Top 7 Factors that influence the cost of Mobile App development in 2022.

How much does mobile app development costs? For your business to thrive smart budgeting is essential, we
understand. Cost estimation is the first thing to consider while opting to develop a mobile app in 2022.

There are development experts with substantial proficiency to provide the most accurate cost estimation for
mobile app development. Yet, if you are in a research mode, or you do not want to rush things, this blog can
give you answers to:

• Why you should consider building a mobile app?
• What can be the overall cost for developing your mobile app from scratch
• Which factors affect the cost of mobile app development?

Let us start with; Why you should consider building a mobile app?

To know whether building a mobile application to promote your business is beneficial or not, let us consider the
following statistics given by the market players:

• According to Statista, the Apple app store offers more than 1 million gaming apps and more than 3.79 million non-gaming apps, as of March 2022. More than 35,000 apps
  are published every month on the IOS app store.
• Whereas, the Google play store offers more than 2.65 million apps as of March 2022. More than 90,000 apps are
  published every month on the google play store.
• As per Statista, the mobile apps shall generate revenue of USD 613 billion, by 2025.
• 87% of smartphone users spend
  their time on digital media using mobile apps.
• 49%
  of smartphone users open an app more than 11 times a day.
• On average, a smartphone user opens 10 apps per day and 30 apps a month.

The above statistics back the fact that the demand for mobile apps is snowballing. With an ideal mobile app, your business is sure to be a hit.

Now all you need is an expert to develop a superior quality mobile app for your business, that too at a reasonable price. Which factors affect the cost of mobile app development?

While mapping out your budget for mobile app development, considering only app development time or hourly rates will not be enough. You must gauge other aspects like the concept of your mobile app, development platform, features & design, visual complexity, post-design maintenance, and others.

To understand this better, let us delve deeper into the 7 major factors influencing the cost of mobile app development

1. App development Platforms:

iOS, Android, or native? The platform you choose for developing a mobile application decides the budget scale of your project.

Developing a mobile application on the iOS platform is easier than developing it on the Android platform. In some cases, building the same app on an Android platform takes three times longer than on the iOS platform. So, developers suggest starting with app building on the iOS platform.

The other option is to build a native app essentially developed for the iOS or Android platform. Once your native app gains popularity/audience on one platform, you can go for cross-platform app development and make your mobile app available on various platforms.

If you ask, which platform to choose? It depends on your target audience. Highly experienced mobile app development companies do rigorous research on various consumer segments and help you find the right audience and their specific requirements.

If time is your constraint, you have a significant app-building budget, and you want to develop the app on both platforms together, you can hire an expert team of mobile app developers, who can deliver superior quality mobile apps at reasonable prices.

2. The goal and the role of a mobile app:

The most important question is, do you want to develop a mobile application for B2-B or B2C business? The answer to this question will help you evaluate whether you want a basic mobile app or a sophisticated mobile app. Once you determine the role of a mobile app, it becomes easy to choose the right set of features for that app.

To illustrate;

Do you want to develop an enterprise-grade mobile app for staff use in an organization? For this, you require an intricate mobile app capable of processing a large amount of data. This indeed will be a big budget development.

Or, do you want to develop a consumer application, aimed at personal use? For this, you must consider visual components, app marketing, as well as customization of UI (User Interface) and UX (User Experience) designs.

Hence, the goal and the role of a mobile application substantially influence the overall development cost.

3. App Features that encourage user engagement:

Basic features in a mobile application include authorization, notifications, networking, password security, and others which can be simple or sophisticated. And features like appealing aesthetics, password recovery, password storage, push notifications, social media engagements with users (like/share/comment), and others can be complex. It consumes more time, resources, and expenses to develop an app with complex features.

Higher the number of features in a mobile app, the higher its development cost. Also, you must note that some features may require third-party integration.

4. Hardware features:

To build your app, you do not require to integrate all the advanced hardware features.

First, you must identify, which hardware features suit your app the best. Second, determine whether the hardware features you choose to integrate with your app will optimize its utility & performance. You can save a lot of time, and money by choosing capable hardware features.

To illustrate:

If your app is based on location data, consider including the cost of geolocation features like GPS

If your app is based on social media communications, consider including the cost of the push notifications feature.

If your app is based on online payments, consider including the cost of mobile payment features.

So, the more advanced the hardware features you opt to integrate with your mobile app, the costlier and time-consuming the development process becomes.

5. Visual Complexity of the Mobile app:

If the visual component of a mobile app is complex, it can affect the cost & time of app development, because of its intricate architecture.

Visually attractive components with novel features can enchant you instantly. What you must consider is they can vehemently increase the development cost.

Based on the complexity level of visual components, the mobile apps can be bifurcated as MVPs, medium apps, and complex apps.

MVP (Minimal Viable Product): This component leverages minimum budget maximum returns. In the early release stage, important components defining your USP are launched in the app. This saves on cost and time. It also assists in researching UI/UX, and user responses. It takes 3 to 5 months in developing an app with MVPs.

Furthermore, it takes 6 to 7 months for the development of medium apps and more than 9 months for the development of complex apps.

6. Maintenance of the mobile app:

App maintenance is the most crucial step because it can cost you users’ trust. Entrepreneurs often ignore this factor, in the excitement of launching the app. No matter whether your app is simple or loaded with rich features; if it fails or collapses while in use, you fail to meet your user expectations. This can be a huge backdrop and can cost you more than your investments.

For most applications, maintenance costs approx. 15% to 20% of the initial cost of app development.

Maintenance cost includes the cost of back-end support services, upgrading the operating systems to the latest version for enhancing user experience, fixing bugs, code optimization, updating to current versions of third-party services, controlling the stability of the app, as well as monitoring server performance.

To hire a team of professionals for app maintenance you can either opt for on-demand services or ongoing support, depending on the nature of your mobile app.

7. A team of experts for app development:

The team of experts completely depends on the complexity level of your mobile app, and the business goals you aim to achieve. The larger the team size, the higher will be the cost for app development.

To develop a mobile application, you need a team comprising of a business analyst, a scrum master, 2 or 3 android developers, 2 or 3 iOS developers, testers, a QA engineer, a UI/UX designer, a solution architect, and a project manager (to supervise progress from your end).

Why outsourcing can be a good choice?

Nowadays, outsourcing is gaining momentum, because outsourcing companies offer premium services, and acquire a team of highly qualified Mobile application experts. These companies are well experienced in the development and maintenance of mobile apps.

Outsourcing companies mandatorily adhere to all industry practices, making remote communication seamless, and the development process effortless.

What can be an approximate cost to develop a mobile app?

• A basic mobile app falls in a reasonable range of USD 10,000 to 20,000.
• A decent app involving app building experts, fall in the range of USD 20,000 to 30, 000
• A complex app powered by advanced features, can be costlier. Higher than USD 30,000

To conclude:

Building a superior quality mobile application is not an easy task. Not only does it cost you financially, it also costs your time, energy, and resources.

App building does not end at merely launching the app. Its aftermath is an important phase you must concentrate on. Monitoring the user interface, user experience, and user response, is equivalently important, to meet user expectations. After all, that is why you are building an app for.

Also, app maintenance, app up-gradation, and security updates remain a continuous task to perform, after launching the app. Find an experienced mobile app development company that can take this off burden off your shoulder and can serve you a superior quality mobile app at affordable prices. Companies that work with multiple projects acquire expertise in several technologies.