5 Best Countries to Outsource Software Development
Software development outsourcing is a great way to save finances and get high-quality software products for your company. However, there are some details that you need to know about to make the developing process more effective. First of all, you need to know which countries are the best in the outsourcing market. It will help you to avoid possible troubles when looking for specialists to satisfy your business needs.
In this article, I am going to tell you about the top 5 countries for software development outsourcing. You will know why Ukraine developers and specialists from other countries can be so good.
Factors to make a country suitable for outsourcing
When choosing the right country to outsource the development processes, keep in mind the following factors: cost, IT market development, educational infrastructure, as well as the ability to communicate in the preferred language. By default, the most common language in the IT industry is English. All these factors guarantee a huge amount of qualified technical staff.
Other factors may also be important for some companies, such as cultural differences. These may include different official holidays, mentality, and many others.
The final factor to consider when choosing a suitable country is time zones. Many businesses are looking for ways to interact with employees from different parts of the world, but you should consider that at an early stage, before contacting and cooperating. Are you ready to get up early or stay in your office late for your Skype meetings? How high is your project’s priority? Is this delay in communication acceptable? Or do you want your time zones to be significantly close to contact your employees in real-time?
Once you know what your company’s specific outsourcing needs are, you can start looking for employees in countries that are ideal for you. Let’s see the top 5 of them.
Ukraine
The Ukrainian government takes many efforts to improve education, which juices the thriving technology field. According to statistical analysis from HackerRank, Ukrainian developers have an average score of 88.7% on all tests. Ukraine also has the largest amount of C++ programmers in the world.
English is not very popular among ordinary people, but 80% of the IT community speaks English not less than at an intermediate level. It is very hard to find a programmer who does not speak English at all. Though, the communication barriers are minimal. Other benefits of outsourcing in Ukraine: convenient GMT+2 time zone, which partially matches the US and especially the UK time, a similar working culture which values the competitive factors and competition.
Salaries: According to PayScale, the annual salary of Ukrainian developers varies from $11,936 to $46,787. They tend to become more expensive in recent times.
India
India is probably the first country a lot of people think about when they hear about outsourcing. Actually, there’s a good reason for that. India is the second-largest English-speaking country around the globe, which makes it an ideal choice for businesses from the US or the UK who are interested in outsourcing. According to The Scalers, almost 80% of European and US businesses prefer to offshore their IT processes to India. Yes, their English can be very specific but many Indians speak it on a native level. Their education system is also heavily tied to mathematics and generates up to 2.6 million STEM graduates each year.
According to the Gild study, Indian developers are 11% ahead of their American colleagues in mathematics and logic skills. However, they have much lower scores on PHP and HTML tests. If you are going to outsource the website development, make sure to check whether the team you are going to work with has a sufficient portfolio of the work done.
Salary: According to PayScale, the average annual salary of a software developer in India is $11,139. However, low salaries do not mean high quality.
Poland
According to HackerRank data, Poland is the third country with the highest amount of experienced developers in the world. Polish specialists are ranked first in Java tests and take top five position in other technologies, including Python, Shell, Ruby. The two largest Polish cities, Warsaw and Krakow, are also among the top 50 cities in the Tholons Globalization Index.
A great plus for Western developers will be that for 30% of Poland’s population, English is the second language. It highly simplifies the communication process. Companies from North America will need to consider changing the working hours to have live video conferences, but that it is not very difficult to overlap the time zones for full-scale cooperation.
Salary: PayScale data shows that an average software developer in Poland receives an annual salary of $22,273.
Philippines
About 92% of Filipinos speak English, that’s why the Philippines are one of the biggest English-speaking countries in the world. They also have a dedicated STEM education system, and in recent years they had a serious educational reform.
These factors, along with the low cost of the Philippine national currency, make this country one of the top places for software development outsourcing, with its capital, Manila, being recognized as the second-best city for outsourcing by the Tholons Globalization Index.
However, the reforms have not broken the gap between specialists from the Philippines and from other countries we mentioned here. It’s best to outsource just simple projects to them, while for more complex solutions it’s better to contact the developers from other countries like Ukraine or India.
Salary: The average software developer in the Philippines earns about $10,563.40 per year.
Canada
This country has a powerful educational infrastructure with a special emphasis on technology: 18.6% of its graduates specialize in STEM degrees. Regarding the skill level, Canadian developers were ranked 21st in the HackerRank ranking. Three Canadian cities are also among the top 50 in the Tholons Globalization Index: Toronto, Calgary, and Halifax.
Software development outsourcing in Canada also has a couple of other benefits, especially for American companies. There are slight cultural differences. Time zones make it easy to communicate with US customers. This allows companies to collaborate more effectively working on complex projects.
Salary: Canada is the most expensive place in the list. An average programmer earns $47,659 here. However, the additional cost is compensated by the excellent qualification of the developers and a good currency exchange rate.
