re very satisfied with the project management. We have a project manager on site there which helps since there’s such a time difference. He manages those resources and we interact with him directly as well as the developers. It’s been very helpful in managing the overall effort. We use Slack, email, GitHub, Jira, and a lot of the Atlassian ecosystems and use scrum as our overall work process.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They're pretty talented and know the technology stack that we use. They brought resources on that were very technical and savvy. They’re easy to work with and understand even though they’re far away from us in Poland. They’ve been a great group to work with and we look forward to continuing to work with them in the future.
Are there any areas they could improve?
No. They’ve been great to work with.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
I like how we secured the project manager. It’s been very helpful having a point person in charge of all the resources. I recommend leveraging that resource if you get a decent size team.
the project
Web App Dev for Sport Services Platform
“From the CTO to the developers, every individual was approachable and accessible.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Respondent 1 (Co-Founder): I’m one of the co-founders of a sports services company. We’ve created a platform that uses technology to expand sports services, particularly within the U.K. tennis industry. Our overall business model seeks to bring together all elements of the sport, from helping users find venues to looking at how people execute real-world experiences with our app.
Respondent 2 (CTO): I serve as the CTO. In my role, I focus on understanding the product needs and translating them into technical solutions.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
R2: We wanted to create a mobile responsive web app but lacked an in-house team to build it. At the time, we weren’t looking to take on anyone permanently, so we reached out to STX Next to help us design and develop our platform while still being flexible to our needs. We’ve since expanded their role into more of a long-term partnership.
What was the scope of their involvement?
R1: Initially, they conducted a discovery phase to identify our challenges, understand our problems, and set goals. Their account manager and CTO conducted a high-level review of the project to define the scope and assemble a team of qualified developers.
Together, we were able to produce strong solutions and ramped up our development efforts. Rather than just dictating technical tasks or just handing them problems to solve, it was a collaborative effort between both parties. We also engaged their design and QA testing team.
R2: I worked directly with the developers to build the web app. One of our objectives was to be accessible on a wide variety of desktop and mobile devices. However, due to time constraints on our side, we couldn’t invest in full-native development and opted for a mobile responsive design instead. That way, we could still deploy the site in the App Store down the line.
The platform itself allows users to sign up, book coaching sessions, reserve tennis courts, and invite friends. We’ve also included a subscription payment system, which lets users pay a flat rate for a certain number of bookings.
What is the team composition?
R1: In the beginning, we worked with their account manager and CTO to scope out the project. From there, we coordinated with their developers, designers, and QA testers.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
R1: Going into this project, we reviewed several candidates, including STX Next. As we’ve mentioned, we wanted a partner that could provide a long-term, sustainable development program rather than just taking on a specific piece of work.
R2: Out of all the vendors we evaluated, STX Next came with several recommendations. I interviewed each developer individually, giving an hour-long technical review to test their capabilities. I was impressed by STX Next's performance. They scored highly on the technical side and demonstrated strong soft skills, so we felt comfortable moving forward with them.
What is the status of this engagement?
R1: The initial build lasted from February–July 2018, but we’re currently in between development phases. They were able to effectively get the platform to an MVP stage, so we’re still able to run pilots and gain user feedback. However, from a business and marketing viewpoint, we’ve decided to pause the project for the time being. We would prefer to continue understanding our users and prioritizing next-level features before launching the app.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
R1: Although we haven’t launched the platform yet, we’re still running various tests to gather user feedback. This means looking at the app from a product and value proposition perspective in addition to the technology and the user experience. So far, we’ve been extremely pleased with their services. I’m confident that if we were to go live today, the app would hold up.
R2: The team delivered many of the core and sub-features, and the app works well. We’ve completed a small-scale location test to gauge the app, and test users have successfully booked coaching sessions.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
R2: Because I worked closely with them, we shared project management responsibilities. We typically used an agile methodology, working in biweekly sprints to drive development. On occasion, we would also have weekly sprints when we needed to get something out quickly.
Each week, we’d have three check-ins as well as more in-depth meetings to discuss the product. We would then take product tickets and break them down into achievable tech solutions. I was impressed at how proactive the developers were in identifying potential issues and coming up with strong technical solutions.
R1: In terms of meeting deadlines, we were under a lot of time pressure due to industry events. STX Next was able to establish a timeline estimate, accelerate through development, and adhere to our schedule.
What did you find most impressive about them?
