How to Get the Best Hands-On Coding Help at a Reasonable Price

You’re in a tough spot.

Scratch that, you’re in a miserable spot.

You’ve been writing code diligently - building a website, app, program, game, etc. - and you’ve done everything by the book. You’ve written clean code, followed best practices, and never cut corners (even though it was tempting at times).

But despite your best efforts, something’s broken in your code.

Maybe you’re stuck with a blank screen or maybe something’s just not rendering correctly. Either way, it’s stopped you dead in your tracks, and you can’t seem to get around it.

You’ve tried Stack Overflow, forums, manuals, and every other resource you could find, but still no dice. Now you’ve been sitting in front of your computer screen for hours, staring at your code while the problem-solver inside you runs through every possible remedy.

Your head hurts, your eyes burn, you need sleep, and you’re just about ready to give up.

So what do you do?

You get a second opinion.

It’s amazing how much help a fresh set of eyes from another developer can be when you’re trying to solve a seemingly impossible problem.

Luckily, there are websites out there that offer 1-on-1 help from an expert developer, so you can get past roadblocks and keep on trucking towards your project deadline.

But knowing which one to choose is the tough part, and you don’t need anything else to think about when you’re stuck in a problem-solving daze.

So here are 3 of the best hands-on, 1-on-1 coding help websites compared.

Codementor

Codementor is the first on the list, and with an Alexa rank of just over 14,000, it’s likely the largest of the 3 help sites on this list.

As for their pricing, they seem to base everything off of 15 minute intervals, with prices starting at $10 for 15 minutes and going up depending on experience.

You just type in what you’re looking for help with, and you’ll get a list of experts along with their reviews and pricing. If you’re familiar with freelance sites like Upwork, this is a similar layout.

You can also skip the selection process and simply post your request, along with your budget, in order to get help faster.

Their site says they have over 3,000 experts, and they even offer a 100% guarantee, which is reassuring.

What’s cool is, they also have a “Gigs” section similar to Fiverr, where developers post different things they’ll do and attach a price to that “gig”. At first glance, gigs seem to run anywhere from $10 to $300+, with somewhere in the $100-200 range being normal.

Note: Be sure to check Dealspotr for Codementor coupons before purchasing help through them. It could save you some money!

Airpair

Airpair is another site where developers can get live help, but at the time of this writing, their consulting/pairing marketplace is down. Here’s the message I got:

As you can see from their message, they intend on offering the “best rates possible anywhere” for developer consulting. However, their site says they’ll be back starting Q3 2016, but it’s now officially Q4 and I’m still not seeing the marketplace.

I wasn’t able to see pricing, but I did find an old TechCrunch article that shed some light on how much they were charging:

“$60 an hour, for example, gets you access to around 15% of the site’s experts — the folks who can answer most basic coding questions. $90 an hour opens it up to people who’ve been coding for a few years [...] all the way up to $300 an hour, at which point you’re talking to people who more or less live in code”

To be fair, it does say they’ll be back after August 30, and it’s only early October. So I would check back with them from time to time to see if they live up to their claim to have the best rates possible.

But until their marketplace is back up-and-running, Airpair seems to only be a text-based tutorial site for software developers. Hey, it’s free though.

HackHands

HackHands is a PluralSight company, which is known for its online coding and IT training. According to Alexa, it’s not as big of a site (with a rank of around 90,000), but they claim to have over 4,000 experts on their site, so it still seems to be a viable option for hands-on development help.

The main thing that stands out is their pricing.

Their 1-on-1 help is all based on how much time the expert actually spends helping you. It starts at $1 per minute, and the first 5 minutes is free. Here’s how it works:

You submit a request for help by specifying what you need help with and how much you’re willing to pay per minute. Your budget can range from $1 to $5 per minute.

Once you submit your request, a chat window is opened and experts are notified of your request. HackHands says they’ll start notifying experts at $1/minute, and slowly increase the budget until an expert accepts and joins your chat room, or until your max budget per minute is reached.

Once an expert joins, you can end the call anytime within the first 5 minutes and you won’t be charged. This allows you to get a feel for what you’re paying for before you get in too deep. The first 5 minutes is called a “trial”, so I’m assuming they don’t charge for it even if you go over 5 minutes.

This is a nice feature because I would venture to say the majority of the time you have no idea how much time you’re going to need in order to solve your problem. It could take an hour, or it could take 10 minutes.

If you just have a simple question to ask, it could theoretically cost you $5 for 10 minutes on HackHands, while it would cost you $10 for the minimum 15 minutes on Codementor.

So while HackHands technically has a higher hourly rate than Codementor, there’s a little more flexibility with HackHands, and you only pay for the time you’re helped instead of in 15-minute increments.

Note: As always, be sure to check Dealspotr for HackHands coupons before purchasing 1-on-1 development help. No sense paying full price if you don’t have to!