Any online entrepreneur dreams about developing a full-scope app to add more value to the customers as well as acquire new. But moving from an app idea to an app poses certain risks especially for the investments.
Building an app requires not only time but also massive investments, doesn’t it? Today, we’re going to set the record straight and give answers to the most frequently asked question “How much does it really cost to develop an app?”
But before starting calculating the price, let’s consider the advantages of having a custom app:
Accessibility
Reach out more people with a mobile app. An app makes the access to your store or business extremely easy. Today people tend to use cell phones more than tablets or laptops.
Engagement
An app allows the customers to keep in touch 24/7, get support and engage with you in real time. The following will help build trusted and stable relationships.
Value
With an app, it’s more convenient and easy to show the customers how much you value them. Introduce a loyalty program especially for those with your app.
Brand visibility
Even the presence of your logo on a smartphone or tablet will increase the brand recognition. Look around, everyone holds their heads and eyes in the cell phones. And as a result, having an app will bring you more and more customers.
Sale channel
With in-app purchase feature, you can encourage the customers to buy goods or services from your app. And along with a loyalty program, the customers will highly appreciate making online purchases.
Factors affecting the costs
- Functionality
- Platform
- Timeline
Functionality
For any app, there is an unlimited number of features that you can choose. Moreover, every feature can be built in several ways affecting the final costs.
The very first thing to consider is what pains the app’s going to solve to understand what features needed.
What the app will do is a crucial thing in determining the price. There is a huge price gap between a simple app like e.g. a calculator and a fully-loaded app like Spotify or Uber. The more crammed with extra features and advanced functionality you app is, the more it’ll cost you.
Platform
One of the main issue to decide at the early stage is a mobile app platform to release an app. Note, an iOS development takes less time when compared to Android. And iOS is a step further than any other platforms in terms of revenue. Hence, you can first build an app for iOS and then go for Android.
Another disputable question is “What app type should I develop?” Let’s delve into this issue.
A native app is developed specifically for a particular OS (iOS or Android, etc.), and a mobile web app can be installed on any device regardless of the operating system. A mobile web app runs on a web browser.
So what to choose? If you don’t need to support several operating systems, choose a native app. But if there is a high need to work on all devices including BlackBerry OS, a mobile web app will come extremely useful.
Timeline
Take a breath and decide when you want to get your app. Having a reasonable schedule is the best way to optimize your budget. The less time you have, the more you’ll have to pay.
For example, you run a hospital and want to get a clinical app for doctors. The app should track their activity, show where a doctor is, give access to hospital data, and allow doctors communicate with each other.
The following app is quite a complex one involving advanced features such as GPS, messenger, accesses to the database to be developed. Advanced features and unrealistic expectations of a product delivery will inevitably affect the final price. The overtime work is charged twice or three times more.
How much does it cost?
Clutch has performed a survey and found out that it could take as low as $38,000 and as high as $171,000 to develop an app in the U.S.
Like a piece of software, a mobile app has a great many of variable affecting the price. There is any app development company that can estimate the project cost right away. Even the online calculators are rather a marketing bait than a useful tool.
One of the best ways to estimate the price of an app is to get price quotes from a couple of app development companies.
At the negotiations stage, a company will estimate the amount of hours required to develop an app. As you can see, a complex app requires more hours of work.
There a lot of surveys available on the Internet, having analyzed dozens of surveys, we found out that you need to spend at least $15,000 for a plain app. And for a complex app, the price starts from $100,000.
Also see: Top 8 Unexpected Uses For Mobile Marketing That Can Boost Your Startup
My name is Tosha Bronicka. I’m a content crafter at IDAP Group. I run, swim, and cycle. When I’m not doing all these, I read and write amazing coverage on app development issues. Follow IDAP on Facebook.