R2: Their developers were exceptionally personable and proactive. I appreciated that they believed in what we were doing. They were just as invested on the product side as they were with the tech side, and I liked how they were able to look at the platform from a user’s perspective. This made it easy to form a good working relationship.
R1: To build on that, I’d like to stress just how personable they were. When dealing with a larger company, it can be difficult to get a high level of in-person service. However, since I occupy more of an overarching role, I interacted directly with people from several departments, including their management. From the CTO to the developers, every individual was approachable and accessible. We always felt that we could discuss anything with them.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
R1: To get the most out of their services, focus on the design before transitioning to development. They actually advised us to do this, which was the logical order, but we decided to start with a dedicated development team first and engaged the design team mid-way. As a result, it took a while for the designers to come up to speed. They handled the situation well in the end and were flexible enough to accommodate our requests.
the project
Data Entry System for Financial Market Platform
“STX Next provides a comprehensive set of skills and resources, which is helpful for a project like ours.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I'm the founder of a startup for financial markets and information. We're building our new platform from scratch.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next
At the time, we were essentially building our business from scratch. It was a fairly holistic problem; we needed to hire developers to build a data entry system. Initially, we hired two software development houses to collaborate on our project. It was an interesting dynamic because they both used slightly different practices. I'd worked with the other team previously, but STX Next was new to us. As we got closer to finishing the MVP, we decided to only move forward with STX Next. We had them manage the project on their own.
What was the scope of their involvement?
STX Next built the architecture of the underlying technology for our entire business. The full stack developers usually use Python and Node. They programmed the frontend website using either Angular or React, as well. Our product is a series of backend Mongo databases. Each one works with slightly different types of metrics. They built a form entry with spreadsheet uploading capability and a calculation engine that computes complex financial market math.
A critical part of our system is the data scraping engine. It connects to APIs from external vendors including trace APIs from Condor. The system feeds information into a data service that uses ElasticSearch. It sends queries back and forth from the frontend in the form of a REST API.
What is the team composition?
We started working with their top developer, who is exceptionally talented by any measure. The second resource we added was a bit weaker. They didn't work out, but STX Next assigned us a much more senior resource. Our first tester resigned, but we plan to hire a new one.
About six weeks ago, I took on a business analyst who's now performing the product owner role. Since then, we’ve hired another two developers with mid-level experience. We plan to add another one when our lead developer leaves at the end of the month.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We found them through a recommendation.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started our collaboration with STX Next in July 2017, and we’re still working together.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
STX Next completed everything we asked them to do. It’s a bit too early to assess how reliable of a solution they’ve developed. I don’t have the technical background to review its functionality using proper terms. A year ago, we started using the MongoDB database which wasn’t the right solution for us. This wasn’t STX Next’s decision, though; they just worked with it after the fact.
STX Next provides a comprehensive set of skills and resources, which is helpful for a project like ours. They have a strong business model and employ skilled and professional developers. The team can provide anything a client might need, from programmers, designers and testers to product owners and business analysts.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
STX Next pairs their teams with a business analyst. They prefer scrum to Kanban, at least for our website. Rather than having the developers test the product themselves or using an automated method, they manually have it tested externally.
Initially, a couple of STX Next’s contract developers worked under my internal business analyst. This paired team collaborated with my other developers. They essentially complied with directions and tried not to rock the boat. The developers from STX Next seem much happier with the new approach and have been more productive and efficient.
Regular status updates clearly indicate what’s being accomplished on a weekly basis. We’re currently running a standard project together using Jira as an organizational tool. Our communication via Google Hangouts and Slack has been excellent.
What did you find most impressive about them?
Unlike other firms I’ve worked with, they don't get hung up on theoretical concepts or on building beautiful code at the expensive of actual accomplishments. I want to see how they cope with some of the new problems we’ve given them before I’ll have a concrete answer, though.
Are there any areas they could improve?
The way they work now is a bit different than before. I felt like I had to hassle them so they’d provide us with good teams. They became quite responsive after I did so and hired new resources to meet my needs.
They’re a tightly-managed business. This is impressive for the owner, but also means they lack the spare capacity to react to urgent issues quickly. This dilemma comes with a trade-off. STX Next would be much less valuable if they had a spare person perpetually waiting around to join in on the work.
