Joomla is one of the hottest CMSs in nearly every city in the world and Montreal is no different. But what is different for us is that we are based in Montreal. When a Montreal company (located downtown) calls us and asks to do some work on its Joomla website, we often do the work on-site. Of course, the quality of work is not better when doing the work in our client’s office instead of our office, but it tends to build a stronger relationship between us and our clients.
Based on the many Joomla projects we have undertaken in downtown Montreal, we have noticed the following:
- Montreal companies prefer working with Joomla experts from Montreal rather than working with programmers from other cities/countries.
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Companies in Montreal tend to have very beautiful, original, and professional looking websites. We don’t know whether it’s the absolute cold, the beautiful mixture between the French finesse and the English practicality, or the creative immigrants choosing Montreal as their new home – but we know for a fact that every Joomla website we have worked on here in Montreal is pure art when it comes to design!
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Most of the Joomla work we do in Montreal tends to be very advanced since there are many companies here in Montreal that push Joomla’s functionality and power to the extremes.
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Joomla administrators in Montreal are very well educated about Joomla, and they know all the ins and outs of Joomla, as well as its limitations. (This is why most of the work we get in Montreal is usually very complex)
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Usually a system administrator is the person who manages the Joomla website at the technical level. That system administrator will ensure that Joomla’s environment is always optimized. S/he is also (usually) responsible for backups, installing new extensions, and updating Joomla.
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Montrealers know how to get traffic to their websites: most of the Joomla websites (for companies in Montreal) we have worked on get at least a few thousand uniques per day. That’s a lot of traffic!
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Since most Joomla websites in Montreal get a lot of traffic, then load balancing and advanced optimization techniques are nearly always a must!
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Montreal is located in Canada (an officially bilingual company) in the province of Quebec (which has French as official language) – as such all Joomla websites in Montreal are bilingual (there’s always a French and English version of the website). Work on bilingual Joomla websites tend to be very challenging because you need to ensure that all the extensions (even extensions that do not support languages other than English by default), and not only Joomla’s core extensions, are bilingual.
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There are some governmental websites in Montreal powered by Joomla. It is worthy to note that the federal government in Canada has created a standard for the look&feel and the navigation that all federal websites have to abide to. By the way, the federal government doesn’t really care about the infrastructure of the website (e.g. which CMS is it running, which type of server is it hosted on, etc…) – as long as the website meets the interface (and, of course, the security) standards, then everything’s OK.
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Montreal is a very cold place – temperature often drops below 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahrenheit) during the winter! This means two things: 1) There are many travel websites in Montreal tempting Montrealers with vacation escapes to the warm south, and 2) most of the websites have a fresh look to make up for the gloomy weather that Montrealers suffer from for about 5 months a year.
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Joomla websites in Montreal take advantage of all the social media – as such, almost of all websites have extensions for integrating Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc… Additionally, most Joomla websites in Montreal have blogs, where owners and staff discuss topics about their business.
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Montrealers have a sense of humor and are very nice people to work with. (Yes, that includes us!)
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Montreal is like a mosaic – it has people from all over the world, and all these people like to bring special things from their original countries – usually these special things are recipes. Hence, there are many restaurants in Montreal, and guess what, many of these restaurants have websites which are powered by Joomla. (We’ve worked on quite a few restaurant websites in Montreal.)
What kind of companies have we worked with in downtown Montreal?
We have worked on the Joomla websites of many companies here in Montreal, such companies include:
- Clinics
- Federal governmental agencies
- Furniture companies
- Law firms
- Restaurants
- Telecommunication companies
- Travel agencies
We have also served small businesses such as car rental companies, doctors, lawyers, photographers, nurseries, wedding planners, etc…
We have also done a lot of sub-contracting to large North American consulting companies which are based here in Montreal. We now have several of these large consultants outsourcing their Joomla development work to us.
So, why do companies here in Montreal like to work with us? What’s so special about us?
Well, the first thing is that we’re located in downtown Montreal – making us easily accessible for these companies. The second thing is that we are Montrealers ourselves, which means that we’re some of the friendliest people on this planet, and which also means that we’re fun to work with. The third thing is that our customization services cover everything related to Joomla: we can build any extension our clients want, we can modify any extension, we can even modify Joomla’s core! The most important thing, however, is that we get the job done, on time, every time since we are always honest and realistic in our estimates.
How do our clients from Montreal find us?
Many of our potential clients (not only our Montreal clients) know about us through our website (they’re usually looking to fix something on their Joomla website and they stumble upon our website). Once these potential clients reach our website, and in case they like what they see, they check our “Contact Us” page to know where we’re located – that page clearly shows that we are in Montreal. Since Montrealers love to work with Montrealers, and since we provide the service they’re looking for, they nearly always opt to work with us.
Additionally, we now have a large customer base and as such, we get a lot of word of mouth recommendation (which is the best form of advertising) by fellow Montrealers who vouch for us and recommend us for any Joomla project/task.
What is the percentage of our Montreal clients?
We don’t like to give numbers – but we’d say that, compared to the rest of the cities, Montreal is our third biggest when it comes to clients and revenue. California is the city where we have the most customers (and where we get the most revenue) – it is closely followed by Arizona.
Why are we located in Montreal?
If you’re asking this question it means that you’ve never been to Montreal. Montreal is a charming cosmopolitan city (very cold – but still very charming) – the people are beautiful inside out, and the nature is wonderful. Additionally, Montreal has some of the best programmers on this planet – many of them are truly Joomla experts. Finally, Montreal is adjacent to the US, where most of our clients are located, and it gives us an exposure to Europe and the rest of the world. Oh, and we forgot to mention, that Montreal’s infrastructure when it comes to IT is top notch – we now have high speed Internet nearing 200 Mbps.
Do we charge less for work done inside Montreal?
No – the rate is the same across the board. However, we do not charge travel expenses for companies asking us to do Joomla work in their offices in downtown Montreal. Any work physically done outside downtown Montreal will be subject to our travel expenses. Please note that again, travel expenses only apply for companies that ask us to do the work on-site (and are not located in downtown Montreal).
Are you located in Montreal? Do you need help with your Joomla website? If yes, then feel free to contact us neighbor! We’d really, really love to work with you!