Andela Review: Pros, Cons, Pricing, and Alternatives
What is Andela?
Andela is one of the leading platforms for hiring tech talent all over the world and building your development team. You can find experts in every domain, whether design, product, or engineering.
Here are some interesting numbers for Andela:
- Represented 110+ countries across 6 continents
- 96% success rate for placements
- An average engagement time of an Andelan is 18+ months
How To Hire Tech Experts For Your Startup Through Andela
Andela is quite efficient with its hiring process, claiming to help tech teams hire within days instead of weeks or months.
Here’s a simple 4-step process on how you can start hiring talented developers and designers through Andela:
#1 Create a Job
The good thing about Andela is that you can create unlimited jobs for each tech role.
Simply fill out their form and define the skills and qualities you’re looking for in a specific role, the years of experience they should have, and your budget for the project. Once you’ve filled this out, continue to the next step.
#2 Browse Potential Talent
After you process your job form, you’ll be immediately matched with top-quality candidates according to your criteria.
You’ll be given suggestions on different candidates who fit your timezone and budget requirements as well.
Schedule a Meeting or Interview
Let’s assume you found a potential candidate immediately, the next step for you is to schedule a direct interview with them to see if they’re qualified for the position or not.
Talk to them about your project, what you require, and see if they’re the right fit for your team.
Hire and Start Working
The best part of all: the approval! 🎉
If you give the green light to the developer and they’re ready to work too, then you can hire them in one click.
Pros, Cons, and Key Features of Andela
Pros
1. Strict vetting process
Andela claims to help you employ top-notch developers through a thorough selection approach consisting of past evaluations, mental assessments, and partnered programming activities. They get roughly 25,000 candidates who apply each year with an acceptance rate of 0.5%.
2. Clear price brackets
Some platforms have varying rates which can cost you unnecessary time and energy to finalize developers – Andela is transparent with their pricing.
If you want to hire a junior, mid-level, or senior developer, you’ll have to pay a certain amount in a price bracket for that. Nothing more, nothing less.
3. Quality talent
Andela boasts over 250,000 expert engineers, product managers, and designers on their platform. Seeing as each individual goes through a thorough check, the odds are pretty good that you’ll find an ideal developer for your software needs.
Cons
1. Shortage of senior developers
Might be missing experienced coders. Even though they once had an awesome learning plan to develop seasoned pros, they’ve not had many skilled developers join their talent pool. Just lately, they’ve switched to bringing on board veteran programmers.
2. Only Longterm Hires
Andela emphasizes more on creating long-term deals between developers and clients – meaning it’s not feasible to hire freelance developers for short-term projects.
3. Expensive Developers
Andela’s pricing isn’t market competitive. If you have a tight budget, then you’d probably be better off with other tech hiring platforms such as ReactSquad, Toptal, or Turing.
Key Features
- The platform has a database of over 250,000+ expert developers.
- Andelans typically get an 84% increased income compared to an average candidate.
- Andela offers a variety of developers skilled in multiple programming languages and tools such as Python, PHP, Java, Ruby, Salesforce, Android, etc.
Andela Pricing
As we discussed before, the good thing about Andela is they can get transparent about pricing from the get-go.
They have a flat monthly rate for hiring developers. According to their website, hiring will set you back between USD $6,000 to USD $14,000 monthly, depending on the developer’s expertise, location, and technology. No extra costs added.
Top Andela Alternatives
Andela is a great platform for hiring tech talent, but it may not be the best fit for all your needs if:
- You have a tight budget.
- You need to hire a specialist developer.
In either of these cases, you need to resort to other platforms, such as these: 🔽
ReactSquad
ReactSquad is an exclusive agency that helps SaaS startups accelerate their product development by matching them with remote React-specialized engineers.
How you can leverage ReactSquad:
- Quick team expansion: When your dev team needs to grow fast, ReactSquad matches you with qualified developers in just 24 hours.