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
They work best when given projects with clear goals to work towards. When they’re given control of all aspects of a project, from product design to testing and development, clients should assess the resources they assign.
the project
Desktop Application for Loan System Platform
“STX Next is certainly a Python powerhouse.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
We are a fintech startup company enabling payday loans to employees. We provide mobile apps to companies that allow their employees to manage their loans. Through the mobile apps, users can request loans, and companies can manage and approve or deny those loans.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We wanted to start things quickly. We had a product manager and product analyst in-house, but we didn’t have a CTO or in-house IT team.
What was the scope of their involvement?
I was considering Python as the base language for our application, which is why STX Next came up on my radar. The desktop version uses the Python Django framework, and the app was built for Android since our customer primarily uses Android phones.
We have an internal product team. We built some low-fidelity wireframes for both backend and mobile apps, but we also asked STX Next to propose a new design and build high-fidelity wireframe of the mobile app.
What is the team composition?
We had a team of eight people from STX Next, including five developers, two QA resources, and a product owner. At the moment, we are only using three developers totaling six resources.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We went to a couple of companies including STX Next and requested their feedback, proposals, and offers. STX Next was able to start quickly and could provide a full team solution for us.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with STX Next in late October 2017. The infrastructure of the system is mostly complete and went for alpha testing with live clients at the end of April 2018. The project is still ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We just launched a beta release of the product, so we only have a couple of companies onboard and seven companies still in testing mode.
The mobile app was slightly challenging at the beginning as we opted for a relatively new language, React Native, but the backend development went smoothly.
STX Next focused a lot on QA, so we didn’t encounter many bugs in their work. Some of those were misunderstandings, given that we come from different cultures. The issues were minimal compared to some of our previous projects as we have communication with the product owner almost daily. There have been setbacks at some points, but we are satisfied with their work in general.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
We had a huge setback at the beginning as the product owner assigned to us suddenly quit his job. However, our service delivery manager was very responsive and immediately attended to this issue and amazingly, they managed to get another person for the project in such a short time. We’ve been working with her so far, and she has been a wonderful addition to the team.
We don’t engage them with clear-cut requirements like typical scope-based projects. We work together more like an internal team, so we engage agile methodology and define our sprint goal based on ever-changing business requirements. In terms of sprint achievements, we are stabilizing but I believe that we can still do better.
We collaborate with the help of tools like JIRA, Confluence, GitHub, Slack, and Hangouts.
What did you find most impressive about them?
STX Next’s approach has been very different from other companies. Previously, we worked on a time and materials basis with requirements being set up front. With STX Next, we wanted a fully dedicated team, and they assigned one to us. I haven’t experienced any problems with this approach as we communicate regularly, and they have a service delivery manager who has been in contact with us in case of any issues. STX Next is certainly a Python powerhouse.
Are there any areas they could improve?
They do not differentiate between junior and senior developer costs. Hence, it may not be cost-efficient for projects that consist of more trivial tasks.
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
They are a great company to work together with especially if you know what to expect in managing a dedicated team and how they work.
the project
In-House Software Support for Gaming Firm
“[T]hey’re highly qualified technically.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
Ricky Kaare: Unity is a global game engine developer.
Diego Campos: We’re a 1,500-developer software company, with most of us based in the U.S. and Copenhagen, Denmark.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
RK: We had some internal systems being used for maintaining our development organization. Some of those needed to be modernized or have new versions created. We needed to still keep the old versions running while we were building the new generation of tools. STX Next came into play when we wanted to focus on building our new tools, while outsourcing the maintenance of the old tools.
What was the scope of their involvement?
DC: Our product is older and open-source, so they came into play for the maintenance of it. It’s still operational and has an active user base. They’ve been working on a continuous integration tool for the past months. The whole stack is based on Python. They’re maintaining the server code and some of the machine code where we run test builds for our software. They also performed code reviews.
Our main development team is working on the new version, while STX Next is exclusively maintaining the older version.
What is the team composition?
DC: We’ve had a few changes of personnel since the beginning. We currently have two Python software developers whom we communicate with every day. We also interact with their boss, who coordinates the team.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
RK: The decision was made before we were onboarded to the project.
What is the status of this engagement?
DC: We started working with them in October 2017, when we had a different team.
RK: We onboarded the current developers in January and February of 2018.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
DC: We’re satisfied with the team we have now. They became productive much faster than I expected, given that there was a lot to catch up on. They quickly knew exactly what they were doing, investigating and learning new items by themselves.
