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Last Published:
08 August 2026
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Quick answer: The ten companies below are Imaginary Cloud, Developers Dev, Brocoders, CloudFlex, Riseapps, Integris, 3 Sided Cube, Sigma Software Group, Digiryte, and IT Path Solutions. Every one holds a Clutch rating of 4.8 or higher across at least 20 verified reviews and has traded for three years or more. We scored all ten on the same six criteria: engineering capability, industry experience, strategic fit, cost, adaptability, and client support. The right choice is rarely the cheapest; it is the partner that can carry your product past its first release.
Disclosure: Imaginary Cloud publishes this ranking and appears in it at number one. The scoring method is set out in full further down, the analysis is not sponsored, and we have kept a provider we do not compete with in the list, flagged as out of scope, rather than quietly filtering the field to flatter ourselves. Judge the reasoning on its merits.
This list is for executives buying software product engineering, not day-to-day IT support. The two are sold under the same three letters but are different purchases: a development company builds and evolves a product, while a managed IT provider keeps infrastructure you already own from falling over. One entry, Integris, sits on the managed side; we have kept it in and flagged it, and explain the distinction in full below. What decides the choice is not price. It is whether your partner can carry the product past its first release, when the specification shifts and your original assumptions quietly stop holding.
Ratings and review counts throughout are published on Clutch, which verifies client reviews before listing them. Imaginary Cloud's profile is here. Each competitor rating links to its Clutch profile, and those figures should be confirmed against the live listing at publish rather than taken as fixed.
Best suited for: scale-ups and enterprises.
Brief description: Imaginary Cloud designs and builds web and mobile products for scale-ups and enterprises, and audits products built by somebody else. The process behind that work is the Partner Fit Checklist further down this page, applied from the supplier side.
The team has worked with organisations across sectors since 2010, and has been named to the Clutch 1000 list of top global B2B companies for 2024 and 2025, listed in the Financial Times 1000: Europe's Fastest Growing Companies in 2025, certified to ISO 9001, awarded Digital Transformation Enabler of the Year 2024, and certified as a Great Place to Work.
Services: Product ideation, covering digital transformation, digital acceleration, scoping sessions, the product design process, and MVP definition. An MVP, or minimum viable product, is the smallest release that tests your core assumption on real users. Product development, covering web and mobile development, artificial intelligence, and UX/UI design. Product improvement, covering code audit and UX audit. A code audit is a structured read of an existing codebase, its tests, and its delivery pipeline, usually run before you decide whether to extend or rebuild.
Technologies: React, Next.js, Angular, Vue, Webflow, Ruby on Rails, Node, Python, Django, React Native, Flutter, AWS, Azure, Google Cloud.
Key clients: Neom, Advania, Eurofound, Nokia, Sage, Ernst and Young, BNP Paribas, TravelWiFi, JingaLife, Elsa, Trust Portal, Remax, Environment Intelect.
Proof in practice: the Pulsar Helium build shows the product design process and Webflow work described above; UNUA shows a combined web and mobile product, an iPad app and a back-office app, replacing a manual workflow; G7FX shows a full build run with development and project management in one team; and NotaryCam shows delivery in a regulated setting. The Flipped Normals migration, a marketplace re-platformed off WordPress and moved to AWS in two months and then developed continuously after launch, is the closest match to the continuity thesis this article is built on.
Reviews: 4.9 stars on Clutch from 34 reviews (Clutch profile).
Feedback: "They always deliver on time and are very responsive to changes in scope"; "The team delivered on time and within budget, ultimately helping accelerate the overall process. Moreover, their team members were outstanding"; "We've worked with several developers, but Imaginary Cloud is the only partner that does what they say they'll do."
Methodology: Agile.Location: London, United Kingdom.
Company size: 50 to 249.
Founded in: 2010.
Price range: $50 to $99 / hr.
Culture and values: Process-oriented and technical, working with experienced Europe-based developers across a range of industries. Digital acceleration with a lean mindset, which means shorter cycles and earlier releases instead of a long upfront specification. Transparent communication, project management, and budgeting. Strong ownership of the work, so the team that scopes your product is the team that stays with it through delivery.
Brief description: Developers Dev builds CMS, ERP, CRM, and e-commerce systems, plus web and mobile applications.
Delivery runs from a team of more than 1000 people in India, with a commercial base in San Jose, California, and prices below $25 an hour. That combination suits a build you can specify up front. Less so the exploratory kind.
