This is a 6 month follow up to my review. After spending $8000 dollars for my site with them. I shortly after asked Abe/ owner if I could hire their team to build a subscription package onto my site. He quoted me 3 months and that he would get back to me in January. I never heard back from him again.
I ended up going with another company through a referral in Orange County, a company that wasn't even on yelp that had to completely rebuild my site - 2 months after Tepia finished. A project that took Tepia over a year to complete took my new development team 3 weeks. They rebuilt my ENTIRE SITE-with better speed, sexier smooth interface, added the entire subscription package for an entire 1/3 of the price that took Tepia over an entire year to complete.
In fact in my first meeting I literally laughed at my new team when they told me 3 weeks. I told them I would be floored if they knocked it out in a month. After it was over I just couldn't believe it.
I will add that some of the timeline speed can be contributed to the concept being laid out by Tepia but I had NO IDEA HOW FAST WEBSITES COULD BE BUILT OR CHANGES MADE as what I'm experiencing now and my website rocks.
Below is my reasoning:
I originally wrote Tepia A 5 STAR REVEW. So here is why I am dropping my rating.
PLANNING FOR WEBSITE LAUNCH / GRADE : F
After your site is launched there is a TON of work to do. I certainly wish I would have known what I do know now ... a checklist, a plan, anything and feel Tepia should have taken the time to explain that in their build they are thinking about SEO, customer experience and the ease of being able to edit the site on the site before and after dropping $8000. This was straight up an abysmal F.
WEBSITE SPEED / GRADE: F
When Tepia finished my website it WAS ridiculously SLOWWWWWW. Infact I scored so low that when other developers looked at my site they mentioned they had never seen a site score so low as mine. On GTmetrix I scored an F and zeros in every category.
In order to place high on google rankings for SEO and for people to find your site - your site has to load fast so google provides it's users with premium sites that load fast for their users. Bottom line if your site is slow forget going anywhere in the internet world or e-commerce. (Something developers should know to tell their clients).
Imagine not being able to edit anything or things taking forever to edit modify because your site is crawling- you basically can never get any work done. I encourage all users to check out google's page speed or webmaster tools to anylize your site. GTmetrix reports will tell you right away what significant errors are on your site. Do this after any site is built.
Not once was any of this explained to me when building my site or anything mentioned for SEO as I believe it is critically important for a customer to know. Website page speed is everything.
COMPLETION TIME / GRADE: BELOW F
I believe Tepia is a kind hearted company but I believe that in their growth they are serving customer's too slow. When timelines were missed, I never got a call from the owner saying "hey Mike I know we are running behind on some things but we haven't forgot about you, how is your account manager working out? Any feedback for us?" I felt there was virtually no checkin or a disconnect from business owner to business owner. Time is money when you are trying to launch a product. This would have meant sooo much to me. I guess what I'm trying to say is that EVERYTHING FELT LIKE A REALLY BIG DEAL to do. To change something to get a quote, to fix a problem. Forget ANY timelines.
AFTER WEBSITE LAUNCH / GRADE: D
I felt after the money I spent I deserved some type of follow up from the owner or team after the site was built. Pretty much nothing, not even a call back to reply to my request for subscription packages. This directly from the owner/ Abe not so much... as a customer I just feel that a 30 second phone call could have fit in his schedule. To this day - nothing.
TEAM ATTITUDE / GRADE: A
Overall great spirit over the whole team. Dustin, Chase, Matt, seemed like they like what they are doing. I believe they have talent and are nice. My only comment here is that business owners don't just pay for nice.
WOULD I DO IT AGAIN
Although the work with Tepia was valuable because we laid out a concept together the answer is no. With the company now that has built my site. Changes are lightening fast and nothing scares them. A quick "no problem" and complex changes are shockingly fast much less expensive.
To summarize again, I believe the team at Tepia does have skill and are nice. But in the end, you just don't know better till you've had better. There was a time I believed these guys were the best in OC because of yelp reviews. Not anymore- and I want to work with the best.
If you have questions don't hesitate to contact me.
c: 805-234-6216
michaeljdm@schmidtsknives.com
Michael JDM
CEO / Owner read more