Actual Cost To Develop A Mobile Applications

The customers in today’s world are on the move and they’re using mobile application platforms to get there. Whether they use mobile phones, tablets, or other mobile devices they have all the information they need. That’s why mobile apps are so much important in today’s market.

There are so many factors that come into play when determining the cost of developing the mobile application. Its like building a house, there are so many variables comes into play and its makes impossible to answer a generic question on how much does it cost to build a house.

Here are some sneak peak that you should run through it quickly::
What are the design requirements? Design alone can cost you in thousand of dollars. Applications used within a company probably don’t need as “fancy UI” as like consumer facing apps.
What is the feature set?. More the features you add, more the complex it will be and the greater the cost.
Is it a stand alone app or does it need a back-end server (most need a back end server)
Does the app need to integrate with any third party software applications or API integration or payment gateway?
What platforms does the app need to support (iOS, Andriod, or Windows) or you want it in Cross-Platform?

Here in this blog post you can find our lean approach to find an excellent solution to calculate the precise cost of developing app. We strictly follow this 6 steps or stages to tell apart in a perfect project. Within each of them we at Themesfinity apply the lean approach and agile development methodologies.

1. Consulting

Here at this very first stage of beginning is all that we need is an idea from the client and we need this to estimate the actual cost for this stage. In this consulting session we get the approximate understanding of the project scope and whether there will be a need for nontrivial solutions or innovations that could require a research to estimate the cost of their development.

We have a set of teams with group of UI/UX designers, developers, project managers with the client at this stage of consulting to know every part of their business, work, industry, about their users and mainly about their idea.

We always try to go bit deeper into details so that we can come up with the precise and the right kind of solution to solve our client problem. In a series of hourly talks with a client helps us to estimate the total time & cost to develop an app in more precisely (and i reckon this estimate will still be soft-soap, so it’s better not to do it).

At the end of the consulting session here is the stuff that what our client gets in the end:

• Detailed document (Consulting report)
• Business model canvas
• Sometimes – a fundamentally different idea, if a research shows that the market is oversupplied with competitor products or an idea is not realizable with modern technical equipment.

2. UX Development

The outcomes of the consulting stage are an ideal start for our clients even if they choose not to work with us as that itself gives them an idea. Usually it just doesn’t happen in that way as we present the consulting report in such a way where they stick to us to develop an app for them.

Here the work starts, a team of designers and developers steps in and works together. During this session our team comes up with the cost estimation of

• UX wireframing
• Your app map screens (the actual relation between several screens of your app)

There seem to be no need to explain how priceless the above-stated information is for a precise cost estimate of the next stage (UI). Our experience shows that we never (!) exceed the UI development cost if a client agrees to the UX stage.

3. UI Development

Here during this session both my team and the client geared up to meet with full preparation and planning and we put extra effort to understand each other. Here UX and UI team can easily inter-change and work together to transfer an app cost estimate (and as a result, the development of the stage) to another professional of the department. It allows bringing a fresh perspective to a project, which is very important in the development.

In this session we highly consider this points for our estimation:

• Design analysis of competitor products;
• Development of several versions of a logo;
• Development of several styles for main screens;
• Development of interactive mockups;
• Preparing of Design Guidelines.

This will be a key stage & important one for us and for our client as well as there will be participation from UI/UX, developers, project manager, QA analyst, and end-users. In other words, the work is coordinated between all interested key parties at each stage and their feedback is maximally taken into account to make the app much better.

4. Planning

This is one of the most crucial stages of making an accuracy estimate to develop a mobile application for you and this is where the entire teams steps in and participate in it. Yes you might not be well aware of it as this cost estimate comes of a great deal of boring technical datas or something rad data including;

• Identifying MVP (sets up a list of features for it);
• Grooming a product backlog (a detailed list of all app features in the form of user Stories and test cases);
• Writing test cases;
• Developing technical specifications (if necessary);
• Planning project architecture.

5. MVP Development

Finally, we reach the most important stage where everything has been started for. If at this moment to ask clients to look back at what we’ve done and on what they have come with, it will make them smile 🙂

Always figuring out the cost of app development is truly complex and bulky one. And for us or for any agency it’ll be just a trick in our sleeves that we rely on the results of the gigantic work and efforts that we have put in the earlier stages. In fact, this estimate is a ready backlog with user stories and test cases to implement.

On top of everything we consider and include the following evaluation to make the estimate of an app development

• Work of a QA specialist;
• Work of a project manager depending on a role: from a ScrumMaster to a Product Owner (if a client doesn’t have time for this);
• Time, the team needs for SCRUM meetings;
• Work of a DevOps engineer.

6. Ongoing development + support

Yes we make your app more successful when it goes on the market. At this point of time the client will be having sufficient data and information from their users which will help in influencing the future of a client project.

So when we sit to draw a conclusion then i would surely say that this approach may not guarantee you 100% hit in the time-frames but it’ll help you in reducing the niche average.