When we build an App, several factors help set the costs, some of them are obvious, but some are more complex than they look.
We are going to destructure for you the most significant ones:
Mobile apps are complex, and we have several operative systems.
The most common ones are iOS and Android. Android and iOS apps are built with different technologies and different programming languages, Android with Java, and iOS with Objective C or Swift.
We need to have two projects and different people to work on them, increasing the complexity of maintenance and costs.
Now let's compare the pros and cons:
Performance. Perfect for heavy graphical apps, like video games.
Engineers only focus on one codebase.
You can launch features on any platform when you want.
Expensive.
Increase complexity.
Hard to launch features on both platforms at the same time.
It gets costly, very fast.
We have a few tools that can help us to build platforms on both platforms with a single codebase. You can use hybrid tools like Phonegap and Ionic, Using web technologies with a mobile-like feel. It sounds like a good idea, but in reality, the performance of these "hybrid" approach is terrible, and users can feel the difference.
On the other hand, we have frameworks like React Native, where you write code in one language, but the app is native, using native components with a native app's performance.
At OGD42, we recommend this approach, and we use it personally on most of our apps.
Fast Development
One codebase.
Less expensive.
Launch faster.
Native devs can be against it.
If you already have an app, you need to rewrite it.
Not fast enough for intensive apps (like videogames).
Complexity is one of the points that determine costs. A simple app can be a survey app, with few forms to collect data and send it using email without storing it in the database.
A complex app can be a Banking app or an Augmented Reality for a shopping experience. Therefore, the more complicated it is, the more it shall cost.
The complexity of the app is reduced to two categories.
Simple apps are the ones that do not talk to the cloud-based services to store data; alternatively, all the inputs are captured in a form and sent via email or rendered in the apps as output.
On the other hand, complex apps have a service with cloud storage and a database that does many processes to return the results. They're ways to reduce the time and get better cost-effectiveness, for example, by using services like Firebase from Google or Amplify from Amazon Web Services.
We have several ways to choose how to build our app.
We can get in-house employees to do this. You will need engineers (developers), designers, product managers, and probably a project manager, but this will not ensure you will succeed.
Building apps is a complex process. If you're not familiar and don't have experience with the proper tooling and framework, you're going to lose time, money, and probably even employees.
If you want to create an in-house team to build a product, we recommend the book "Inspired" by Marty Cagan and "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries.
Hiring freelancers sometimes is more affordable. You can always go to Fiver.com and price fishing for low cots freelancers.
Sadly this option rarely ends in the right product. Freelancers are not going to focus 100% percent on your project, and therefore they don't care a lot about your project's success.
We advise this option only if you don't have money, and you need a prototype, nothing more.
Probably the best option between costs and efficiency. They already have skilled teams to start working right away. You don't need to tame them or train them for months to have the required skills to start working on your project.
They are quick to understand your requirements and deliver as expected because they do hundreds of similar nature projects.
If the agency specialized in your specific market niche, that's even better!
In the USA, the cost of developing a mobile app for startups or small projects is around $40,000, for mid-size apps is from $40,000 to $80,000, and more complex, and great apps are from $74,000 to $150,000.
If your choose React Native to build your app, you reduce your costs, not to half as some business say, because you need to consider the differences between Android and iOS, but you save money for sure!
If these costs are too high for you, send us a message. Great ideas founded by great people are why we are here. We are here to help and find a way to build new products.
In this economic depression, we only have each other. We can build together a better future!