How to find a good Hyvä developer (and avoid the bad ones)

The Hyvä developer market is small enough that you can realistically pick one agency or contractor anywhere in the world. The problem isn't volume — it's signal-to-noise. Every Magento agency now lists "Hyvä experience" on their website. Most of them have shipped two or three Hyvä builds at best.

Here's the practical vetting framework we'd want to be asked, if we were on the other side of the table.

The three questions that separate specialists from generalists

Use these in the first 5 minutes of any vetting call. A real Hyvä specialist answers each with specifics. A generalist deflects.

1. How many Hyvä builds have you shipped end-to-end?

Specialist answer: A number with context. "30+ in the last 18 months, ranging from £8k single-module work to £80k full Hyvä Commerce implementations. Three of those were Adobe Commerce B2B."

Generalist answer: Vague. "Quite a few." "A lot of Hyvä experience." "We've worked on several Hyvä projects."

The key word in the question is end-to-end. Touching tickets on someone else's Hyvä project doesn't count. The threshold is: were you the responsible engineer who would get woken up if the cutover failed?

2. Show me a Hyvä module you've written from scratch.

Specialist answer: Pulls up a GitHub repo in 30 seconds. Walks you through their compatibility module pattern. Shows you the layout XML, the .phtml templates, the Alpine.js component.

Generalist answer: "We'll prepare a portfolio." "Most of our work is under NDA." "We can show you something during scoping."

The "everything is under NDA" deflection is the tell. Specialists either have public GitHub presence (they contribute to the Hyvä community) or have at least one client they have permission to discuss in detail. A team that genuinely ships Hyvä every week has accumulated at least one sample they can show.

3. What's your typical mobile Lighthouse score on a Hyvä site you've built?

Specialist answer: A number (92, 88, 95) with awareness of what pulls it down. "92 typical. The hit is usually third-party scripts in the GTM container — once we audit those it pushes to 95+. LCP is rarely the bottleneck on Hyvä; it's the marketing tag overhead."

Generalist answer: "Hyvä is fast." "Our sites score well on Lighthouse." "Performance is one of Hyvä's main benefits."

The specific number matters. Anyone shipping Hyvä regularly knows their own score range. Anyone who doesn't, isn't shipping enough Hyvä to be a specialist.

Red flags — walk away

In rough order of severity:

1. They quote hourly rates instead of fixed-price scopes. The whole point of hiring a specialist is they've shipped enough Hyvä that they can predict the timeline accurately. If they need hourly billing, they're transferring delivery risk to you because they don't know how long it'll take.

2. They want a 50% deposit upfront before scoping. Reputable agencies do scoping for free or for a nominal scoping fee that's credited against the project. Big-deposit-before-scope is a sales-pressure tactic.

3. They can't name the specific Hyvä-compatible modules for your top 5 paid extensions. A real specialist has worked with the major Magento extension vendors enough to know which ones ship Hyvä compat and which don't. If they need to "research and get back to you", they haven't shipped enough Hyvä.

4. They claim 100% mobile Lighthouse Performance scores. Lighthouse 100 is achievable on a static demo page; it's not achievable on a production ecommerce site with real third-party tracking, real fonts, real product images. Anyone claiming 100 is either lying or doesn't understand the metric.

5. They don't push back on your scope. If your scope is genuinely realistic, fine. But more often, the merchant scope contains unrealistic items (rebrand bolted on, 25 extensions to migrate in 6 weeks, B2B features that need 4 extra weeks). A specialist tells you what's unrealistic upfront. A generalist says yes to everything and then blames you mid-project.

6. They sub-contract the actual Hyvä work to a different agency. Some "Hyvä agencies" are sales fronts that subcontract delivery to another shop. The PM is theirs; the engineers aren't. Ask directly: "Will the engineers writing my code work for your company?"