Overall, they’re highly qualified technically. They know what they’re doing in terms of Python and its services. Python is one of their key proficiencies.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
DC: I’m happy with their approach to managing the work. The actual project management is still happening on our side. I coordinate the project, helping them figure out which tasks are more important. They’re taking on more responsibility as we go, and after they have enough experience, we want them to take over the management. The engagement is still mostly local for now.
We had them working in the Kanban system, keeping a list of the most important tasks that they finish on their own time. I’m happy with their velocity. It hasn’t taken too long to do one particular thing or another, but I can’t really talk about scheduling or commitments. We communicate with the developers through video chat for standup meetings or through Slack messaging. They also use our task boards. We have catch-up meetings once every two weeks.
What did you find most impressive about them?
DC: We’ve seen an infinite-percent improvement, considering that we didn’t have anything in place before.
I was impressed with how quickly they were able to familiarize themselves with the project and learn how to move around in it. It’s quite a messy, old bit of code. I’m also happy with their way of doing code reviews, and with their Python code in general. It’s clearly being written by people with a level of expertise in that language.
RK: Their work has also helped us focus on important projects.
Are there any areas they could improve?
DC: We’re currently happy with how things are going. They’re well on-track to get to where we want to be and I wouldn’t say that there’s anything we need to change.
We didn’t have a proper QA process defined around our work in the beginning. We had some trouble getting started, but the same would have happened if we were writing the software instead of them. That problem is solved now.
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
DC: Clients need to give them as much freedom as they need. Some people have preferred processes and preferred ways to do things but they seem to be covering all our needs.
RK: In general, when working with external teams, it’s important to set aside the necessary time to bring them in-sync with the rest of the team. In our case, we had status calls in the morning and kept a chat channel open for questions and dialogue.
the project
Web Dev. for Online Buddhist Library
“STX was happy to personalize the project according to our needs and plans.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I run an organization called SuttaCentral, a small nonprofit that hosts Buddhist scriptures. We have analytic and translation tools to help present and convey the texts in a straightforward and dignified way that makes them available to everyone.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We’ve had a website since 2005, and our internal dev team recently began rebuilding it. We created all the templates and details, but we realized we needed more help.
What was the scope of their involvement?
We explained our goals and plans to STX then they did the backend in Python and database in ArangoDB. We keep basic data in JSON files to feed into ArangoDB and use a translation software for the texts.
We built the site in Polymer, which is relatively unknown, but it lets us leverage the web components and build our Progressive Web App (PWA). That was one of our most important criteria because a PWA means we don’t have to build independent apps. It also allows our users, who are mostly in developing countries and use mobile devices, to run the site while offline.
What is the team composition?
STX provided two programmers, a tester, and a project manager.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We found them on Clutch. STX dealt with the kinds of technologies we use, and they seemed to be a reasonable price, so we got in touch. From the beginning, they were friendly, welcoming, and willing to listen to us. A lot of companies just want to do things their way, but STX was happy to personalize the project according to our needs and plans.
How much have you invested with them?
We spent around $150,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We worked together from October 2017–March 2018.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
People like the site—it’s received a lot of positive feedback. As with every large project that uses cutting-edge technology, it has a few bugs, but we’ve worked closely with customers to fix them.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
They implemented an agile methodology, which was helpful. They listened to what we wanted and developed a plan accordingly. We modified the process as the project proceeded, which showed that they were paying attention to our progress. We used Jira and Slack to communicate and had daily meetings.
What did you find most impressive about them?
They’re highly professional and talented. Their process for reviewing code and team management were much better than any other firm we’ve worked with. We learned a lot from STX; we’d never done a project like this, so they taught us useful techniques and methodologies.
We could tell that STX cared about our project and wanted to do their best—it wasn’t like working with a big, faceless corporation. They weren’t afraid to make suggestions to improve the product, so it really felt like we were a team. We got along well and looked forward to our daily meetings.
Are there any areas they could improve?
No, I can't think of anything.
the project
Python Dev for Currency Exchange Platform
"They own projects, show responsibility over the work, and deliver the best possible results."
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I am the founder of a cryptocurrency exchange platform.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We were looking to outsource our IT development. We had been using an in-house team for the past four years, but we needed to scale up our efforts.
The cryptocurrency market fluctuates highly, making it hard to guess what will happen next. We saw such a period near the end of 2017, and increased our team size dramatically to keep up with demand.
What was the scope of their involvement?
