About Smudge Apps
Smudge develops mobile solutions to help business around New Zealand engage with mobile device users. The culture and capability are fantastic and they have passed their expectations. Their designers are award-winners and their expert mobile app developers have masters to make high-quality apps. They always try to provide the best applications they can. They take great pride not just in their work but in all it’s helping their clients to achieve.
Last updated May 13, 2026
Services
Smudge Apps Reviews
Write a ReviewA partnership that began with a single project and earned a place on our preferred vendor list
Sebastian Lapointe / CTO - Boreal Systems IncMay 19, 2026
Project summary: Our campaign management workflow had grown to involve twelve different tools and significant manual reconciliation. The inefficiency was affecting both speed and accuracy.
We had worked with three agencies before this engagement. The comparison is not flattering to the others. What distinguished this team was a systematic approach to understanding the problem before proposing a solution — something that sounds obvious and is practiced far less often than it should be. The delivery phase ran to schedule, the codebase is clean enough that our internal engineers made positive comments during handover review, and we have not logged a critical incident in five months of live operation. We intend to use them for our next phase of work.
Senior-level engineering presence throughout the entire project, not just during the pitch, honest and commercially fair handling of scope changes, codebase that our internal team praised on review
We underestimated the input required from our subject matter experts during the requirements phase. The team flagged this early but our resource planning did not fully reflect it — our responsibility, not theirs
Questions & Answers
Technically rigorous, commercially grounded, and a genuine pleasure to work with
Liselotte Bakker / Head of Platform Engineering - Harbour Digital BVMay 15, 2026
Project summary: Several years of incremental development had left us with a platform that was technically functional but strategically limiting. A structured rebuild was the agreed path forward.
We had worked with three agencies before this engagement. The comparison is not flattering to the others. What distinguished this team was a systematic approach to understanding the problem before proposing a solution — something that sounds obvious and is practiced far less often than it should be. The delivery phase ran to schedule, the codebase is clean enough that our internal engineers made positive comments during handover review, and we have not logged a critical incident in five months of live operation. We intend to use them for our next phase of work.
Deep domain knowledge that reduced the discovery overhead significantly, proactive risk identification before issues became incidents, delivery cadence that our stakeholders found reassuring
Time zone coordination required some deliberate overlap management from both sides in the first couple of sprints, after which we had an efficient async rhythm that worked for the whole project
Questions & Answers
Service desk that outperformed our previous in-house team on every SLA we tracked
Maja Söderström / Head of Product Engineering - Scandia Digital ABApr 12, 2026
Project summary: Our engineering capacity was committed to maintaining existing systems and could not absorb a net-new build of this complexity. An external partner with the right skills was the only viable option.
The project brief was ambitious and we had received proposals ranging from two to five times our eventual budget from other vendors. This team came back with a proposal that was commercially realistic and technically credible — and then delivered against it. That alignment between proposal and outcome is not something I take for granted. I have been on the other side of it enough times to know it requires both honesty in the sales process and discipline in delivery. We experienced both.
Commercially transparent throughout — no hidden assumptions, no bill shock at the end, change requests that were fair and clearly explained rather than used as a margin-recovery mechanism
Pipeline availability for kickoff required a few weeks of lead time — in hindsight that selection pressure means you are working with a team that is in demand for the right reasons
Questions & Answers
Consulting that delivered real options with real trade-offs rather than a predetermined answer
Flynn Buchanan / GM of Technology - Pacific Rim Commerce GroupMar 20, 2026
Project summary: Several years of incremental development had left us with a platform that was technically functional but strategically limiting. A structured rebuild was the agreed path forward.
We gave this team an aggressive timeline, a technically complex scope, and a client-side project team that was stretched thin and not always available at the speed the engagement required. They absorbed all of that gracefully. Where they needed input they were precise about what they needed and when. Where they could proceed independently they did. The result was a delivery that landed on time despite the constraints on our side, which I regard as evidence of genuine professional maturity.
Commercially transparent throughout — no hidden assumptions, no bill shock at the end, change requests that were fair and clearly explained rather than used as a margin-recovery mechanism
Their insistence on a detailed functional specification before development began felt like friction at the time. In retrospect, it was the reason the development phase ran without the ambiguity that has derailed similar projects for us previously
Questions & Answers
QA coverage that finally made Friday deployments feel like a professional activity
Erik Lindqvist / Chief Technology Officer - Nordic Cloud ABFeb 26, 2026
Project summary: A previous engagement had delivered something that worked in staging and struggled in production. We approached this project with greater rigour in vendor selection as a result.
The technical quality of the final deliverable is the easiest thing to point to. The automated test coverage is thorough, the deployment pipeline is reliable, the documentation is genuinely useful rather than ceremonially produced. But the metric I keep returning to is the number of post-launch conversations we have not had to have. No incident calls at two in the morning. No emergency patches. No retrospective discussions about what went wrong. The absence of those events is the evidence I would show to someone considering this vendor.
Clear and consistent communication adapted appropriately for both technical and non-technical stakeholders, shared tooling that gave our team real-time visibility, reliable sprint delivery throughout
Time zone coordination required some deliberate overlap management from both sides in the first couple of sprints, after which we had an efficient async rhythm that worked for the whole project
Questions & Answers
Outstanding service and exceptional results
William Brown / Senior Consultant - Brown ConsultingJul 10, 2024
Project summary: We required a HIPAA-aware solution to digitise patient workflows and improve care coordination across our clinics.
From the discovery workshop to the final handover, the experience was seamless. The team invested real effort in understanding our business goals before writing a single line of code, and that foundation paid dividends throughout. Every milestone was hit, every deliverable was polished, and the few issues that arose were resolved before we even had to ask. The solution has already delivered measurable ROI and we are planning our next engagement with them.
Deep technical expertise, professional project management, responsive support, great value
Slightly higher day rate than some alternatives, but the quality justifies every penny
Questions & Answers
Stunning web platform delivered on time and on budget
Emily Rodriguez / Founder & CEO - LaunchPad VenturesApr 26, 2024
Project summary: We required a custom platform that would give us a measurable competitive advantage in our market.
From the discovery workshop to the final handover, the experience was seamless. The team invested real effort in understanding our business goals before writing a single line of code, and that foundation paid dividends throughout. Every milestone was hit, every deliverable was polished, and the few issues that arose were resolved before we even had to ask. The solution has already delivered measurable ROI and we are planning our next engagement with them.
Excellent communication, high-quality deliverables, on-time delivery, proactive problem-solving
None — every aspect of the engagement exceeded our expectations
Questions & Answers
Professional team that delivers excellence every time
Sophie Dubois / Innovation Lead - French Digital SARLFeb 23, 2022
Project summary: We required a custom platform that would give us a measurable competitive advantage in our market.
We evaluated five vendors before choosing this team, and the decision has been fully validated. Their technical skills are top-tier, but what really sets them apart is their commitment to understanding the business context behind every requirement. The project was delivered on time, the solution is robust and scalable, and the knowledge transfer was thorough. A truly outstanding engagement from start to finish.
Innovative thinking, meticulous attention to detail, reliable delivery, transparent reporting
Wish we had engaged them sooner; no meaningful issues to report