What determines the cost, how it stacks up and how much it costs to make an application in our studio. Every customer who wants to make an application asks how much it costs. But it is impossible to unequivocally answer this question – in each case, the cost will be different. It depends on which studio takes on the job, and what studio costs are included in the price. Therefore, different developers are ready to make the same project for different money. It happens that the difference is hundreds of thousands of rubles – and this is normal. We will tell you what determines the cost of an application, how it stacks up and how much it costs to make an application in our studio.
Which Studio Makes the Application
Why does some mobile app development cost three hundred thousand rubles, while others – three million rubles? It’s in the studio.
There are many different studios in the mobile app development services. There are companies from Moscow, and there are from the regions. There are large studios with a staff of two hundred employees, and there are small teams of eight to ten people. Some studios specialize in medical and insurance applications, while others specialize in taxi and catering applications. But the main criterion for choosing a studio is the clients with whom it works. The location, the state, the specialization, and the prices directly depend on this.
All studios can be roughly divided into three groups: companies that make applications for 10 million rubles, large and medium studios, small studios.
Studios That Make Applications for Ten Million Rubles
Most often, these are eminent studios that have been on the market for many years and constantly occupy the first lines of profile ratings, and their portfolios include the logos of giants like Gazprom, Rosneft and MTS. They do not take on small and quick projects, as it is not profitable for them. They win large and long-term tenders. It costs ten million or more to create an application in such a studio, simply because the guys are used to working with very large customers who are ready to pay big money.
Large and Medium Studios
Such studios are also in the ratings, though not in the first positions. And they also work with clients that everyone knows. But for some reason, they still cannot shape the mobile development market by themselves, so they charge a little less for projects than their colleagues. Such studios account for millions.
Small Studios
These are young teams of promising developers who have recently entered the market, but are constantly growing, improving their qualifications, studying, replenishing their portfolio and flickering in the ratings. They are interested in taking on different projects and it does not matter for them whether everyone in the market knows about the customer – these guys perfectly understand that they need to start small. Usually there are only a few people in such studios, but together they close the entire cycle of creating a mobile application – from design to development. Therefore, the cost of the application is several times lower than that of more eminent and large colleagues. This is often less than a million.
When choosing a studio, look at those other companies in your market are working with. So you get developers who already have successful experience in creating such applications and who offer an adequate price list.
Studio Costs
In addition to the scale of the studio and the clients with whom it works, the cost of the application is influenced by the company’s costs for the development of a particular solution. Costs are divided into direct, indirect and others.
Direct Costs
Direct costs, that is, labor costs, include the capabilities of the application and its functionality, individual design, platforms on which the service will run, as well as the server side and administration capabilities.
Direct costs of a mobile development studio, on which the cost of the application depends.
Application Features and Functionality
The more complex the application, the more expensive it is. Custom scripts, the number of screens and application states, buttons, fields, the amount of business logic, and the server infrastructure require many hours of development and subsequent testing. Here are the most expensive components.
Screens, actions and data in the app
Each screen must be thought of: choose the optimal arrangement of elements and buttons, think over the business logic, and take care of the user’s convenience. Behind this is a lot of work of different studio specialists – from the project manager to the tester.
For example, in an online store application, data should be displayed dynamically – so that the user can see only those products that he can buy now and those prices that are currently relevant. To do this, you need to synchronize the application data with the server, configure and test the API, which is quite expensive.
Custom scripts.
User interaction begins with launching the application. The user registers, goes through the authorization procedure, creates and edits a personal profile, sets up notifications and then makes a purchase. Each of these elements can be implemented in different ways.
The user authorization procedure can be either simple or complex. It is easier and cheaper today to use fast authorization by phone number. But it happens that this cannot be done. It is necessary to add such functions as generating a complex password, authorization using social networks, two-step SMS authentication. All this will increase the cost of developing the authorization module and the application as a whole.
If your application needs to have multiple user roles, such as buyer and seller, then you need to think about custom scenarios for everyone. This makes development more expensive.
Using the built-in functions of smartphones
Previously, the phone was able to make calls, send messages, transmit data via Bluetooth, was equipped with a simple accelerometer and a simple camera. Today, using a smartphone, you can pay for purchases, verify your identity, measure your heart rate, and so on. APIs are used to create applications with access to these features of mobile devices. For such an interface to work correctly with every smartphone, it must be configured correctly and must be tested. This increases the overall development time and affects the final cost.
Integration with payment systems depends on the number of payment methods: by card, using a wallet, via Apple Pay or Google Play. Each additional payment processing method takes additional time to implement and test.
If the application needs to use user location data or navigation, this can be done in a standard way or using advanced indoor navigation technologies like iBeacon and GeoFencing. The second option is quite time consuming: developing each of these functions increases the cost of the application.
Connection of other services
It happens that an application must use data from other services, for example Yandex.Maps, PayPal, Vkontakte. It is usually easy to add one or two popular services to an application. But if there are many such services, the developer will need many hours.
Another situation is when you need to make friends with an application with a specific service, for example, the customer’s own CRM system. In this case, integration can become laborious, since no one has solved such a problem before and it is impossible to use a standard solution.
Individual design
Typically, designers and developers use Apple and Google guidelines. A guideline is a kind of set of rules that determines how interface elements should look and work so that they are convenient to use on different smartphones. But sometimes the customer wants the application to look different from what everyone is used to.
To create a unique user interface design, you need to do some serious business intelligence and involve professionals in the field of UI and UX design. The immersion of analysts and project managers in the analysis of the business processes of the future application also incurs additional costs.
