My review of PCBWay.com

I have been using PCBWay.com for more than 3 years now. I initially started off with OSH Park because I loved the fact that they were in the USA close to my home, and that they had the iconic purple PCBs. However their cost became out of my budget quickly when the time came to scale to larger quantities. PCBWay.com is the 2nd PCB maker I ever tried personally, produced all my Miuni32 PCBs through them, and I have not had any reason to try any other in the past 3 years.

Top 5 facts about PCB Way.com

  1. Based in China. Will get back to you later on this.
  2. Active on SNS – they actually active in that they take participate on Twitter
  3. 1 stop shop that uses quality components (as far as I can tell)
  4. No hidden fees. What you pay is what you see in the invoice.
  5. Quality. Never once was disappoi nted.

Top 5 Likes

  1. Efficiency. PCBWay.com is based in China, and during their business hours, you will get extremely prompt responses via emails and chat. Daphne – I don’t know if she’s real, but she’s the overseer who’s always prompt.  I used my email 100% for the communication and exchanged some 70+ emails on a single order. They were always professional and extremely efficient.
  2. Their DHL shipping *literally* takes 2 days to show up at your door in the USA. The shipping cost is calculated based on the weight and volume, and I paid $84 USD for an order of 200 assembled PCBs that are about a size of a large cellphone.
  3. When things go wrong, they are always extremely helpful. Things go wrong. DNP parts could show up soldered. You may have found out an error last minute in your design. Let me tell you, they will literally go talk to engineers on the floor and find things out and send you back videos and photos to let you know what exactly is happening.
  4. They actually tested every single board at no extra cost. Granted, there is no way to tell if they actually did what they said they did, but judging by video and photos, at least they ran the test on some portion of the order. This is a huge relief for a first timer like myself.
  5. Communication (again). Things get lost in translation. I asked to get the scraped parts along with the finished boards, but they forgot. They found and sent it to me promptly at no charge.

Top 5 Dislikes

  1. None… perhaps I am just an extremely optimistic and positive guy. I couldn’t come up with 5 dislikes.. Let alone one…

Top 5 Recommendations

  1. Check your BOM, schematics and special requests one more time.
  2. Break down your process. I asked to get 3 bare PCBs to get sent to me before they went ahead and assembled 200 of them.
  3. Once the bare PCB checked out, I gave them a green light to go ahead and assemble the boards. Again, I asked them to send me 3 finished boards.
  4. Run prototypes. Before I submitted the big order, I ordered bare PCBs which costed a little less than $100 all in all, hand soldered the boards, and tested them.
  5. Check Chinese national holidays. I wasn’t aware their Thanksgiving holidays were like a week long.

Thanks for reading this far, and please consider using my referral code.

I don’t get any compensation for the referral other than that I get a small discount on the next order of PCBs from PCBWay.com. It will help me reduce development cost, but more than anything I wholeheartedly recommend their service.

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