Services: CMS solutions, ERP and CRM solutions, e-commerce solutions, software development, mobile app development, front-end and back-end development, UI/UX design.
Key clients: past and present work includes eBay, Nokia, and Mannatech. Confirm the current client list before publish, as some named references date back several years.
Reviews: 5.0 stars on Clutch from 39 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "Their reactivity and flexibility are notable"; "I had a really positive experience working with Developers Dev"; "They've done a great job."
Location: San Jose, CA, United States. Development team: India.
Company size: 1000 to 9999.
Founded in: 2005.
Price range: under $25 / hr.
Brief description: Brocoders was founded in 2014 and has grown into a team of programmers, managers, marketing specialists, content managers, and designers who work together on delivery.
Its completed work includes web apps, mobile apps, back-end services, scripts, and websites, across products in helpdesk, statistics, e-learning, real estate, and social networking.
Services: Custom software development, SaaS team augmentation, UX/UI design, cloud architecture and DevOps services, software testing, IT strategy consulting. DevOps is the practice of joining development and operations so releases become automated and repeatable. Team augmentation means adding contracted engineers to your own team rather than handing over a whole project.
Technologies: Backend, Node.js; frontend, React.js; DevOps and cloud architecture, AWS, Google Cloud, Azure; cross-platform mobile application development, React Native, Flutter; AI integration and chatbot development.
Key clients: Gokada, EveryPig, MyCurrency, Backbone International, Skilent.
Reviews: 5.0 stars on Clutch from 30 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "The Brocoders team has fully adapted to our schedule and is always available"; "With Brocoders, we were able to set up a highly skilled IT team in the shortest amount of time"; "They worked very closely together with our team and were involved in our planning processes."
Location: London, United Kingdom. Development team: Ukraine.
Company size: 50 to 249.
Founded in: 2014.
Price range: $25 to $49 / hr.
Brief description: CloudFlex is a 10 to 49 person team that builds complex multi-component systems from scratch through to launch, for startups and established businesses alike.
It is the smallest firm on this list, with one client named publicly. That makes it a closer fit for a single focused build than for a long programme running across several teams.
Services: Data science and AI systems development, mobile app development, web app development, ongoing technical support, discovery-stage business analysis, UX/UI design, custom software development, staff augmentation.
Key clients: Yaza.
Reviews: 5.0 stars on Clutch from 22 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "CloudFlex has various capabilities, so we don't need to hire multiple vendors"; "They had a deeper well of knowledge than most people I'd spoken with in this space"; "CloudFlex went further than we expected."
Location: London, United Kingdom. Development team: Ukraine.
Company size: 10 to 49.
Founded in: 2018.
Price range: $25 to $49 / hr.
Brief description: Riseapps is a full-cycle product development company working with startups, SMEs, and enterprise vendors. It either builds tailored solutions from scratch or takes an existing product and pushes it closer to product-market fit through new functionality and scaled infrastructure.
Services: Custom software development, development team augmentation, AI and ML engineering, product re-engineering and support, product consulting and audit.
Key clients: past and present work includes Nikon, Fit20, Viemed, and Bolt. Confirm current references before publish.
Reviews: 4.9 stars on Clutch from 54 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "They seamlessly integrated into our team"; "They were highly responsive to our needs"; "They were working according to the timeline, delivering high-quality code, and proposing improvements."
Location: Lake Mary, United States. Development team: Estonia.
Company size: 50 to 249.
Founded in: 2016.
Price range: $25 to $49 / hr.
Brief description: Integris is a national managed IT provider offering managed IT services, cybersecurity, cloud, compliance support, and strategic consulting for small and midsize businesses, delivered by local teams backed by national scale. It is ISO 27001 and ISO 42001 certified.
It earns a place here because it ranks highly on Clutch for managed IT services in the United States. Note the difference in scope, though. Integris runs and secures the systems you already have, so it is not a comparable option for a product build, and its hourly band reflects managed service work rather than development.
Services: Managed IT services, managed cybersecurity, cloud services, compliance support, IT strategy consulting, and a managed AI workspace.
Key clients: community banks, law firms, manufacturers, and other regulated small and midsize businesses. Integris does not feature a single flagship client publicly, so confirm any named reference before publish.
Reviews: [confirm current star rating] stars on Clutch from around 93 reviews (Clutch profile).
