What’s the cost of making an app? In a nutshell, it may vary from $2,000 to $250,000. Quite a gap, isn’t it? But everything has a price tag, and when it comes to building mobile apps, you’re really getting what you’ve paid for.
The price of software development depends on many factors, and now we’ll try to find the main drivers of its cost. Let’s dive in.
How much it costs to build an app? [Worldwide estimation]
Let’s start with rough numbers. If we take the $50/hour rate, we can say that basic app costs around $25,000, medium complexity application – from $40,000 up to $70,000. Apparently, the price of complex apps goes beyond $70,000.
It’s no secret that the cost of app development often depends on the company’s location. And the average cost of software development greatly varies from region to region. For example, in North America devs charge $150/h for iOS app development and $168 for an hour of working on Android apps. Australia shows more moderate appetites charging $110/h. UK charges $70/h, Eastern Europe – $35/h, India – $30/h (iOS) and $26/h (Android). And, finally, rates in Indonesia are $11/h and $12/h for mobile app development.
- North America is the most expensive region for iOS/Android app delivery. They charge from $20 up to $250 per hour.
- Australia offers a rate of $35-150 per hour.
- UK devs tend to charge from $35 to $175/h.
- Eastern European hourly rates start from $20 reaching up to $110.
- Devs in India are satisfied getting $10-75/h, while in Indonesia the highest cost is $20.
Outsourcing or local development: which is better
When you’re going to build a mobile app, cost is not the only thing that matters. If you don’t have a team of devs, it’s time to start looking for people that can deliver your product. Currently, there’re two best options to choose from – outsourcing and local development.
The most valuable argument in favor of building the app locally is physical proximity to the team. That greatly simplifies communication during the process. Sure, it’s much easier to explain the requirements face to face as well as check the product before paying for it.
Still, offshore development is not that troublesome at it seems. Same for communication with an outsourcing team. Remote teams try to meet the organizational requirements as local devs do. Outsourcing development often performs a lot better due to the high level of expertise and reasonable cost. The matter is to actually find a suitable offshore team – there’s a number of companies to choose from.
What influences a mobile app development cost?
Unfortunately, there’s no magic wand when it comes to defining the software development price. That’s why devs can’t provide an accurate estimation right away. Before sending a bill to customers, the team of developers estimates the number of hours needed to implement the specifications. The most important factors that influence app development price are:
- Features and app functionality
- Customized visual design
- Number of platforms
- Backend infrastructure
- App administration
Now, it’s time to review these factors in more details.
Features and functionality
The number of features and app functionality are the main cost drivers. So prior to asking about the price, you should define how complex the app’s going to be. Screens, buttons, fields, and logic matter a lot. So let’s discover what features influence the app complexity and development length.
- User engagement
User involvement may take place while performing authorization, networking, notices, etc. For example, the authorization process may be either simple or complex. Adding password recovery, complex visual design or login via social networks lead to the cost increase.
- In-app purchases and location-based features
Credit cards, PayPal and other e-wallets are very popular in-app payment methods. And each of these methods requires time to be implemented. And if you’d like to use location data, detecting and mapping are quite simple to do. But more sophisticated technologies like iBeacon and geofencing do take some time.
- The use of native device features
Using device native facilities becomes more obscure. Previously, these interactions were confined to dialing, accelerometer, the use of device camera, location information, etc. Currently, we deal with NFC chips, payment systems and innovations are constantly moving on. For building apps that can access in-built features, devs use APIs. And with the emergence of new features, there’s a need to create new APIs that have not been developed yet.
Design customization
Working on a unique UI design is quite complicated and it provides additional expenses to the product. The cheapest option will be using OS-supplied items and creating screens of standard elements.
Number of platforms
Most apps have both iOS and Android version, and this means doubling the cost. No wonder product owners may want to start with just one platform, developing the app only for Apple or Android users. Choosing the platform, they need to consider factors as OS market share, device fragmentation, and prevalence. Finally, we need to remember that the delivery of apps for these platforms greatly differs. They take over different programming languages, different SDKs, and development tools.
However, if you’re aimed at having both the apps but are limited in budget, cross-platform or a hybrid app may be a solution.
Backend and app administration
In app development, backend is an OS providing devs with API to ensure data exchange between an app and a database. To track user activity as well as assess the performance of the app, it’s equipped with analytics. The number of parameters to track and detalization of tracking influences the cost.
The admin panel is an extremely useful tool for managing app content, its users and statistics. Sure, there are ready-made templates, but finding a good one is a problem. This, it may be worth creating a custom admin panel that 100% meets your requirements.
Wrapping Up
As you see, mobile app development is a complex process and its price completely depends on your requirements. So prior to contacting software developers and asking questions about the total price, create a list of features you expect to see, think of its design, goals, and issues your app solves.
About the author:
Sergey Lypchenko is a technical writer at Cleveroad. It is a web and mobile app development company located in Eastern Europe. Their main goal is to develop first-rate and competitive software for our customers. His mission is to provide people with interesting material about innovations in the world of IT.