You’ve a million dollar app idea. Or you have a Buoyant multi-million-dollar business and looking to give a next-level consumer experience through an app.
You know that you need to find a good development partner at the right price before you take the idea out in the market.
There are countless apps on the app stores that are unnecessarily complex, frustrating to use, created by amateurs, or just plain broken. In terms of real effort, these apps likely took weeks or at the very top end, a couple of months to build.
Then, there are the apps that wow you. These are the apps that you use every day. They make your life better. They are fast. They are beautiful. They are intuitive. They do not crash and are mostly bug free. They are the definition of a great app.
Let’s be straightforward — customers always wonder how much it will cost to make an app. Relatively low prices and high quality are what everybody is looking for, whether you’re from the UK, the USA, India, or Ukraine. We know this very well, because we develop iOS and Android applications for startups.
How much does app development cost? How is the pricing decided? What is the breakdown of costs and efforts involved?
Needless to say, mobile app development cost varies widely. Nevertheless, let’s try to figure out how much you might expect to give away for your fancy new iPhone, iPad, or Android application, and what that money is actually paying for.
What influences the cost of the app development?
App development is majorly divided into two parts:
Designing the experience & interface
-
Information Analysis — User study, market research, stakeholder interviews, and competitive analysis. Identification and creation of use cases, behavioural scenarios, and the collection of user stories.Time Taken: 15 to 30 hours
- Market Research — 50 hours, depending on the familiarity with the industry and it’s terminology and then understanding the product, along with competitor analysis
- Stakeholder Interviews — 90 hours, for finding stakeholders, preparation of questions, conducting interviews and making sure all the questions are answered.
- Use cases — 25 hours, depending on the variety of the audience being designed for and how much they need to overlap for a solution.
-
Prototyping — Usability testing, concept validation, and UX designTime Taken — 200 hours, Gathering inspiration, Ideation, conceptualisation, picking, versioning, design development of the Information architecture, the user flow, the features, the wire-frames and the wire flows and then build a testable prototype out of it, 200 hours
UI Design of Tripin’s Shipper Application
-
Visual design (UI and UX design) — Complete look and feel of the app.UI design means how a product looks, whereas UX design means how it creates feels. UI design covers app colors, buttons, shapes, fonts, frames, and navigation style, etc., whereas UX design is what a user feel at the end of every action on the app.Time Taken — An average of 80 to 280 hours
The design cost may vary depending upon the complexity of features and intricacies of design. A good hour from a designer whose experience ranges from 0–2 year can cost around 15–45$. A designer who has 2–5 years of experience can charge around 45–90$ an hour, of-course discounts are allowed and a design company can charge as per their expertise in India.
Development of the App
How long does it take to code an app? While the question isn’t as timeless as “How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?” (spoiler alert: 3481), it is one that’s very dear to our community of mobile application developers.
Development varies upon the number of feature inclusions, the detail of the animations, the speed of application and so on.
Functionality of app includes:
-
Users and accounts sign in medium — Facebook sign in, Google sign in, Email sign in.Time Taken — 18 hours, 6 hours each
-
User generated content — User profiles, Ratings, Search functionality, Media uploading.Time Taken — 24 hours
-
Mobile specific features — Cloud sync, Device sensors, Barcodes & QR codes,Time Taken — 40 hours
-
Dates and Location — Calendars, Location access, BookingsTime Taken — 12 hours
Development of Tripin’s Shipper Application
-
Social Engagement — Messaging, Forums and commenting, Social sharing, Push notificationsTime Taken — 32 hours
-
Billing and E-commerce — Shopping cart, Payment gateway, In-app purchasesTime Taken — 40 hours
-
Admin, Feedback & Analytics — Usage analytics, Customer support, Data managementTime Taken — 32 hours
-
External API integration — Third party integration, SMS messaging, Phone number maskingTime Taken — 18 hours
-
Security — OTP ManagementTime Taken — 8 hours
Summing up all aforementioned functions equals to 224 hours which would account to, 1–2 months.
Now the cost of a developer depends upon their coding discipline and the language they are coding in. A developer who has 0–2 years of experience charges 20–35$ an hour, another developer who has a 2–5 years of experience may charge ranging from 35–80$ an hour in India.
This has been a rough overview of the myriad factors that go into app development. But you now have a sense of the true app development cost, and know enough to beware simplistic app cost calculators that don’t take the sophisticated design and development process into account.
If you are ready to take the next step toward developing your app, our team is waiting to chat. One of Tripin’s product strategists is ready to discuss the unique requirements of your project — use the contact form to say hello.
References:
https://fugenx.com/how-much-does-it-cost-to-design-an-app/https://fueled.com/blog/how-much-does-it-cost-to-develop-an-app/