Feedback: "Their knowledge base is impressive"; "I would give Integris almost perfect scores regarding their responsiveness"; "They're patient and know when to escalate."
Location: national provider with offices across the United States, headquarters in Cranbury, New Jersey.
Company size: 250 to 999.
Founded in: see note below.
Price range: $150 to $199 / hr.
Brief description: 3 Sided Cube builds mobile and web products for charities, NGOs, and other impact-driven organisations, including the American Red Cross, UNHCR, and UNESCO.
The company reports that its partners' products have reached communities in over 87 countries and have been downloaded more than 100 million times. Its work has been recognised with a Lovie from the Lovie Awards, a Digital Impact award, and multiple Webbys.
The team works with impact-driven organisations at every stage of the project lifecycle, including product scoping, user testing, design and UX, build, launch, and continuing support.
Services: iOS, Android, and React Native app development; web app and website development; voice and Alexa skill development; bot and AI development; UI/UX app and web design; mobile strategy; prototyping and concept development; product and software design.
Key clients: American Red Cross, UNHCR, Global Forest Watch, UNESCO, World Resources Institute, LUSH, Global Commons Alliance, British Red Cross.
Reviews: 4.9 stars on Clutch from 40 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "3 Sided Cube is always highly communicative and delivers things when they say they will"; "They're a passionate, enthusiastic, and young team"; "We had confidence that their work would make sense from every perspective."
Location: Washington, DC, United States.
Company size: 50 to 249.
Founded in: 2009.
Price range: $100 to $149 / hr.
Brief description: Sigma Software is a group of around 2000 IT specialists based in Sweden, the United States, Poland, and Ukraine, working on customer business problems since 2002.
Services: Software product development, custom software solutions and applications development, IT consulting and digital transformation, support and maintenance, big data solutions and data engineering, research and development in extended reality, artificial intelligence, and IoT. IoT, the internet of things, means connected physical devices that send and receive data.
Key clients: Volvo, Scania, Knorr-Bremse, AstraZeneca, Scandinavian Airlines.
Reviews: 4.9 stars on Clutch from 32 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "Sigma Software Group meets our requirements"; "We were assigned a great team"; "The quality of their resources makes them stand out."
Location: New York, NY, United States. Development team: Ukraine.
Company size: 1000 to 9999.
Founded in: 2002.
Price range: $50 to $99 / hr.
Brief description: Digiryte builds apps and digital products against business goals, and works with founders bringing new ideas into established industries.
Its speciality is designing mobile and web app user experiences.
Services: Mobile application development, web application development, full product development, MVP development, product design and prototyping, product scaling, code and UX audit, digital transformation, machine learning.
Key clients: NHS, Channel 4, Close Brothers, Hinch Property Management, Queen Mary University of London, Marriott, Hilton, GNC.
Reviews: 4.8 stars on Clutch from 43 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "Digiryte is always forthcoming with the best way to do things"; "The Digiryte team has essentially read my mind and brought my vision to life"; "I have found Digiryte to be flexible and trustworthy throughout the project."
Location: Manchester, United Kingdom. Development team: India.
Company size: 50 to 249.
Founded in: 2016.
Price range: $25 to $49 / hr.
Brief description: IT Path Solutions is a technology consulting and solution development company with offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, and India.
It works across web and mobile development, product engineering, and cloud migration, with delivery run from India and the lowest price band on this list.
Services: Custom web and mobile app development, startup and enterprise product engineering, AI, IoT, and blockchain apps, cloud consulting and migration.
Key clients: Digital Civic, E Citizen.
Reviews: 4.8 stars on Clutch from 27 reviews (Clutch directory).
Feedback: "I liked that they were responsive enough at our convenient time"; "The workflow is collaborative, effective, and timely"; "They're quick in completing their tasks"; "We loved their support even on the changes I required, and nothing was any trouble at all."
Location: Harrow, United Kingdom. Development team: India.
Company size: 50 to 249.
Founded in: 2012.
Price range: under $25 / hr.
Think of it the way you would think about hiring a builder for a house you fully intend to extend. The first release is the shell, and almost anyone can put up a shell. What you are really buying is whether the foundations will take a second storey, and whether the people who poured them will still be on site when you want one.
This is the checklist we use ourselves when scoping work, and the same one behind the ranking above. Score each candidate out of 5 on the six criteria, weighted as shown. More often than not, the shortlist then resolves itself.