- Cost-effective expertise: Reactsquad has pros in React, Next.js, Redux, Tailwind CSS, and more at less than half the normal rate you’d pay.
- Risk-free trial: You get to try out a developer for 7 days, absolutely free. It’s like a test drive for top-notch talent.
How it works:
- Tell them your needs: Whether you need one developer or a whole team, ReactSquad listens and understands.
- Speedy matching: Their matching process is lightning-fast – way quicker than traditional recruiting methods.
- Meet your developer: A quick call to ensure the developer fits your team’s skill and culture.
- 7-day free trial: Test their skills in real-time, with zero risks involved.
ReactSquad employs their developers directly and has a rigorous selection process, ensuring a level of consistency and quality that freelance platforms can’t match.
With rates starting at $75/hour and flexible payment options, it’s budget-friendly for early-stage startups, bootstrapped companies, and hypergrowth teams alike.
CloudDevs
CloudDevs is a hiring platform for developers who have worked with hundreds of SaaS companies, including VC-funded startups and Fortune 500 companies.
If you want to hire specifically Latin American developers, then CloudDevs is the right option for you.
Here are some facts and figures for CloudDevs:
- CloudDevs has a talented developer assigned to your team within 24 hours
- The platform allows you to work with hired developers outside of the platform after reaching mutual agreements.
- CloudDevs uses an intensive screening process to hire all top-notch developers.
- Developers are skillful in C#, C++, React Js, Django, Java, Net, Ruby on Rails, and so on.
- Risk-free 7-day trial with a $500 deposit.
- Transparent rates of $35 – $75 per hour, depending on the package you choose.
Toptal
Toptal is a global hiring platform for recruiting top freelance developers, designers, and project managers.
This platform can help you hire tech talent at any seniority level from anywhere in the world.
Some features of Toptal:
- You can get matched with a prospective candidate within 48 hours.
- Their intense screening process helps you find the most talented candidate(s).
- After you choose a candidate and pay an initial security deposit of $500, the developer can start working with your team as soon as possible.
- They have a 2-week risk-free trial period – if you aren’t satisfied, you can ask for a refund.
- Pricing is generally at $60-$180 per hour.
Turing
Turing is one of the top-most platforms to hire talented software developers. You can hire from over 2 million qualified candidates from all over the world.
Here are some key features of the platform:
- Risk-free 2-week trial to find the best tech talent for your startup.
- You can hire a developer and start working with them within a week.
- Turing’s global outreach connects you with the right people from all over the world.
- Strict developer skill assessment to filter candidates who are the best fit for the role.
- Their rates vary from $70-$200 per hour depending on seniority level.
Best Alternative To Andela
We recommend ReactSquad as the best alternative to Andela for hiring freelance developers, especially if you run a SaaS startup.
Why We Recommend
- Unlike other alternatives, ReactSquad is fully focused on one specific tech stack (React & Node.js). Their developers have high expertise and a niche focus on SaaS products
- Reactsquad has a rigorous vetting process for their developers; with 4 interview rounds and 4 weeks working on a paid test project
- Senior developers with 5+ years experience
- Startup-friendly rates (starting from $75/hr)
- 7-day free trial with your matched developer and a replacement guarantee at any point during your project
Visit ReactSquad’s website to get matched with the best React developers for your SaaS startup
Summary: When Should You Hire Through Andela?
Determining when to hire through Andela depends on various factors.
With Andela, the hassle-free hiring process is quite attractive for businesses. They also handle the legal aspects, making it easy to find highly skilled and gifted developers. The company is confident that you can find a quality developer in a specific region through their platform.
For many organizations, Andela’s approach is a highly dependable and secure option for outsourcing developer teams. Although it’s not a traditional freelance model, the startup provides consistent and well-guided teams of developers who excel in remote cooperation and fulfilling client expectations. But in certain use cases, like hiring React-specialized engineers, it’s better to resort to specialist platforms such as ReactSquad.io.
