Revelo vs. Terminal: Which is Best for Developer Hiring in 2024?

Despite there being more developers globally in 2024 than ever before, startups in places like the US and Canada still struggle to find much-needed software programming talent. Worse still, thanks to the plethora of options, choosing a platform that supplies professional talent cost-efficiently and reliably can be difficult.

Today we’ll focus on two popular options among tech talent seekers in North America: Revelo and Terminal. Each of these two platforms has its unique features and advantages, but unless you’d rather use both, we must compare them and find the best one for you.

What Is Revelo?

Revelo is a Miami-based, full-service remote hiring platform founded in 2015. Its hiring service enables clients to find and connect with remote developers from across Latin America, especially Brazil. 

Revelo operates an in-house talent model, maintaining a pool of pre-sourced and pre-vetted developers ready for hiring. The company employs over 250 remote employees distributed across the US and Latin America, and its talent pool comprises over 300,000 English-fluent developers from all across the latter region. 

What Is Terminal?

Terminal is the leading remote hiring network servicing the talent-hungry North American market. The platform functions exactly like an airport terminal, providing a steady stream of fresh, premier tech talent from across Latin America, Canada, and Europe to tech companies in the US. 

Terminal is especially adept at building developer teams, although it also provides individual staffing. Since launching in 2016, the platform has hired thousands of software engineers and built over 125 elite developer teams for tech startups like GoPro, Nextdoor, and Grindr. Needless to say, Terminal is a well-known name among US tech startups. 

Revelo vs. Terminal

In comparing Revelo and Terminal for hiring remote developers in 2024, we will consider the following key metrics. 

• Talent sourcing
• Talent vetting
• Hiring costs
• Hiring flexibility
• Hiring process
• Developer roles and specialties
• Client incentives
• Online ratings

Talent Sourcing

The geography of a hiring platform’s talent sourcing is crucial because it impacts many aspects of your experience working with that platform. For example, owing to relative levels of digitalization and tech infrastructure development, programmers from different regions may have different skill levels or specialties. Furthermore, geography can also affect the work ethic and cultural diversity that remote hiring can bring to your team. So, how do Revelo and Terminal stack against each other on talent sourcing?

Revelo

Revelo has leaned heavily into Latin America due to the exponential growth of the region’s talent market in the past decade. The platform sources thousands of developers from Chile, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina, Mexico, and Brazil. 

Revelo’s talent is especially concentrated in Brazil. The country’s expanding tech industry, driven by increased venture capital investment and State government initiatives like Start-Up Brasil, is the fastest growing in the region. However, Brazil has a history of instability and currency fluctuations (including in 2024), which make it a riskier market to invest in if you’re looking for predictable costs and little political uncertainty.

Terminal

Terminal recognizes the rise of talent hotspots in Latin America. Thus, Terminal offers nearshore hiring for US companies hoping to tap into these hotspots, which include Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, and Mexico. 

However, unlike Revelo, which completely focuses on Latin America, Terminal offers its clients even more geographical options. Hiring on Terminal gives you access to talent from other places like Poland, Eastern Europe’s recently ascendant tech powerhouse. Additionally, you can access legacy tech hubs like Spain and Canada, which have a long history of tech innovation. 

Talent Vetting

Any given talent market contains thousands to millions of developers with various skill levels and specialties. Consequently, a tech talent-hiring platform adding new talent to its in-house pool must filter out the cruft, as it were, and accept the best candidates. Hence, the quality of the platform’s vetting system is worth considering before hiring. So, we ask: which of Revelo and Terminal has the superior vetting processes and standards? 

Revelo

Revelo proactively engages with the talent market, finding both passive and active job seekers and offering them a shot at joining its in-house talent pool. The subsequent vetting process for these candidates includes evaluations and interviews to determine English proficiency and soft skills like teamwork, problem-solving, and adaptability. Tests for technical skills in the relevant fields of expertise come after this soft skill vetting.

The platform doesn’t say precisely how rigorous this pre-vetting is – at least not in numerical terms – but affirms that only the best candidates pass it. However, our assessment found that Revelo mostly targeted junior-level developers.

