A question that is asked to all experienced and well-established app developers is: how much does it actually cost to build an app? For those who are new to programming and app development, an on-demand mobile app can be perceived as a forum where customers can tank their demands at one collective spot. It is essential to understand the exact strategy of calculating the cost of your app and even launching it in the most effective way. You can seek the help of growth strategists like ondemandly or you can outsource your work to a third-party IT services company, but it is imperative to learn the skills yourself to handle more extensive issues and keep your team on the right track. So, let us dive straight into it and try to make the maximum out of the process.
Cracking the Formula – Starting from Scratch, Developing Simple and
Complex Applications
There is no magic number to the cost estimation techniques, but there are multiple factors that play a vital role in determining the cost of an app. Entrepreneurs can spend anywhere from a few hundred to thousands of dollars in order to build and structure an app that they want. The catch is that not all apps are created equally, some cost less while others are more on the heavier side as they are more complex to develop. To start right off with the bat, let’s tackle the evergreen question- how do companies calculate the cost of an app; The answer to that question is not straightforward, so let’s begin with a few typical ways that app development companies use to calculate how much your app is going to cost. They start by taking into consideration a few variables which are overall cost, hourly effort, and hourly cost. The hourly aim is the amount of time the company or individual will be spending in the development process of the app to complete it and
then multiply it with the cost incurred in programming every hour. The formula can be written as:
Overall cost = Hourly cost * Hourly effort. To break this down even further, let us take an example. Imagine that you have an app with five different features in it. An app development company will generally break it down and classify the elements into the number of hours they are going to take to finish working on each feature. So, if we consider that the total number of hours needed to complete the development of the app is 300 and two companies are charging differently, one charges 50 dollars an hour while the other charges 75 dollars an hour, calculating as per the formula, the first company would cost you 15,000 dollars for the total project.
In contrast, the other one will charge you 22,500 dollars. We must understand that the striking difference in their fee is due to the difference in the hourly cost. This method is generally applied to apps that are simple to develop and take less time. If we had to create an app which would take more than 1,000 hours to be prepared, the story would be entirely different, and the same
companies would charge 50,000 dollars and 75,000 dollars respectively.
The Hourly Rate Conundrum
Once you get a solid grasp on the process of estimating the cost, the first question to pop in your head will be how do these companies define their hourly rates and what makes it so drastically different for different companies? The most significant contributing factor to the difference in the hourly rates is the location, and the cost will vary significantly if you go out of your own country. If you are a developer in the USA and you are getting your work done from Germany, it is going to cost you a fortune. Still, an exception to that is if you move to countries which have cheap labor and are a part of the third world economy, the cost of getting the job done will be significantly less as compared to countries like the USA, UK, EU, and Australia. The number of release platforms you choose also affects the cost of the app, and the cost would be pretty low if you are opting for only one platform like Android as compared to additional platforms like IOS and Windows.
Conclusion
You must be utterly aware of the process yourself before you hire a third party to the job for you. If you lack the necessary information, IT service companies can charge you way more than needed,and it will become a load on your pocket. The best way to begin is to start by doing thorough internet research and read reviews about the company. After that, you can move on to talking to your competitors and friends in the industry to gain some insider knowledge on the subject.