STX Next is our company’s outsourced IT department. They specialize exclusively in Python, which is the language we use for our platform. They’ve also provided cloud-infrastructure DevOps services, frontend development services, and quality assurance.
What is the team composition?
They have provided resources for all aspects of the software development lifecycle, including developers, project managers, and QA testers. We started with a team of 5 people, and increased to 15 after three months. We now have 10 developers, two QA testers, a project manager, a Scrum Master, and a DevOps specialist. We also have a key account representative on their side.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
I was overwhelmed by our lack of resources and the amount of work to be done. I found STX Next after looking for software houses on Google. They were close to my location, so I visited their office. I found that their senior- and junior-level developers had good experience in Python. After a few meetings, we started working together.
How much have you invested with them?
We’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on their work.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with STX Next in September 2017. The project is ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
Previously, our system could only serve 300 concurrent users. STX Next did extensive work that increased that number to 5,000. This was immediately reflected in our revenue, increasing it tenfold.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
They always responded quickly to our scaling needs, and provided us the correct resources. They’ve managed the project internally using Jira and other tracking tools. They also utilize some state-of-the-art software development tools outside of infrastructural components. We use Telegram for communication, which is my choice. We usually call each other with WhatsApp, but we use Google Hangouts and email as well. We have also visited them in Poland.
What did you find most impressive about them?
We had worked with a local company before, but their quality of service and responsiveness were nowhere near what we’ve gotten from STX Next. It’s been a completely different experience.
They behave as a part of our company. They own projects, show responsibility over the work, and deliver the best possible results. STX Next stands out by acting as an internal IT department.
Are there any areas they could improve?
The cost could be lower.
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
Software development is an open-ended task, so the customer needs to focus on maximizing the benefits of a partnership. STX Next also offers this kind of involvement. I didn’t have the time to give them a lot of information about our project in the beginning. I simply gave them the code, and they constantly pushed me for more information after that.
the project
Data Integration for Software Product Firm
“Their team contributed a significant amount to critical projects, excellent work..”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there
I’m the CTO and co-founder of a software product firm. We make compliance software for the financial industry to handle a number of functions: know your customer, anti-money laundering, and enhanced due diligence.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We were looking to expand our technical capacity quickly to handle client demands, to avoid the lead time the typical hiring process has. We initially outsourced the integration of several data providers and the build-out of the Python framework used to do so. This lent itself to outsourcing as we could provide clear specifications for the integrations. Later in our engagement, the team worked on the core product, working on features with our on-site development team.
What was the scope of their involvement?
STX Next worked on various data integration and other projects relating to our software products. We would provide specifications for data integrations, including how these sources were to be queried and how the resulting data should be displayed and then send. When disparity was found between what the external providers produced and what specifications stated they would identify possible alterations and verify it with our PM team. We worked with them to establish the types of data we wanted to use to ensure that we were working towards the same expectations.
Some of the more complicated integrations included writing non-trivial data processing pipelines, data cleansing, full-text indexing for which STX build a framework for handling integrations consistently, which highlighted some good product and architectural understanding from the dev team and some great management from the more senior developers.
After trialling them with the integrations project we included them in development of other aspects of the product including frontend work with AngularJS and ReactJS, adding new functionality or updating existing work.
We have a tech and QA team here, so we tried to include STX as much as possible in meetings when appropriate. It’s difficult to come up with a perfect specification, but what really helped was making communication as easy as possible and including them in our normal communication channels.
What is the team composition?
We worked with around six developers and one QA in total. We started off with two developers (one senior and one junior) to integrate them with our team, who both ended up being really effective. We then increased this to four developers and one QA. We didn’t have any STX Project/Product Managers/Owners but rather kept that in-house.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
We did quite a lot of research searching various outsourcing sites such as Upwork among others eventually we found STX.
How much have you invested with them?
We spent around $200,000.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working with them in February 2017 and finished our work this past Wednesday.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
I don’t have any specific metrics on hand but the STX developers were integral to the success of projects we have had with two of our biggest clients.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
In-house product managers and developers interacted directly with the STX developers on a daily basis, they were included in our internal Slack channel, we communicated with them via Google Hangouts, included them in our GitHub organization from which we were handling task management. This seemed to work well and didn’t require much change to the standard in-house approach.
What did you find most impressive about them?
The quality and experience of some of the developers were invaluable. I was impressed how much they can act as a force multiplier to both the STX and the in-house development teams.