7. They don't have public Hyvä community presence. Hyvä is a small enough ecosystem that real specialists are visible — Hyvä Slack, contributions to compat.hyva.io, GitHub PRs, talks at MageMastery or Mage-OS events. If you can't find your prospective agency anywhere in the public Hyvä community, that's a signal.

Green flags — these are good

1. They volunteer the cases where they wouldn't recommend Hyvä. A specialist talks you out of a Hyvä migration in three scenarios: replatforming-off-Magento timelines, very low-traffic stores, Magento version not yet Hyvä-supported. If they say yes to everyone, they're selling not consulting.

2. They quote in 48 hours from a scoping call. Specialists have a quoting framework that maps your extension list + design fidelity + B2B complexity to a price band. Slow quoting = no framework = no track record.

3. They give you a list of references you can call directly. Not testimonials on their website — actual references with phone numbers. Specialists with happy clients are happy to make introductions.

4. They publish open-source Hyvä work. Compatibility modules for common commercial extensions, Hyvä helper utilities, blog posts dissecting Hyvä-specific problems. Open-source contribution is unfaked credibility.

5. They name specific Hyvä-version compatibility. "We support Hyvä 1.3 and newer; 1.2 we'd need to upgrade you first." This is technical depth that a generalist doesn't have.

Where to actually look

In rough order of signal quality:

1. Hyvä Themes' partner directory (hyva.io/partners). Vetted by Hyvä Themes; you're guaranteed real Hyvä experience. Not all good Hyvä agencies are listed (some haven't pursued the partner programme) but the false-positive rate is low.

2. The Hyvä community Slack. Active contributors are visible. The agencies whose engineers answer technical Hyvä questions in #general or #compatibility are the ones doing the work.

3. GitHub — Hyvä Compat Tracker contributors (compat.hyva.io). The agencies submitting compatibility modules to the tracker are the ones writing them. Easy way to see who's actually shipping Hyvä code.

4. Magento community references (Mage-OS, MageMastery, MageTitans speakers). Anyone speaking publicly about Hyvä has at least some real experience.

5. LinkedIn search "Hyvä developer" or "Hyvä theme". Lower-quality signal — anyone can claim it on a profile — but useful to cross-check against the above.

Don't trust

• Magento marketplace listings (no Hyvä-specific vetting)
• General "best Magento agencies" lists (rarely Hyvä-specific)
• Clutch / G2 / GoodFirms profiles in isolation (paid-for badges, no Hyvä validation)
• Agency websites with "Hyvä experience" as a checkbox (everyone claims it now)

These can be useful if combined with signals from the first list, but don't take them at face value.

What a good first conversation looks like

A 30-minute Hyvä scoping call with a specialist covers:

• Your current Magento version + Hyvä supportability
• Your extension list (they ask for it; they don't guess)
• Your design intent (faithful rebuild vs rebrand vs new direction)
• Your B2B / Adobe Commerce features if applicable
• Your performance baseline (current mobile Lighthouse, current checkout completion %)
• Your target launch date

The output is a fixed-price quote within 48 hours, with line-item pricing visible (theme work, extension compat work, performance tuning, QA + UAT, cutover, post-launch). If the quote is one big lump sum with no detail, the agency doesn't have a costing model.

When to walk away after scoping

• The quote is materially higher than competing quotes and the agency can't explain the line-item difference
• The agency refuses to give references
• The agency wants a non-refundable deposit before sending the scope doc
• The agency's PM is hard-sell on a Phase 2 you didn't ask for
• The timeline is dramatically shorter than other quotes ("we can do it in 4 weeks") — usually means they don't understand the scope

The bottom line

Hyvä is a small enough ecosystem that the good agencies are visible if you know where to look. The vetting framework is three questions in 5 minutes; the red flags are obvious if you're listening. Don't pick on price alone, don't pick on agency size, and don't skip the reference calls.

Next steps

• See the Hyvä specialist developers page for our vetting summary
• Read Hire Hyvä developer vs hire Hyvä agency for the contractor question
• Book a scoping call — if we're not the right fit we'll say so