PCBA assembly cost hugely different to online quote
I have used a number of Chinese suppliers for PCB and PCBA projects, but was attracted to PCBGOGO by their PCBA assembly offer for USD30 (excluding supply of components) A number of PCBA vendors have similar PCBA assembly offers, which are all limited in terms of number of boards, number of components, etc and most (like PCBGOGO) have a comprehensive online quotation tools into which you need to enter the number of boards, number of unique components, total number of SMT components and total number of through hole components, which provides their system sufficient information to calculate the assembly cost. And which, based on the number of boards, unique components, total components, was quoted by PCBGOGO as USD30. Based on the quoted USD30 assembly cost, I proceeded to prepare all the files (Gerbers, BOM, etc) in the format required by PCBGOGO - all vendors require files in some specific format to suit their processes - and placed the order. I had requested PCBGOGO to quote on supplying the components, so was expecting the total order cost to be adjusted based on the actual component cost. However, PCBGOGO came back with a revised assembly cost of USD107 (excluding components) instead of the USD30 quoted. When questioning this with PCBGOGO, I was advised by Martin Chen "I'm sorry that this may bother you. But this is the imperfection of our website. We are trying to improve our website. But the assembly cost is still inaccurate. So we have to use the price we reviewed. The $107 is the right price." Some minor adjustment in price could be understandable, but 3.5x out makes their USD30 offer look like click bait. Based on this experience, I would recommend using PCBWAY or JLCPCB, whose online and actual quotations I have found to be reliable in past projects. I did not proceed with PCBGOGO based on this initial experience with the company.