Are there any areas they could improve?
As mentioned above, it was impressive how much team composition in terms of senior and junior developers can change the dynamics and productivity, there is probably some efficiency gains to be made there.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
If you are considering a team consisting of more than 2/3 of developers consider a manager as well. We choose not to which required non-trivial organization on our side which will be exacerbated by for instance timezone differences.
Initially, we got the team over for a week which really helped build the relationship so I’d suggest doing this if you're going to be working with them for any length of time.
the project
Python Support for Information & Communication Technology Firm
“They really maintain the relationship and work professionally.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
I’m the CTO at a small agency called Fluid within the global firm Wunderman. We do all the digital and marketing work for South Africa’s largest telecommunications company.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We needed to rebuild a website that was built by another agency using Python and Django. We don’t offer Python ourselves. Our long-term plan is to redevelop the site in a technology we work in and we needed Python development specialists.
What was the scope of their involvement?
They’re developing the entire website taking over existing sites. They have full control over the source code, developing new features and fixing bugs. They do continuous deployments every second week to release those fixes and new enhancements.
The website is a beast. They’ve dealt with various tricky challenges, including things that go wrong on the live side that they have to debug. They aim to have the new website done by September of this year but I foresee at least another 12 months of work.
What is the team composition?
We work with two account managers, a scrum master, a lead developer, and other developers including a QA.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
Someone else at Wunderman referred me to them. He may have gotten their details from another office of ours because I believe they work for Wunderman in other countries. We work with a few other companies who know technologies that we don’t do. They were likely indexed or listed as the supplier of choice when he referred them to me.
How much have you invested with them?
We're paying roughly $25,000 a month so we’ve spent about $100,000 so far.
What is the status of this engagement?
We started working together in August 2017 and it's ongoing.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
I’ve heard feedback from the client that these guys are better programmers than the previous company. From my personal perspective, they’re very thorough. This client is high pressure. Everything is urgent. They’ll be on vacation but asking when they can see something. Even with that pressure, STX won’t pass something if they haven't quality assured it and are happy with the output themselves. I really appreciate that.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
Communication is good and frequent. We meet with the entire development team every day. We have a daily stand-up using Google Hangouts, Skype, or another video technology. We speak to the scrum master every other day. I also have a weekly call with the account managers to check on the status and health of the relationship. We talk about any issues or improvements he can suggest. We always know where we stand with them.
We use Atlassian tools including Jira, Hipchat, and Bitbucket. All bugs and announcements get assigned a ticket through Jira. We use Hipchat to communicate and that is linked to the tickets. Everything is managed and we all have access to the same systems.
Working and enforcing the agile way has worked really well. We're not working with a project manager per se but, with the scrum master and just the general communication, I think they're very thorough.
What did you find most impressive about them?
The way of working. Everybody tends to be agile, have scrum masters, and those kinds of things. But they're the first company I've worked with to actually enforce the process. They’re working via the proper agile methodology. They insisted that we have a scrum master on the project. We have someone who checks in every week on the relationship and wants to know if there are any problems they need to solve. They really maintain the relationship and work professionally.
Are there any areas they could improve?
The only negative that's come out from a client perspective is that we’d like to see better turnaround time. We tend to spend a lot of time on certain issues. That being said, we also know that this website is very complicated in the way that it was built. When they got the code to begin with, they did a review. The quality of the code that they received was a -13.8 of 10. The website is in really bad shape. As they develop, they continuously try to improve, stabilize, and reflect the code. In their defense, that’s why it takes time. But if they could deliver a little bit faster, that would always be appreciated.
Do you have any advice for potential customers?
No real advice. They were very good, easily on-boarded, and really just a pleasure to work with.
the project
Modernized Legacy Tool for Entertainment Business
“We’re getting more worth for our money due to STX Next’s contribution.”
the reviewer
the review
A Clutch analyst personally interviewed this client over the phone. Below is an edited transcript.
Introduce your business and what you do there.
We’re a global network of studios providing visual effects for movies. We have locations in Los Angeles, Toronto, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Vancouver, Beijing, and Shanghai where we produce visual effects for feature films, commercials, and visual effects. I’m the global head of pipeline, which is a specific type of software development department in the visual effects realm.
What challenge were you trying to address with STX Next?
We are a small team of 5–10 developers, and sometimes have needs which we can’t provide. We were looking to outsource some development work, and needed experienced Python developers who could help us build a tool. This was our first experience with outsourcing.
