Need Coding? Use These Guys.
November 12, 2007 Posted by Tyler CruzThe following is a paid review and is completely of my own opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having me review your site or product, you can purchase a review from me through PayPerPost by clicking on the PayPerPost Direct button located at the top left of my blog.
Back in July, I did a review of a site named Xhtmlslashcss.com. As can be read in my review at the time, I was overall impressed with their service and gave them a favourable review.
Xhtmlslashcss has just relaunched itself as InstantCoding.com. This is great to hear as the name and domain Xhtmlslashcss.com was a very poor choice! InstantCoding.com is not only a good, brandable, and easy-to-remember company name, but it is a great domain name as well.
Along with their new-and-improved name, InstantCoding.com also has a lovely new look as well. I didn’t really have anything against their previous look which was a very basic and bland white theme, as I felt that a coding company doesn’t really have to have anything fancy, but their new design suits them perfectly.
It was actually designed by Unique Blog Designs, the recently-famed blog design company which designed the blog themes for JohnChow.ca and Shoemoney.com. Unique Blog Designs actually subcontracts InstantCoding.com for their coding work, which explains this partnership.
Their new design consists of only 5-pages which is, in my opinion, the perfect amount for such a company. It gives you all the information you need to know before contacting them to discuss things further.
Since part of InstantCoding.com’s specialty is W3C valid XHTML and CSS, in my original review I had checked all of their pages for both HTML and CSS validity. Surprisingly I found several errors. Shortly after I posted my review, they had fixed these.
I don’t mean to embarrass InstantCoding.com by doing this again, in fact you’ll see that the rest of this review will be very favourable to them, but I found validation errors with their new design as well.
However, it is only restricted to two pages. The Get Started page contains both XHTML and CSS errors and the Contact page contains XHTML errors. I can almost guarantee you that these pages will validate shortly after posting this review.
This leads into a perfect segway into my next topic…
Turnaround Times
While it is probably hard to believe, InstantCoding.com has turnaround times as low as just a few hours for a one-page coding. WordPress and vBulletin themes takes about a day.
These are absolutely lightning-fast turnaround times, which has InstantCoding living up to it’s moniker.
Most companies take 2-3 weeks, with one-week being considered fast. The fact that InstantCoding can offer next-day completion is pretty astounding.
Services
As their name suggests, InstantCoding.com does W3C-valid XHTML and CSS coding. They do not design, they do not do server programming; instead they focus on what they do best: valid XHTML and CSS.
It’s great to use a company that focuses solely on one aspect of web development, as it usually means that they are especially proficient in it, as opposed to the all-in-one companies that can "do it all".
InstantCoding offers 3 basic packages: Normal Package, Integration Package, and Consult Package.
All of their packages include:
- Entirely hand-coded XHTML/CSS
- Complete separation of markup and presentation
- Page and image optimizing to reduce loading time
- Tableless coding
- 100% Valid XHTML/CSS
- By default, all layouts will be tested in Internet Explorer 5.x to 7.0, FireFox 1.x to 2.0, Opera 8.x to 9.0 and Safari 3.0 Windows
Their Normal Package starts from $129 and has a turnaround-time of between 4-8 hours. This is the basic package one would use for converting a Photoshop layout to code or cleaning up an existing webpage’s code with valid XHTML and CSS.
Their Integration Package starts from $249 and has a turnaround-time of between 12-24 hours. This package is used for converting a design to a CMS such as WordPress, Joomla, or vBulletin.
Their Consult Package starts from $49 and has a turnaround time of between 4-12 hours. This package is more for "special" tasks such as fixing existing code, installing or modifying WordPress plugins, etc.
Portfolio
InstantCoding.com has done a lot of work, with several high-profile sites in their growing portfolio.
Some of these sites include mogul Kieron Donoghue’s Here.org.uk and multi-millionaire Scott Wainner’s WRevenue.com.
