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 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 under developed 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 but 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 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 become more and more cheap to develop these days.
App development cost factor # 3 - No. of features –
As its name suggests, the more feature 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, upload pics are not much time consuming these days but even the regular ones can increase the cost of app development if they come in large volume. 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 the version 1 of the app itself and also helps keeping the users engagement 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 ofcourse, 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.
App development cost factor # 5 - Complexity of the features –
Similar to 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 everyday is the more complex features than 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 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 worth to launch a 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 –
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 may be 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, calculate surge pricing and handles load of millions of booking request 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 more costlier app to develop. This sounds ironical, but its true. Here is how? – The cheaper 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 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 app is our own Aiko & Egor app that we’ve developed for out 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 save 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 when they are a 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 but its 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 Fransico 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 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 offering here – Free App UI Design by Agicent. Some 3 startups have been able to raise some seed funds using this free design service of ours This May/ June. So keep following us on our FB and twitter and you may land up on a chance to win such free services.