Two observations from running code audits on existing products, which is where we most often meet a previous vendor's work. The first: the problems are rarely in the code that was written. They are in what was never written, usually tests and deployment automation, because those are the first items cut when a fixed price starts to squeeze. This is also why so much software disappoints against its plan. Long-running industry research such as the Standish Group's CHAOS reports has shown for years that a large share of software projects run over budget, run late, or deliver less than was promised.
The second observation is about why partnerships end. It is seldom a missed deadline. It is a partner who could build the first version but could not carry the second, because the people who understood the decisions had already moved on. No foundations, no second storey. Weight continuity accordingly.
The checklist above sets the weights. This section gives you the question to ask behind each one.
1. Technological expertise. Ask what the team has kept current on, and how. A credible answer names specific technologies and recent work, not a list of trends. Certifications from established vendors do show investment in skills, though they say more about the company than about the engineers you will actually get, so ask who those engineers are and what they have shipped. Then look through the portfolio for work where the technical choice was not obvious, and ask why it was made.
2. Industry experience. A partner who has worked in your sector already knows its bottlenecks and its regulations, which shortens discovery and cuts the odds of a compliance problem surfacing late. Ask for case studies from the same field, and for references you can actually ring. Where a sector carries specific rules, healthcare, finance, or education, ask which of those rules they have built against and what it changed in the design.
3. Strategic fit. The right partner understands where you are taking the business, not just the feature list. Check that their technical roadmap supports the growth you are planning, that they raise problems before those problems escalate, and that they will adjust scope when the market moves. Cultural fit matters more here than it sounds like it should. The work runs through hundreds of small conversations, and mismatched working styles show up as delay.
4. Cost efficiency. Look for pricing written down without hidden extras, and compare on value rather than rate. The bands in the table above span $25 to $199 an hour, and the cheapest option is rarely the cheapest outcome once rework, supervision, and delay are counted. Ask what scales with your growth and what does not, and whether the agreement lets you change team size without reopening everything.
5. Adaptability. Ask for a project where the requirements changed halfway through, and listen for what the team did rather than how they felt about it. Same with incidents. A breach or a hardware failure is a fair test of whether the backup plan exists on paper or in practice, and scalable service packages beat a fixed monthly retainer whenever your own volumes are uncertain.
6. Client support and satisfaction. Check availability, response times, and what the service level agreement commits to. An SLA, or service level agreement, sets out response and resolution times and what happens if they are missed. Beyond that document, high client retention and named references are the signals worth trusting, along with whether the provider tells you about maintenance and risks before you notice them yourself.
Four things, and none of them arrive automatically.
Capability without hiring: you get design, engineering, and DevOps skills at the point you need them, without the recruitment cycle or the fixed payroll. This is the main reason scale-ups use a partner for a first product and hire in-house later.
Speed to a working release: an established team has its pipeline, testing, and deployment already built, so your first release does not wait on infrastructure decisions. That is where most of the time saving sits. Not in raw coding speed.
Shared delivery risk: a partner brings security practice, compliance experience, and a track record of shipping. Where that experience is real, it removes a whole class of problem you would otherwise discover yourself.
Capacity that flexes: team size can move with the roadmap, which matters most in the year after launch, when demand is least predictable.
Every one of these depends on the partner being the right one. A poor fit reverses all four.
Rates across this list run from under $25 an hour to $199 an hour. That is a spread of roughly eight times for work that can look identical in a proposal. The gap is mostly seniority, location, and how much of the delivery process comes with the team: at the lower end you are buying hands and supplying the management yourself, and at the upper end the management, testing, and release process are inside the rate.
Two costs are easy to miss when comparing bands. The first is supervision, because a cheaper team you have to direct closely eats your own senior time, and that rarely appears in the business case. The second is rework: where tests and deployment automation were never built, your second release costs more than the first, and that is the point at which a low rate stops being cheap.
The scale of that risk is well documented. A study by McKinsey and the University of Oxford found that large IT projects, those with initial budgets over 15 million US dollars, ran on average 45 percent over budget and 7 percent over time, while delivering 56 percent less value than predicted. Smaller product builds are not immune to the same pattern, and the causes are usually the ones this article keeps returning to: unclear scope, thin foundations, and lost continuity.
So set the budget against a defined first release rather than a whole roadmap, agree what sits inside that release before you sign, and treat the date the first working version reaches users as the number that matters.
This is the distinction that puts the wrong contract in front of the wrong buyer, so it is worth its own section rather than a footnote.
