This is a handy app development cost
calculator tool that allows you to select the features that
your app is going to have, select the platform, choose the
features out of the given app feature lists, describe your
app idea and then we’d get back to you with a quote range
and timelines and that would answer how much does it cost to
create an app. This is an automated tool originally,
although once you share the app description in the last step
then we offer you a custom quote and you can definitely
consider that as a “go to” app development quote range.
This App cost calculator considers
several factors while estimating the App development costs,
some of the salient factors are as follows –
App development cost factor # 1
- Platform you want to target
No matter if you use native
technology or cross-platform, the fact remains true
that the more platforms you target at once the more
it would go heavy on the pocket and also on
development time. It is advisable to first target
one platform (that is most famous in your target
geography) and then add further ones as the next
enhancement. There were days when 9 out of 10 times
our client would ask us to develop the app for iOS
first but gradually android picked up a lot across
both developed and underdeveloped world and now it
has become quite comparable between android and iOS.
So choose the platform which your target users use
most, and then jump on another.
App development cost factor # 2
- Online/ Offline
While most of the useful apps are
usually online or internet-driven only, they are the
ones that attract more development hours and cost as
well. On the contrary, basic apps that are static
and exchange no data from the internet are the ones
that are cheaper and quicker to develop. Although
with the modern technologies available for the
backend like firebase, even data-driven/ internet
driven apps are becoming cheaper to develop these
days.
App development cost factor # 3
- No. of features
As its name suggests, the more
features and functionality you put into your app the
more time and cost it would take to develop. While
some regular features like map view, search, and
upload pics are not much time consuming these days,
even the regular ones can increase the cost of app
development if they come in large volumes. It is
advisable to divide your overall feature list into 2
or 3 versions and then release the app in
corresponding versions only. That makes sure that
you don’t end up investing a lot in version 1 of the
app itself and also helps to keep the user engaged
and entertained with regular updates.
App development cost factor # 4
- No. of Screens
Number of “unique screens'' can
have a lot of effect in determining the app
development costs, even though they don’t show much
“technical features or functionality” but only some
information or output of a user’s input, the more
unique screens you add the more app development
costs that would attract. This of course, doesn’t
mean that adding a redundant “privacy policy” screen
only can cost you more app development costs. Only
the ones that have some “user specific” information
to share or grab are going to increase the cost of
app development, which then can be calculated on the
app development cost calculator.
App development cost factor # 5
- Complexity of the features
Similar to the above point,
sometimes even a single feature turns out to be
costlier than 10 regular features but that only is
the “crowd puller” for sure. For example, in a
dating app like Tinder, the algorithm that matches
one with another and also sends suggestions of new
matches every day is the more complex feature than
the other 10 features of the same app and probably
have taken most development time and dollars.
App development cost factor # 6
- How polished you want your apps to be
Like everything else in life,
Apps do come with quality categories. There are apps
that are pretty basic and do what they are intended
to do but they look basic, have no much effort on
user-friendliness and enhancement features and
therefore all your efforts and app development costs
go into the development of the code for both app
front end or backend. On the other hand, there are
apps that are pretty basic in terms of functionality
but their user interface and design is so polished
and modern that your developers spend 3 weeks in
development and 10 weeks in polishing the design and
enhancing the user experience. As the name says, the
more polished you want your app to be the more cost
it would attract. It is always worthwhile to launch
polished apps but as in case of everything else, we
advise saving the most polished features and
enhancements for further phases and don’t offer
everything at once.
App development cost factor # 7
- The Backend Complexity [Major Part in App
Development Cost Calculator]
The apps that have simple
backends that only store the data and do a basic
level of data processing are the most quicker to be
made and need less customizations, such backends are
sometimes get created in maybe 1000 $ and within a
week or so but then there are apps that look pretty
simple from the front like Uber taxi booking app. In
apps like uber, the front may look pretty simple (to
see available taxis, book a taxi, enter destination
and get going) though the backend is what has the
most complex part of the code. The backend is where
it calculates fares, sees and renders location of
the cabs and users, calculates surge pricing and
handles the load of millions of booking requests per
second. So, in most of these famous apps, the
backend is the most costly part. In simple words,
App development costs are the sum of app design
costs, app front end development costs, app backend
development costs, and server management costs.
App development cost factor # 8
- Offline sync
It’s funny that we previously
discussed that creating an offline app is cheaper
than creating a data-driven Internet-enabled app and
now I’m going to say that sometimes having an
Offline functionality, along with the online
functionality in an app makes it a more costlier app
to develop. This sounds ironic, but it's true. Here
is how? – The cheaper way is to create an altogether
offline app but when you want an online app to also
support certain features even without internet then
it becomes a whole lot of new effort for the
developer. The code that you write for online
functionality is all dependent upon the internet
while when you want it to run offline also then you
need to customize the code according to offline
environment and also to enable a “sync” so that when
users come back online they find their data synced
with what they did offline.
App development cost factor # 9
- The UI, Animations, special effects
As much self-explanatory as it
sounds, it is true that the app with the most great
animations, gestures and effects are going to be the
most development and design time consuming and
therefore cost of development of app would be more.
In most of the cases, such apps are games or “Game”
based learning apps. One good example of such an app
is our own Aiko & Egor app that we’ve developed for
our clients.
App development cost factor # 10
- Integrations with Third-party APIs, and how deep
those integrations are?
Logging into an app using FB or
Linkedin or Google or Github or phone looks so
common these days, but app developers work many
hours to enable each such integration right from the
front end appearance for the user to the backend
data handling. Integration with third-party services
do increase the overall cost of app development,
however, these are again much optimized now because
of highly modern APIs that big third party services
offer. Some common third party integrations are –
integrating with social media login like FB,
integration for data sharing, integration with
Google maps for map views, Integration with payment
gateways like paypal, stripe or Braintree.
Integrating with third parties ultimately saves a
lot of time since they readily perform the essential
functions (like signup, payments, map view) that
would otherwise take a lot of time and cost to
develop. So in short run, the more third party
services you integrate your app with shall increase
the cost of app development correspondingly but in
long run, that would become trivial. So much so that
Uber or Swiggy happily use Google Apps APIs for many
things even though they are technical giants
themselves.
App development cost factor # 11
– Whom do you hire?
Although this point is beyond the
factors that our app cost calculator considers, it's
worth discussing here for the overall understanding
of the app costs concept. It is always costlier when
you hire a premium app development agency from San
Francisco where the cost of even a simple app goes
beyond 30 K US Dollars. But for most of the early
stage startups or App entrepreneurs, hiring a mid
size offshore app development agency like Agicent from India is the most
cost-effective. We try to develop an MVP version of
a great looking app under $ 5000 only and educate
our clients about the factors that may increase the
App MVP cost. We love working with startups so much
that we sometimes become good Samaritans and offer
free App designs worth $ 2000 to promising startups
just like that. You may read more about such an
offering here – Free
App UI Design by Agicent. 3 startups have
been able to raise seed funds using this free design
service of ours. So keep following us on our FB and
twitter and you may land upon a chance to win such
free services.