My Experience with InstantCoding
I’ve actually worked with Stefan from InstantCoding several times now. Apart from purchasing his second paid review on my blog now, he has also purchased a side 125×125 banner and has put up his company’s coding services as one of the prizes in the PublisherForums.com "Prizes for Posts" contest.
In addition, InstantCoding has actually coded one of my sites. Now, I’ll be honest and say that he went over the turnaround time, but that was largely due to my severe attention to miniscule detail and wanting every tiny nook and cranny absolutely perfect.
He worked with me to fix every tiny detail until I was absolutely happy with everything.
I’ll certainly be turning to Stefan again in the future whenever I need XHTML/CSS services. The fact that I’m getting quality W3C valid XHTML and CSS code for incredibly cheap is great enough, let alone the fast turnaround times.
I’d personally recommend using InstantCoding.com for any XHTML/CSS work you need done.
13 Responses to “Need Coding? Use These Guys.”
This is a great paid review. It clearly show that you have taken pains to make this review and it’s worth more than 80$. The post itself speaks everything and with pictures makes it great.
I hope this will bring more sales to that design sites. All the best for both of you.
[…] – You must know these guys by now, as they have the most prominent ad on my blog. Check out my review of […]
[…] – You must know these guys by now, as they have the most prominent ad on my blog. Check out my review of […]
[…] – You must know these guys by now, as they have the most prominent ad on my blog. Check out my review of […]
You’ve written quite a thorough review, but left one obvious bit out – is the code any good? Being valid does not make their code useful, and after looking at both their site code and the code on some of their portfolio pieces I’m forced to tell you that it’s pretty rough.
Take this for example:
They’ve used 3, THREE divs two wrap a paragraph and a span.
The recent influx of coding services is great, but the quality of most of the ones I’ve encountered is dubious at best. I’ve found maybe three that provide professional level code.
Lets try getting that code in once more time…
I was impressed with the high levels of quality I received from InstantCoding and their professionalism. I would not hesitate recommending them to anybody.
- Kieron Donoghue, Director UK Offer Ltd
InstantCoding not only provides superb coding, amazing turnaround times, and great customer support, but their prices are extremely low as well.
- Tyler Cruz, Merendi Networks
DO NOT USE this service.
The code is terrible. The turnaround time is terrible. They are unfriendly, take very long to respond and they did not give me a full refund like I requested because the code was just aweful.
I used these guys for some coding and I must say that you are wrong Frank. The turnaround time was a little more than they said there but the code was very good. I tried psd2html too but Instant Coding is much better.
Frank / Chris.
You guys are right. My experience with InstantCoding.com turned out to be a disaster.
– they were late
– they repeatedly delivered work that contained glaring differences from the PSD
– the markup they delivered was very poor, did not validate as promised and failed to use a number of best practices that should be obvious today. H tags were even completely absent.
Those were the good parts of the experience. The thing that is unacceptable to me is the way in which my dis-satisfaction was handled.
Instead of making good on their promises, InstantCoding choose a different path. Their representative Stefan ignores my emails and they refuse to honor their 100% money back guarantee claiming that they “decide when we refund and we are not”. That sort of defeats the purpose of a guarantee does it not Stefan?
Regrettably my experience with InstantCoding was nothing short of terrible and all I can do now is suck up the loss and warn others to look elsewhere for PSD to css/html work. Instant Coding failed on almost every one of their promises and clearly have no interest in sticking to their word.
Avoid. Avoid. Avoid. These guys set the customer respect bar so low that almost any other vendor will probably be a better choice.
I don’t know about you guys but I’m using them regularly and I am very satisfied with Instant Coding.
I used once Instant Coding and their coding services are pretty good.
Hi.
I read your comments. I’m using them too and I like their code. They are delivering pretty quick and they are also cheap.
Dwaine
Actually…I’m not sure how people can be happy with these guys. I also had a miserable experience. At the time of this comment, their own site doesn’t even validate. What they gave me was amateur hour and they refused to honor the guarantee. If you are selling CSS services…shouldn’t it at least validate? Look elsewhere.