A software development company designs and builds products, then evolves them: web and mobile applications, the design and engineering behind them, and the ongoing work of extending them as your needs change. Nine of the ten companies above sit here.
A managed IT provider runs and secures the infrastructure you already have: networks, devices, cloud environments, security monitoring, and the support desk your staff ring when something breaks. Integris is the example in this list, which is why its hourly band looks so different from the rest. It reflects managed service work, not product development.
Both are sold under the banner of "IT services", and buying one when you needed the other is a common and expensive mistake. If your goal is to build or grow a product, you want a development partner. If your goal is to keep existing systems running and protected, you want a managed provider. A quick test: if the outcome you are buying is a new capability for your customers, that is development. If it is uptime and security for capability you already have, that is managed IT.
We used Clutch to build this leaderboard. Clutch publishes verified client reviews and ratings, along with analysis of companies across web and app development, marketing, and design, so buyers can compare providers on evidence rather than marketing. Its team verifies each review, often by phone, before it is published, which is why we treat its ratings as a usable signal rather than self-reported marketing.
The companies in this leaderboard meet the following requirements:
As noted at the top, this is not sponsored and is based on our own analysis. Imaginary Cloud appears in the list it publishes, and we have flagged that openly rather than hidden it.
Define the need first. Write down the problem, the first release you want, and the constraints you cannot move, before you speak to anyone. Vague briefs produce proposals you cannot compare.
Shortlist and consult. Approach three or four companies, and use the first conversation to test how quickly they grasp the problem and how plainly they say what they would not do.
Ask for comparable proposals. Request the same scope from each: approach, team composition, technologies, price, and how change gets handled. Comparison only works when the inputs match.
Verify and decide. Read case studies from similar work, speak to two references each, then score against the Partner Fit Checklist and agree the contract terms, including who owns the code.
Choosing an IT software development company decides how quickly you can change your product later, not just who writes the next release. So score the shortlist on engineering evidence and continuity rather than rate, insist on a defined first release, and stay sceptical of any proposal that never says what it excludes. Foundations first. The shell is the easy part.
If you are choosing a partner for a product build, a scoping session is the cheapest way to test the fit: a short, structured engagement that produces a defined first release, an estimate, and a plan you can take to any supplier. Talk to the Imaginary Cloud team about what you are building.
How much does an IT software development company cost? Rates in this list run from under $25 to $199 an hour. UK and European teams typically sit between $50 and $99, offshore delivery below $49, and US managed services above $150. Compare the total cost of a defined release, including your own supervision time, rather than the hourly rate alone.
Should I choose fixed price or time and materials? Fixed price suits a small, well-defined scope that will not move, and it shifts risk to the supplier at the cost of flexibility. Time and materials suits product work where scope evolves, provided you set a budget ceiling and review it at each release. Most product builds end up on time and materials, because most scopes move.
Who owns the code and the intellectual property? You should, and the contract should say so before work starts. Check that assignment covers code, designs, documentation, and any custom tooling, that third-party and open-source components are listed with their licences, and that repository access transfers to you when the engagement ends.
How do I vet a development partner's engineering quality? Ask to see a real repository: tests, code review history, deployment pipeline, and how releases are made. Ask what breaks in production, and how often. If a code audit of previous work exists, read it. Portfolios show what was built, never how well it holds up.
In-house team or outsourced software development company? An external partner gets a first product to market faster, without a hiring cycle, and flexes with demand. An in-house team is better when the product is your core business and the knowledge has to stay with you. Plenty of scale-ups use a partner for the first release, then hire around the product it produced.
What is the difference between an IT software development company and a managed IT provider? A software development company designs and builds products, then evolves them. A managed IT provider runs and secures the infrastructure you already have, including networks, devices, and support desks. Both sell under "IT services", and buying one when you needed the other is a common, expensive mistake. There is a fuller explanation in the dedicated section above.
Alexandra Mendes is a Senior Growth Specialist at Imaginary Cloud with 3+ years of experience writing about software development, AI, and digital transformation. After completing a frontend development course, Alexandra picked up some hands-on coding skills and now works closely with technical teams. Passionate about how new technologies shape business and society, Alexandra enjoys turning complex topics into clear, helpful content for decision-makers.
CEO @ Imaginary Cloud and co-author of the Product Design Process book. I enjoy food, wine, and Krav Maga (not necessarily in this order).
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