Did you know that on average, people spend 3 hours and 15 minutes on their smartphones daily, checking their phones 58 times a day, and having at least 3-minute screen time sessions per every check? While this data may look troublesome to physicians and psychologists, it’s a valuable insight for those planning to invest in software development. Keep reading the article to get a better overview of the price of your future mobile app.
6 Key Factors Influencing Mobile App Development Costs
How to determine the cost? Those planning to get in touch with development agencies know the price range before the introduction call is made. A reputable agency offers an easy-to-use app development cost calculator with a complicated algorithm at its core. Five to six steps are required to complete a form and learn about the price range. The latter depends on:
- App size and its complexity. Signup, easy navigation, push notifications, effortless payment, and in-app search are some of the basic mobile app functions. More advanced features are complex backend, data synchronization, API integrations, or AI functionality. The more complicated the in-app tools are, the higher the development cost.
- Platform. Development of native mobile applications (Android, iOS) is more expensive than building cross-platform (Flutter) apps. Plus, the latter option allows for saving more time, since little to no alterations are needed to the app to run on both operating systems.
- UI design. Sophisticated and well-designed apps include animation, custom graphics, and complicated transitions. Simple designs are, of course, more affordable, but they prevent an app from standing out in the crowd. If an app is planned to serve internal teams only, a simple UI is desirable and will allow cutting down expenses.
- Backend development. When a mobile application has many integrations and is planned to interact with other services and applications via APIs, its architectural design and development will require more financial input and timeline extension.
- Development team location and structure. No secret that app development in the countries of North America and Western Europe is more expensive than in Eastern Europe or Asia. Plus, teams covering the full cycle of development (from business analysis and design through development and testing) are pricier than a full-stack developer. However, the quality of testing is questionable.
- Maintenance and support. A post-development phase requires additional expenses: app updates, server costs, emergency maintenance, customer support, and more. Most businesses tend to underestimate this item of expenditure, though, eventually, it becomes a large part of the total cost. We’ll talk about it in detail below.
Development Cost Breakdown: Three Cost Components
According to Statista, in the recent quarter of 2023, the full value of global consumer spending on mobile apps reached 171 billion USD. This means that, even despite the huge number of mobile apps already available on Google Play and Apple Pay, investing in this market is profitable. Get to know how much it costs to develop a mobile app for your industry.Â
Basically, there are three core stages that are involved in the development of mobile app projects. Their breakdown gives a profound understanding of how costs are formed.
Initial development costs:
- Project/product discovery
- UX and UI design
- App infrastructure and development
- App quality assurance (manual and automated testing)
- Deployment
Ongoing costs (post-deployment):
- Hosting
- Customer support
- App updates (new features & functionality added)
- Bug fixes
- 3-rd party services support (the latest versions)
- Performance updates
- Stability updates
Extra costs that are rarely considered:
- Marketing expenses (user acquisition costs)
- App content updates
- Localization/internationalization
- Intellectual property protection
- Scalability and future development plans
Strategies for Managing Development Costs
How to have total control over the costs of a project? We suggest you pay attention to the three strategic points that help most startups and owners of existing businesses retail their development costs while delivering a top-notch project.
Connect app features to the pain points of your target audience:
It’s essential to move from additional features to foundational ones to deliver value rather than boast. Learn to stay in between two common traps of 1) under-conceptualizing and 2) over-conceptualizing. For this, you need to set clear project goals, determine expected outcomes, and prioritize feature lists for your development team to be able to align the project’s functionality with the pain points of your audience.
Develop a culture of honest communication:
Knowledge transfer is everything. You need to learn how to manage and balance this transfer at each technical requirement cross-road against business requirements. Give way to interactive development and approve technical requirements at every development point, thus avoiding budget swelling. It’s the iterative process that always allows business owners to determine if a certain technical choice supports current objectives.
Introduce changes to protect your budget:
No matter how precise you are at planning, changes are inevitable. Make sure changing requests don’t make your development team lose sight of the initial product concept. On your way, there will appear competitors, new requests from users, modern technologies, etc. To avoid threads, external or internal, develop process flexibility and direct any occurring changes towards accomplishing the initial product concept.Â
Conclusion
Mobile app development is definitely on the rise. It’s true that many businesses may have a negative experience when building out the idea they have been cherishing and designing for a long time. But to make it work successfully, it’s critical to keep two key points in mind: 1) You need to entrust your project to a top-notch team that will help with all the calculations before a single line of code is written; 2) You need to stay focused on the budget while developing and make amendments accordingly.
