One of the most important things for a business to have nowadays, be it a product or a service company, is to have a mobile app. Therefore the importance of app development cost.
The business now will shift its focus on the cost of the app development.
What I have seen in 10 years of app development is that for 70% of the people, app cost is the foremost in their mind when wanting to develop their mobile apps.
Some of the points that an app developer will ask you to ascertain the app development cost:
Mobile platforms: What OS’s do you want to make the app for ,i.e, iOS, Android, etc?
App features: What are the features you want your app. What are the functions that you want the app to have?
App work flow: How complex is the apps workflow?Screens: How many screens would the app have?
Back end server: Would there be a backend server from with which the apps would interact with?
API’s : Would the team have to develop the API’s for the app-server interaction or would you provide that to them?
Designs: Would the team have to develop the designs (PNG files) for the app or would you provide them?
UI : Would you designs the UI yourself or would you be dependent on the team to develop the UI?
Technology? : Do you want to use native language (e.g native iOS and Android) or a hybrid technology (Ionic, PhoneGap, etc)
One factor that will effect the cost majorly is the engagement model of the project. Fixed price project or time and material based project?
A fixed price project will mean that you know the cost of the enire project before hand itself.
This enables you to plan your finances and is the predictable way of conducting a project as there are no nasty price related surprises later on.
A time and material based project would mean that you will pay based on the actual number of hours worked by the developer.
She charges you on the basis on an hourly rate multiplied by the total number of hours spent o the development.
Depending on your preference and the nature of the project you can chose the best engagement model. For projects which are dynamic in nature, the T&M model is recommended.
A fixed price is effective when all the specs of the project are absolutely clear at the offset.
I would highly recommend going with an experienced and skilled development company even if the price is a bit high.
This will ensure that the development cycle will be stress free for you as well as the quality of the code would be excellent.
Conclusion on the importance of app development cost:
Depending on your preference and budget, you can chose the app development company of your choice to outsource your app development.
My recommendation is to go with a fixed cost model if app development cost is the most important consideration.
Hope the article was helpful. Please feel free to reach out to me at vikram@aichtechnologies.com on case of further inputs if needed.
My other article on iOS development is posted here.
Another helpful article that you may find useful is posted here.