Terminal

Terminal boasts the most rigorous talent vetting of any company engaging with the Latin American developer market. Ideally, you should perform your own screening on the candidates offered to you to be safe. However, Terminal’s rigorous pre-vetting process, which only the top 7% of candidates pass, makes that exercise virtually unnecessary, 

First, Terminal screens the candidates for English proficiency and communication skills since working in a team involves communicating ideas as clearly as possible. Motivation and work ethic are also important, especially if the candidate must perform well in a leadership role. Thus, Terminal also looks for leadership qualities like initiative and commitment, which are positive indications of a candidate who will go the whole nine yards and more for your project. 

Technical abilities are the final and most important vetting criteria, and Terminal maintains very strict criteria here. First, candidates with proven accomplishments in the tech field – important indicators of a project-hardened developer – take priority, although such accomplishments are not absolutely required. Since the platform aims to recruit developers with moderate to elite experience levels, it also makes some allowances for new and relatively inexperienced but potential-laden talent.

Finally, a series of technical assessment exercises determine the candidate’s proficiency with various programming technologies and experience across multiple developer roles. Since actual coding is believing, these assessments always involve live coding sessions and even client-specified programming challenges.  

Hiring Costs

As a hirer, you want excellent professionals, a great hiring experience, and the general service satisfaction that encourages repeat business with a talent-sourcing platform — all at the most wallet-friendly hiring costs possible. So, which of our star platforms best affords you this combination? Let’s find out by comparing their platform charges, developer salaries, and overhead costs. 

Revelo

Revelo makes it difficult to understand its hiring costs. At face value, the platform has a price analysis tool you can use to determine pricing. However, using this tool requires providing your email and assenting to an inconvenient stream of promotional content, which you’re unlikely to put up with unless you’re really hiring. 

Content spam notwithstanding, we investigated the cost system and found that Revelo charges a non-refundable upfront fee of up to $500. Additionally, the developers set hourly rates ranging from $50 to $70, depending on their skill levels and roles. So, suppose a Revelo developer works 7 hours daily for 22 working days a month; that can cost you up to $10,000 monthly on average. 

Revelo mentions on its website that hiring Latin American talent offers time-zone alignment benefits, presumably including cost savings, especially on overheads. However, it doesn’t tell you by how much. 

Terminal

In contrast to Revelo, Terminal is more transparent with its pricing. Using its cost calculator doesn’t come with any inconvenient or discouraging caveats. So, you can find out hassle-free that hiring talent on Terminal saves you up to 40% on overhead costs per role hired, thanks to the timezone alignment and differences in the cost of living across regions. Additionally, the platform doesn’t charge you any upfront fees, least of all non-fundable ones. 

Each Terminal hire can cost between $4000 and $12,000, plus a small onboarding fee, depending on the developer’s experience level or rank. Thus, Terminal proves to be a more transparently cost-efficient hiring solution relative to Revelo. 

Hiring Flexibility

If you’re running a small startup on a limited budget, you may only be able to afford part-time and freelance staffing. As your business scales up and its product coverage and budget expand, the requirement shifts to more permanent staffing. And even in a larger company with a bigger budget, you may sometimes need a quick, temporary addition to your workforce. 

An ideal developer talent network is flexible enough to satisfy any contract term requirements you have at any stage of your business’s growth. So, is that ideal network Revelo or Terminal?

Revelo

Revelo is very inflexible regarding hiring durations. The company only provides full-time, long-term developer staffing, making it a complete no-go if you need short-term, part-time, or freelance developers. 

Terminal

Terminal is entirely free of Revelo’s hiring flexibility problem. Terminal provides all kinds of short-term staffing, including part-time, full-time, and permanent staffing options. Additionally, the platform allows contract-to-hire upgrades, so you can make your short-term contractor a full-time worker at any point. All these factors make Terminal an excellent choice for hiring at every stage of your business’s evolution.

Hiring Process

Excelling in the tech industry often means moving fast with your projects and making every second of your time count. Consequently, you need a platform that can fill your required job roles quickly and on the first try, allowing you to be about your business right away. Additionally, the platform must save you as much effort as possible when hiring so you can use your resources and energies more productively.

Revelo and Terminal claim to afford you the required speed, efficiency, and process coverage, but which does it best?

