So what is the cost to develop a mobile application? I've been asked this
question hundreds of times, and developing a mobile application that's
quality and really impacts your business is so paramount in a mobile generation
that we're living in. Mobile applications can cost anywhere from thousands of
dollars to millions of dollars and I'm gonna get into the formulas of how
leading mobile app developers across the world are using to calculate the cost of
mobile application and what you can do to impact that cost in a positive way. If
you're an entrepreneur thinking about developing a mobile application for your
product or company. When thinking about a mobile application I usually tear it
down into four different sections there's the front end, or the front end
visual portion of the application this is typically what's on the mobile
application itself. There's the back end of the application this is what happens
on the server it's gonna be storing information or retrieving of information
and then there's the design portion of the application, how that application
looks feels the user experienced and the design of that product and lastly the
testing the quality. And how much you spend on quality and design those are
two elements that don't often get talked about but those elements can really
significantly impact both the quality of the application and how much money
you're spending. So let's take a simple example of an application that really
has just three screens. It may have a login screen, so you have to enter a user
name and password and hit submit. It may have a profile screen that may have the
profile of the person who's logging in, and it may have an upload photo screen.
So a very simple application, doesn't do a lot.
Now you'd break that application down into its components so what would it
take an engineer to code the front-end portion of the login screen, and that may
be something that could be done in a couple days - what would it take to
develop the profile section of the application again retrieving information
from the server. Again maybe there's a name profile picture
or information you want to retrieve from the server and then lastly taking a
photo and uploading it. In even that simple type of application there's going
to be a lot of gotchas or things to think about, do you have to log in with
Apple ID? Is there going to be a different login flow on Android than on
iPhone, so all these little gotchas go into the estimation and more experienced
engineering firms will think through some of those scenarios even prior to
starting an application. More junior firms may or may not take those into
consideration, so really make sure you understand the requirements and what
your application has to do before diving in and asking for estimates. Now because
talent is very diverse, and global talent especially is very diverse you'll see a
range of prices for development firms from 200-300 dollars an hour for onshore
development work to twenty to fifty dollars an hour for offshore development
work and you'll see everything in between and this is really based on the
quality of the engineers the seniority of the engineering talent and seniority
of the design talent that's working in a particular product. Now more expensive by
the hour does not necessarily mean that the end application will be more
expensive because sometimes those more senior engineers can save you money down
the road by making the right decisions in the first place so really evaluate
both your budget and the seniority and talent that's going to be working on an
application to make sure you're really getting what you expect. The other
consideration you should really think about is the architecture that you're
choosing for your application. Some developers will use technologies like
react native or flutter to build an application a cross-platform way that
can save you costs from not having to develop an Android version separately
from an iPhone version but these technologies have trade-offs so just
make sure you're aware of the trade-offs before you sign up for a particular
architecture the leading application developers will tend to develop their
applications using native technology. Native to apple and native to android
and these technologies provide a great experience but they can also be
significantly more expensive so just make sure you understand the
architectural choices and the pros and cons of the approach
you're taking. So what are some of the typical costs and timelines for building
a mobile application well it really depends on the features and complexity
of the product but it's really typical for apps to be developed in somewhere
between four to six months of time I find that taking longer to develop an
application is somewhat problematic and that you're waiting a long time to see
what the customers reaction to that product might be and taking less than
four months can really be too fast in terms of not taking enough time to build
a quality application to test it effectively and make sure it has enough
features to be really impactful in the marketplace in terms of the size of team
it really again depends on the number of features but having a person per
platform meaning at least an engineer on iPhone an engineer on Android and a
designer working on the product throughout the length of the project is
really what I recommend is the minimum to make sure you're having enough time
to build the right quality. So far we really talked about the upfront cost of
building the initial application but the real thing you should consider is the
long term ongoing costs of building an application most applications that are
successful end up being maintained by an engineering team course of an entire
year and so if you're thinking about building an application and it's going
to be core in central to your business you should really think about
operationalizing that team across the entire year as well lots of mobile teams
from smaller startups end up being teams of two or three people and then larger
companies can deploy teams of 50 or even a hundred people to make sure their
mobile application is performing well this can be huge amounts of money and
huge percentages of your engineering team and if your product is moving the
needle for your business and your business is truly mobile first this will
be a true investment into the future of your company while the cost of these
applications can be significant the impact that these applications can have
on your business can be profound we're seeing businesses drive 60, 70, 80 % of
their core business from their mobile applications and if your business is
mobile first you might be able to do the same. Thanks so much for joining me
I'm Greg Raiz until the next one!