What was the scope of their involvement?
STX Next worked on an in-house, proprietary tool. We provided them with user stories, mockups, and some specific technical requirements in regards to style and the highly-flexible architecture of the underlying framework. They came up with a well-structured plan, made suggestions around our architecture, and provided extensive user testing.
They utilized the PySide framework to build a UI based on our requirements, which were specific to visual effects. The entire tool was written in Python.
The first iteration didn’t take very long to complete, and consisted of recoding existing functionalities as well as adding new ones. This included the UI that STX Next built, which is something we haven’t had before. We’ve discussed undertaking a second phase and extending the functionalities.
What is the team composition?
We had a 5-week project for which we used 3 resources from their team, including a lead developer and a tester.
How did you come to work with STX Next?
I approached the problem looking for reliable groups who could deliver more than just freelance developers. We wanted to build an ongoing relationship with a company so that we could go to them regularly with issues. I asked a couple of ex-colleagues in the industry, but information about outsourcing work is not very open, since the software we build has to be highly-integrated into proprietary tools.
I researched numerous places on the internet and came across Clutch, which proved to be very helpful. We approached 3 companies from that site, got a couple quotes, and had some discussions regarding scope. We took some time figuring out who we wanted to hire, and eventually found STX Next to be the best fit.
How much have you invested with them?
The cost of the project was between €16,000–€25,000 [U.S. $19,000–$30,000].
What is the status of this engagement?
We started in mid-July 2017, and concluded the project in the third week of August.
What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?
We previously had a command-line interface, but the new one is nicer to use because the user experience is much better. The important factor for us was that the architecture be flexible, and the plug-in-based system STX Next came up with has helped extend functionalities even further in the future. In our work, we have quite high demand around the application systems used for different shows. We’ve used the platform in very different ways, and have been able to dispose of the old tool.
We’ve used the tool for some high-level shows across different locations, including Los Angeles, Toronto, and Frankfurt. The tool does the job much better than the one we had before, and has saved us a lot of time.
We found the architecture to be so good that we’ve started extracting it into libraries which we can use with other in-house tools. This ultimately means we’re getting more worth for our money due to STX Next’s contribution. We’ve had a couple of technical requirements which called for the tool to be highly flexible, but I hadn’t really thought of reusing the code. It was a pleasant surprise.
How did STX Next perform from a project management standpoint?
The project length was 5 weeks, and we kept it short because it was our first time working with an outsourced company. We wanted to work through an Agile process in order to come up with something we could hopefully use. Requirements in the visual effects area can be quite specific, and we wanted to make sure we didn’t spend too much money on the first try. We were ultimately happy with STX Next, and plan to do more work with them in the future.
Communication was one of the things they handled specifically well. They were always quick to respond, even when we didn’t communicate everything we wanted very well. They always reached out to ask questions, and then went back to work.
There was a time difference between us of about 6 hours, but it worked out well. We had a 2-hour overlap, and we also have a German office, which made it a bit easier.
We had a main communication tool in order to keep the process formal, but they also reached out to us on Skype for quick questions or decisions.
What did you find most impressive about them?
I was surprised with how well the collaboration worked.
Are there any areas they could improve?
We demanded a couple of things, but not everything we should have, which was a problem on our side.
For example, we should’ve tried to integrate it into our existing in-house environment earlier in the process. The testing was done in week 4, and it should have been done in weeks 2 or 3. We should’ve used STX Next more as an in-house team instead of giving them small bits of work, and then waiting for the results. Again, this has more to do with how I approached the process. Their team asked for information and showed us their progress on a weekly basis, but we should've actually attempted to get the code into our system, given the small issues which came up later.
Do you have any advice for future clients of theirs?
Everything depends on the kind of relationship the client is looking for. In our case, it wasn’t a matter of the internal team being completely clueless on the technical end. We actually have developers who know what they’re doing. Generally, we know programming, and only used STX Next as an extended workforce. The model worked quite well, but I’m unsure how it would work for someone with no technical personnel in-house.
We were able to write down user stories and create a mockup for the UI. Much of the conceptual work was done on our end. If there is an in-house technical department on the client’s end, they should definitely be more involved from the beginning. It helps a lot.
Their team works smoothly and professionally, with a clean work process and efficient project management systems. They communicate effectively, despite a large geographical and time difference, and have demonstrated their thorough technical knowledge.