A separate cost item is animation. The more complex and unusual the transition from one element in the interface to another, the more expensive it is to develop.
Platforms
Mobile app development for iOS and Android is very different. These platforms use different programming languages and development tools, so programmers with different skills and experience are needed.
It is believed that it is easier for a programmer to learn to work with Android, so the cost of Android developers is lower than that of iOS specialists. On average, IOS developer rate is 15-20% higher than Android developer rate. In addition, the cost is also influenced by the shortage of good IOS developers, which is currently observed in the mobile development market.
The process for testing an application on each platform is also different. There are many more different smartphones on Android than on iOS. Because of this, testing and debugging takes more hours, which increases development costs.
Moreover, each studio forms the cost of developing an application for different platforms in its own way.
Server side and database
The server part or backend is a system for exchanging information between the application and the customer’s database. For example, the backend ensures data synchronization between inventory balances in the online store and the customer’s warehouse, participates in making payments and processing bookings.
To develop a backend, programmers need to write code according to the API requirements. Accordingly, the more complex the data exchange tasks and API requirements are, the more expensive it is to perform work with the server side of the application.
Admin Panel
The administration panel is needed to manage content in the application. For example, to moderate customer reviews, publish articles on the company’s blog, change the status of orders. To make an admin panel, you need more than one studio employee, but several – you need to do design, design, development and layout. This significantly affects the final cost of the project.
Indirect costs
In addition to direct costs for the work of studio specialists, there are others, on which the cost of the application depends. The most significant indirect costs are office rent and the company’s tax burden.
Office rent
A studio that rents a spacious office in the center of Moscow is ready to make the application more expensive than a studio with a distributed development team. The cost of the application, which is announced to the customer, already includes the cost of renting premises, paying for utilities, coffee and cookies for the whole team.
We have a distributed development team: employees work in different cities and countries. This avoids additional office costs. Therefore, we offer prices lower than other studios, and at the same time we are not inferior to them in terms of competence and quality of the final product.
The tax burden
If a company operates in white and does not evade taxes, it must be paid to the state from each income. If employees are officially registered, the company pays VAT and deductions for them. All costs are taken into account when forming the cost of the application.
Other costs
Other costs include the cost of testing the application and debugging bugs, publishing the application in stores, maintaining and developing it. If the customer only needs to develop a service, these costs do not affect the cost. But more often the customer wants to develop and maintain the application – then at the beginning of work it is necessary to take into account what will have to be paid in the future.
Testing and stabilization
At the testing stage, bugs and errors in the application are found. To make the application work smoothly and be convenient to use, it is better to fix all the shortcomings. This requires the inclusion of testers and developers.
Testing is expensive and time consuming. But we do not recommend giving it up.
Publishing to Stores
The finished application must be published in the App Store and Google Play. Sometimes the customer takes it upon himself, but more often entrusts this work to the studio. On average, it costs about 11-15 thousand rubles.
Support and development
Technical support for a finished application is as important as development and takes time. Developers modify the app based on feedback, administer it, release updates, and other specialists fill the app with content. This work takes time, for which the customer pays.
How Do We Calculate the Cost of an Application
We are engaged in the creation of applications inside and out. Our work usually includes the following stages:
Analytics
Technical Task
Engineering And Design
Development
Testing And Stabilization
Publication In Stores
Support And Development
The cost of the application is based on the time required for each stage.
Each project is special. For one, you can combine several stages into one in order to implement your plan faster and cheaper. For another, it is advisable to go through all the stages. When a new customer comes to us, we take into account the specifics of his business, tasks and opportunities – and together we choose the best path.
A Simple Application with Basic Functions
This is a typical solution for one platform, with few screens, no multiple user roles, and no complex user scripts. For such a service, a template is used that we adapt to the customer. It does not require a lot of time and very deep knowledge; therefore, it costs the customer less.
Development time: from 20 working days.
Cost: from 150,000 rubles per platform (iOS, Android).
Over the years, we have collected many standard solutions for companies from different business sectors. Therefore, we offer applications based on standard solutions for service companies, restaurants, food delivery services, online stores. An example of such a solution from our portfolio is Premier Cru.
A Complex Proposal with A Wide Range of Functionality
To make an application that solves non-standard tasks, you need to dive into the customer’s business, think over user scenarios, make the application friends with other services, and set up uninterrupted data exchange with various customer systems. A complex and lengthy development process is more expensive.
Development period: from 2 months.
Cost: from 700,000 rubles to 1,500,000 rubles.
We have experience in developing solutions from scratch, so we are ready to take on complex projects and successfully implement them. Our portfolio contains examples of similar projects, such as Sky Lake and ElZhur.
Short Brief
1. Making the same application in different studios – different money. The cost is directly affected by the scale of the studio and the kind of customers it is used to working with.
2. The cost of the application depends on labor costs, indirect and other costs of the development studio. Therefore, one and the same project costs different developers in different amounts.
3. The final cost of the application is strongly influenced by the capabilities of the service and its functionality, individual design, platforms on which the application will run, as well as the server side and administration capabilities.
4. Making an application in a studio that rents a huge office in the center of the capital is more expensive than in a company with a distributed development team. At the same time, the quality of work and the result, other things being equal, will be similar.
5. When calculating the cost of an application, other costs are often taken into account that will be required from the customer in the future. For example, costs for testing, stabilization, publishing in stores, technical support and releasing updates.
6. The order of prices in each studio and the method of calculating the cost of work is different. It is better to discuss all this with the contractor at the stage of negotiations.
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