Revelo

The hiring process on Revelo begins with accessing the platform and providing your candidate requirements. In 3 to 5 business days, the local matching team will provide you with a shortlist of the best fits, and you can schedule interviews right away. 

Once you have selected your preferred candidate, Revelo facilitates salary and budget negotiations so that both you and your candidate emerge satisfied. You can then sign a contract and begin working with your new developer. The hiring process takes up to 17 days on average, depending on factors like geography, developer expertise level, and negotiation speed.

Revelo also helps with talent management, especially the onboarding process. However, the platform does not offer any information on how much this might cost or if the upfront fee covers it.

Terminal

Once you place your hiring request on Terminal’s website, the algorithm and local matching teams get to work at once, and you receive a shortlist of 5 qualified candidates in 7 days. Customized sourcing requests may take longer to shortlist since the talent may have to come directly out of the pipeline, not the existing in-house pool.

The average hiring time on Terminal is two weeks, while the maximum is 45 days to fill custom-sourced full-time roles. That makes the platform up to 40% faster than traditional hiring and twice as fast as the competition, especially with custom sourcing factored in. By comparison, Revelo may take several weeks to satisfy custom sourcing requirements. 

Additionally, the use of advanced AI technology makes Terminal’s matching very accurate, so you will certainly find your ideal candidate on the first shortlist. By contrast, getting a good fit on Revelo may take several shortlists, costing you several extra days. 

Finally, once you hire your preferred candidate, Terminal handles the onboarding process, which covers everything from orientation and workplace familiarization to schedule synchronization. 

Developer Roles and Specialties

Being a tech-focused platform is great, but even in that niche, some platforms cover more job roles and specialties than others. So, this scope is an important consideration when choosing between tech-focused hiring platforms. Apropos of that, let us compare Revelo and Terminal regarding this crucial metric. 

Revelo

Revelo covers a broad range of developer roles in various sectors. These include iOS and Android mobile development, Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud database management, as well as backend, frontend, and full-stack web and software development. The available programming language specialties include C+, C++, C#, Python, Rust, and Ruby. 

However, Revelo focuses mostly on these legacy technologies and lacks skilled developers in emerging technologies like AI, AR/VR, or blockchain. 

Terminal

Terminal covers a broader range of developer roles than Revelo, including roles in Linux, Windows, macOS, and AuroraOS development. However, Terminal focuses more than Revelo on roles in emerging technical specialties like AI, AR/VR, and blockchain technologies. Thus, if your startup is into one of these technologies, Terminal is your best bet for hiring developers.

Terminal also recruits heavily for senior roles like Technical Leads and Architects and specialized positions for cybersecurity specialists. 

Client Incentives

A client incentive package is an excellent indicator of a hiring platform that genuinely wants to make the process worthwhile for you. So, let’s see what Terminal and Revelo offer in this regard. 

Revelo

Revelo has a 14-day no-cost guarantee, assuring you of a free replacement at no additional cost if you report dissatisfaction with your new hire within the specified period. 

Terminal

Like Revelo, Terminal offers a 14-day free trial period for an instant, cost-free replacement if your new hire proves a poor fit. However, this short 14-day offer is for contract staff only; it extends up to 3 months for full-time staff, making it a more exciting offer than Revelo’s free trial. 

Still, Terminal’s talent matching is so reliable that few clients have had to invoke these free trial offers in the platform’s history. 

Revelo vs Terminal: Which Is the Best For Hiring Developers?

So far, we have assessed Revelo and Terminal on eight different metrics. Which of the two platforms ultimately outperforms the other? 

Terminal wins on every metric. Compared to Revelo, it offers a broader talent-sourcing scope and better vetting standards. Indeed, Terminal’s standards are more balanced, favoring elite developers but also allowing in some fresh talent with proven potential.

Terminal’s pricing is much more affordable, the hiring process is far shorter and less stressful, and the arrangements are more flexible. Additionally, you can find qualified professionals for far more roles and enjoy a juicier incentive system. Finally, Terminal rates higher than Revelo on review sites, enjoying more commendation from users.

So, if you have been unsure which platform is best for your company’s tech talent hiring needs in 2024, Terminal is that platform. Visit our ecosystem today and get excellent professional value for your time and money.