Are you considering building an app? A question that would have invariably come up is how much it would “Cost to develop an app”? There is however no one answer to this question. The cost to develop a mobile app depends on a lot of factors - including but not limited to - the platform to target, the features you want, design, any additional infrastructure and finally the development team that you choose. There are many freelancers who would charge you peanuts to build your app - but their work will not always be reliable, well-thought out or good quality. There are also development shops working on large projects but focusing on specific genres (banking or manufacturing for instance) and not willing to go that extra mile to get you a world-class app or striving for a unique UX most suitable for your app. Then there are development teams that focus on UI/UX, quality and usability to ensure your app stands out.
When going through this article, please keep in mind that the cost projections made here are largely based on our experience developing mobile apps and mobile solutions for the past 9 years - across hundreds of apps we have built for our clients. The cost to develop an app can range anywhere between $500 to $500,000 depending on various factors with the time to develop ranging from anywhere between 2 weeks to 20 weeks. That’s a hefty investment - both time and money. What determines how much your app would cost? Read on to find out:
6 factors determining the Cost to Develop a Mobile App:
We have summarised these factors into an infographic for your convenience.
Details - Factors affecting the Cost to Develop an App:
There are 6 key factors which help determine the appropriate budget for your app development needs:1. Platforms to target
The cost for building an app can vary depending on the platforms you wish to support with your app. The more platforms you wish to support, the more the app development would cost. It is not always proportional to the number of platforms supported since re usability of code comes into picture.
2. Scoping and Development Model
When you’ve decided to go ahead with developing an app, the first step is to determine your business objectives and the solution you need - what will your app do. You need to create a technical specifications doc which lists down the features your app will have. This can be quite a task for a non-technical person - in which case you can always take some help from a technical team on what is possible or what isn’t.Another point to consider is how you want to build your product. Does it have a fixed set of features you wish to go ahead with (waterfall model) or would you prefer to define features as you see your app growing (agile method). These are two vastly different development models followed and determine the cost for developing the app.
We generally follow something called an “iterative development” model which is a mix of both. We start with a set of requirements (sketches, key functionality, some documentation) but our clients have some flexibility around the features and some details during the development process.
3. Design
App design (both UI and UX) is what separates good apps from amazing apps. A great idea followed by an amazing user experience is bound to make a successful app.
If you want an average design that users are familiar with, the cost for designing such an app would be less compared to an impressive app design which takes longer to turn out. The app design also varies based on the number of screens your app has.
An experienced UI/UX designer can also help provide invaluable feedback on what works for end users and what doesn’t.
4. Custom vs Platform-based development
There are many mobile app development platforms that let you build an app in a cheap, fast and easy way, they do have some limitations - most of these platforms have a fixed set of features you can add to your app, you generally do not get the code and don’t own it, there are very few customizations you can do.5. App Features
Probably the most dynamic and most important of the pricing factors is app features. Your app’s development cost depends on the kind of features it will have - is it a simple todo app, an MVP for a social app or a complex app that has email and social login, GPS, notifications and the works? As the number and complexity of features in your app increases, so does the cost of development.6. Infrastructure
If your app is not a standalone offline app and has a server component involved, that increases the app development cost. You need to take into consideration the server setup, storage requirements, data encryption & security, communication with the app, user management among other things.
