The Short Version
Jay at Literate Computing knows Discourse inside and out. He handled a surprisingly tricky migration from Flarum to Discourse with expertise, clarity, and candor. When issues arose, as they often do in such complicated processes, he handled them professionally and kindly. I found Jay to be a reliable and skilled person to work with and will definitely use and recommend his services for any future migrations or other more complex Discourse work that arises.
The Long Version
In my capacity as a consultant for a fast-growing productivity startup team, I selected and coordinated with Jay at Literate Computing to handle a migration from an existing Flarum forum to Discourse. The existing Flarum system had 1000s of topics and users and we needed to migrate as much information as possible. We had only a basic importer that another Discourse user had (kindly) shared to base the process upon.
Jay was as clear as possible up-front with the costs and challenges involved with migrating each type of data (users, posts, tags, like count, etc.). He then conducted additional tests and adjustments within his scope of work to further clarify what could and could not be migrated, and the time/cost requirements of each. This made it possible to make a very informed decision about what we could migrate within our budget, and I was ultimately able to get a budget increase approved by referencing his clear breakdown of what additional benefits it would bring.
When it came time to do the migration itself, a number of issues arose due to the challenges of coordinating between 3 parties (myself as a consultant, my client, and Jay as an additional consultant who needed to work with us both). Jay independently handled this unexpected difficulty kindly and professionally and produced a good outcome for all involved.
Jay is the kind of consultant you want to work with. Absolutely clear about his pricing, availability, etc., but also willing to be flexible when the situation justifies it. His knowledge of Discourse allowed us to move the vast majority of content over from an existing community, with a minimum of disruption or other issues. I would gladly work with him again on any Discourse-related projects that match his services, and will happily recommend him to others as well. His professionalism, candor, and adaptability are top-notch, and his pricing is reasonable for the level of services offered.