The Best Software Development Companies in Romania

The 7 Essential Steps for Choosing a Software Development Company

1. Get Referrals or Look at Ratings

The first step in choosing a software development company from Romania is to see what kind of reputation it has. The easiest way is if someone you trust refers a company. If that’s not the case, then you need to do a bit of digging yourself. Well, not in this case because we’ve already done it for you – the companies on this list have stellar ratings.

However, assuming you want to make sure for yourself, there are three things you should do:

1. check client reviews on their website;
2. check comments on their social media;
3. check reviews, ratings, and comments on independent review platforms.

Steps 1 and 2 are important so that you can get a general feel for the company. Yet, almost every Romanian development company will choose which reviews to put on their website and curate their social media. This means that you’ll only get the impression that the company wants you to get, not necessarily the full picture.

That’s why step no. 3 is crucial. Independent review platforms also curate what they put up, but only to remove malicious and untrue comments, not simply negative ones. Thus, this is the best indicator of a company’s reputation. If the impressions you get from steps 1 and 2 and step 3 are the same, you’re good to go. Otherwise, step no.3 is more trustworthy.

2. Find Out What the Company Specializes In

While you’re digging through a company’s website and social media, you’ll also get an opportunity to see who its employees are. Actually read their biographies and look at their LinkedIn profiles. This can help you estimate what specialists the company has.

Yes, just because a company employs engineers that specialize in area X of development doesn’t mean that the company itself specializes in that area. However, it’s a good first step. In case a company of, let’s say, 20 people has an SQL, AWS, and Azure engineer and a cloud architect, you can be reasonably certain they specialize in cloud solutions.

Additionally, larger development companies often have multiple departments that specialize in different fields of development. Because specializations are important in the IT industry, many companies will also prominently display what they specialize in on their website.

At the end of the day, if you can hire a company that has the specific expertise you need, that’s the best solution. Outsourcing companies with little to no experience in a given field may not build software up to the standards you need.

Once again, we’ve helped you out here. The company descriptions above contain the areas of expertise of each Romanian software company on the list, so you don’t have to research each one independently. However, if you’d like to continue, it’s on to step 3.

3. Read Their Portfolio

Reputation is one thing, specializations that a company claims to have is another, but demonstrable experience is everything. And you can see all of that from an IT company’s portfolio. You will be able to see what clients they had, what technical knowledge the projects required, and the size of projects the company can get done.

If you find a company that has worked on projects comparable to yours, both from a technical and size standpoint, that company should definitely be shortlisted. Additionally, if they had clients in the same industry as yours, that’s another big plus.

However, there’s one major problem here – some Romanian outsourcing companies may not be able to provide you with a portfolio. That’s not because they don’t want to, but because signing non-disclosure agreements is common practice when the US or Western European countries outsource development.

Thus, the company you are inspecting may be legally unable to give you the info you want. If that’s the case, ask a company representative for broad outlines of their previous projects. If they claim to have experience in your industry, ask them about it – you should be able to tell how truthful they are.

4. What’s Their Project Management Approach?

The last two points dealt with estimating the technical expertise of an outsourcing company, but that’s not all you need for a successful project. When you are outsourcing development (unless you are only leasing a developer or two to work on an internal project), you are handing the reins over to the company you hire.

You will get a dedicated team of developers, with all the organizational duties that entails. You need to know that the company has the managerial capability to finish the project on time and up to your standards. So, you need to know what project management approach they will utilize.

Most software companies work within an Agile framework, be it Scrum, Lean, XP, or some other model. This is because Agile has proven to be the most practical way to get development projects done. Agile entails coding in iterations, regular testing, taking into account client input, and changing course when needed.

This methodology can help create the best possible software with the least amount of bugs. Thus, ask a company representative about their team structure, how they organize, and what their procedures are like. We strongly recommend you only shortlist companies that utilize Agile.

However, there’s one issue with the Agile approach. Above, we said that client input is important and that’s not just nominally. Your decisions can have a practical impact on how the project is carried out. This means that you need to be in the loop, which leads us to our next point.

5. How Will You Communicate?

Good communication is key for outsourced development projects. Yes, this may seem like a small issue and with good up-front organization, it is. But, what software will you use to communicate? Will you have access to the platform they use to set and track tasks?

Will you have scheduled weekly or bi-weekly meetings? What language will you communicate in? Will you get assigned an account manager that will work outside of the company’s regular business hours? You should have answers to all of these questions before you decide to outsource a project to a software development company in Romania.

6. Where’s the Company Located?

This point is related to the previous one, as the location of the company impacts the way you will do business. There are three location-based outsourcing models:

• Onshore – when the company is located in the same country as the client
• Nearshore – when the company is located in a country with similar time zones as the client
• Offshore – when the company is located in a country with significantly different time zones to the client

The Romanian time zone is GMT +2, which is 7 hours ahead of EST and 10 hours ahead of PST. Thus, Romanian software companies are considered offshore for US clients and nearshore for Western European clients. This can be a hurdle in communication for US clients, but not one that can’t be overcome with good planning.

However, it can be a bigger problem if you hire a company for staff augmentation, i.e. when you lease a developer or two to fill a skill gap at your company. Assuming the leased developers will need to coordinate with you or your in-house team, you will need to make their business hours work for you. Once again, it’s nothing insurmountable, but it requires planning.

7. A Final Tip About the Costs

Finally, we get to the costs of Romanian outsourcing companies. Here, we have just one piece of advice – the cheapest option is not necessarily the most cost-effective one. If you hire a company to develop custom software for you and it ends up not functioning as intended, what do you do?

You’ll either need to get your in-house developers to work on it or outsource development to a new company to fix it. You may even need to scrap the software altogether and start from scratch. And all the while, you are losing time. So don’t hire the cheapest Romanian development company, but one that can actually get the work done.

Do You Want to Outsource to Other Countries?

If you can’t find a software company in Romania that can do the job you need, there’s no reason to give up on the project. There are other popular outsourcing destinations in Europe and Latin America with excellent software companies. And you can find them all below. So take a look at the other list we have until you find a company you like.