An Exclusive Guide To Mobile App Development Cost Costing of an Mobile App Development How can businesses estimate the overall budget for your app? Table of Contents 1. Discussing the Requirements for App Development ● Platforms ● Type of App ● Complexity ● Infrastructure 2. Concluding Factors Influencing Development Cost 3. Geographic Impact on App Development 4. Estimating Costs for UI & UX Design 5. Deciding on Features and Functions 6. Cost for After-Development Processes 7. Conclusive Factors that Reduce Development Cost 8. Finalizing the Budget Report Preface by Appventurez Want to develop a mobile app but don’t have a figure to set up a budget for it? This happens with almost every entrepreneur, an app developer or any individual that comes up with a unique app idea. This ebook is the key to all your questions linked with the calculation of the app development budget. It has the breakdown of all the necessary factors that are involved in estimating the overall cost for the project. While understanding every major and minor concept in building a reliable mobile app, you will get through all the necessary insights. It isn’t easy to jump off on a specific number during the estimation, but this content will lead you towards a better way of summing up all the costing aspects. Let’s get started. Section 1: Discussion on the Requirements for App Development You can’t actually predict the exact amount of the budget required to build a compact, powerful, and enticing mobile app. However, you need to follow a step-by-step procedure to gather necessary factors that play major roles in budgeting, The very first step is to gather all the core requirements through which you can establish a base of the project. Here are the common factors that should be included in the requirement list: ● Choosing the type of App, eg - mobile game, ecommerce, lifestyle. Social networking, etc. ● Platforms and marketplace - iOS App Store, Android Play Store, or Windows Store. ● Design - Uniform, Advanced or Customized ● No of pages & links ● Architecture & Functions ● Backend tools Without knowing the specifications, you might not able to estimate the actual cost and expenses for your mobile app. Moreover, it also depends on the time to be taken and the efforts needed to execute the final product. Once you listed all the core requirements, you need to dive deeper to categorize more factors. This will help to fulfill the above list and make your project successful for the launch. So, let’s move on to the second section of this ebook. Section 2: Professional Approach towards App Development Cost Estimation Defining the overall costs of the project isn’t an easy task, but when you attain a professional approach then you will get the idea to estimate the cost. A professional estimate provides you with a full specification for your mobile product, with a price that you can take to the bank. Though the purpose is different, a professional estimate serves as a due diligence report if you were investing in a business, real estate, or other ventures. In synopsis, a professional cost estimate should account for every feature, function and design element used by your app, along with its backend, technology stack and other special requirements. It should itemize the time requirements and cost to develop each of these components. Section 3: Concluding Factors Influencing Development Cost From the requirement list, you need to breakdown all the points and know how they can influence the app development cost. Whether you are doing this project for a start-up or a large enterprise, all of these factors will impact the cost of your mobile app: ● Features to be included along with their pricing. ● Every platform has its own deployment and publishing expense. ● Integrating the app with existing or new business software for syncing operations. ● Merging the app with external servers or cloud-based services, which have different pricing plans. ● MVP (Minimum Value Product) or POC (Proof of Concept) approach. ● Is your project based on deadlines? Generally, target-based or short deadline projects cost more. ● Deciding on - who will build your project? - Freelancers, app development agency or hiring your own team. ● The targeted location where you are planning to develop and launch the app. Starting from scratch isn’t an easy task for the teams but when you have the desired aim, based on the end-product requirements, you can stay focused and might examine the expenses along the process. Other than these essential factors, there will be a huge impact of geographic factors on your app development project. Let’s see how: Section 4: Geographic Impact on App Development The location of the project where it is going to be executed or the location of the agency and developers also matter in the budgeting of your app. This is because every country or region has its own legal policies of doing business. Their currency expenses differ and so their market. Moreover, the packages offered by an agency or freelancing team also differ. Most of them charge according to the hourly rates, conveyed how many pages or functionalities they will build or integrate. As you will have a lot of options to choose for building a reliable team, you should compare the quality of their work with the budget. The more you focus on quality over quantity, the better and refined product you will get. It’s totally up to you whether you want to distribute the project on an hourly basis or buy services from an agency. Below image represents the average rate of app developers, examined on an hourly basis: Again, the question will hit the quality factor. So make sure, you get exactly what you need from the hired team. Examine their portfolios, analyze previous projects, and then make a decision worth enough to fulfill your requirements. Section 5: Estimating Costs for UI & UX Design Here comes the major part of your app development project, which will definitely take a huge time to finalize the base structure. At times, possibilities come when you don’t have satisfaction with the layout or overall design of the app. Then you ask for modifications that will definitely take the time and effort of the development team. Hence, more expenses will be required to get a perfect design that can provide a user-friendly interface. However, one shouldn’t mind spending a little extra if they are getting a perfect UI that boosts ROI. In addition, the design of your app also depends on the type of app you want: Simple, ​ Average or Complex. The type of your app depends on the number of pages you want ​ in the app. 6 or Less Pages - Simple App Design 12 or Less Pages - Average Design More than 25 pages - Complex App Structure To get a better reference, use an ecommerce app. They have the maximum number of pages as they need to showcase categories, products, checkout screens and a lot more. On the other hand, a dating app like Tinder has the minimum number of pages with limited functions. Deciding on what type of app you want, you can have a better idea of how much expenses are required to spend on app’ design and architecture. What’s more in the app design is adding necessary features and features for making the user experience better. In the next section, you will know how budgets get affected by adding these elements in the application: Section 6: Deciding on Features and Functions The process of building a mobile app becomes more tensile when it comes to choosing the necessary features and functions. Here, the aim is to make it more engaging, user-friendly, responsive and accessible. Till the above processes, the expenses you need to spend will remain under control. But after that, it all depends on the functions you will be adding in the application. For every module you add in the application, you need to implement a set of functionalities that will enhance user experience. To calculate the expenses, let’s start elaborating these essential features and functions: 1. User Signup/Login Users are the key objects that will utilize your application, so there should be a signup and login section. Using this feature, users can register and manage their accounts accordingly. This is a primary process that should be present in the app development process. Developers usually take approximately 20 hours and might require $500 to $1,000 in total expense. 2. Push notifications Push notification is one of the must-have features in mobile apps. It provides real-time updates about all the user activities. Implementing this feature might take a whole day, depending on what types of notification users will get from the app. Hence, the expenses may lie between $1,000 and $4000. 3. Navigation Mobile apps are all about less clicking, more scrolling and swiping. To ease the access and make the design flexible, navigational features are implemented with all the screens. Providing all the necessary gesture behaviors and clickable features will help users to get a better experience. The logic might take more than 10 hours and may require expenses between $250-$500. 4. Portrait / Landscape view In relation to UI characteristics, this feature helps users to rotate the screen at different positions. to the previous feature, the interface concept is also a part of any application. This feature basically represents the screen layout in vertical (portrait) as well as horizontal (Landscape) orientation. According to the OS platform and app design, it might take around 18 hours to implement this feature and around $800. 5. Content Management Systems (CMS) Though interactive features are assumed to appear by default, they are also a result of certain work.