The app market is on the move right now. Mobile apps created as a complementary marketing strategy for businesses, or mobile apps that were made as a business model, or even mobile games… There are countless applications of various types on app platforms of both Android and iOS, App Store and Google Play. And it doesn’t stop here; the total global mobile app revenue is expected to reach $935.2 billion by 2023.” As the numbers suggest, the market for apps is highly profitable at the moment and presents an accessible yet beneficial option for businesses and individuals looking to up their revenue. Since the profitability of apps is directly dependent on the initial cost of an app, one of the most frequently asked questions about app development is ‘How much does it cost to develop an app?’. Here in Mowico, we help you build your e-commerce app and make your way into the mobile app market without any coding knowledge. In this article, you can find our guide to app development costs in 2022.
App Development Cost Variables
Since pretty much every app is unique, it’s hard to give a uniform answer to the question; ‘How much does it cost to develop an app?’. Still, we can identify some key variables that directly affect the total cost of app development. In general, app development costs are deeply linked with the time it takes to develop that particular app. As the time to make the app increases, the cost of the app development progressively increases too. In fact, we can write a simple equation to calculate the approximate cost of an app development process.
Total Time of Development x Hourly Rate = Total Cost
As can be seen in the formula, two major variables of the app development process cost are the development time and the hourly cost of the development team. While the total time depends on the features you are adding to your app, the hourly rate of your app development team depends on the complexity of your team and your geographic location since developer wages vary depending on the region. This article will assume that you will be developing your app in Western Europe or the UK.
Cost of app development
Hourly Rate
When building your app from scratch, there is a long way to go. And before everything, you need to decide on the team that’s going to develop the app. There are many options here; if you already have an IT department full of developers, there isn’t a more logical option than building your app in-house. Since you are already paying wages to them, this one is the least costly option to pick a team to develop your app. On the other hand, assigning your IT team with a project that can take up to 9 months can create discrepancies in your workflow, and your workforce may fall short in certain instances. Other than building an in-house app, you can also outsource your project by hiring a freelance developer, or you can work with an app developer team or a software developer company. A simple app developer team consists of individuals with various roles such as UX/UI Designer, IOS/Android Developer, Back-End Developer, Quality & Business Analyst, Project Manager, and Solution Architect. A competent team costs around $65 to $100 per hour, depending on the expertise and scope of the team.
Total Time of Development
As we already mentioned, the time of development is positively correlated with the total cost of the development process. Total development time is determined by the scope of the project and the complexity of the applications’ features. Every new feature added to the project increases the development time by 15 to 50 hours.
Let’s say you’re building an e-commerce application for your business. Roughly, your development time would take somewhere between 3-6 months, or it can even take up to 9 months, depending on the additional features of your application. So, let’s review some of the features an e-commerce application may have and how these features affect development time.
If you’re designing an e-commerce application, you’ll want your users to have personalised experiences for maximum return, so adding user logins and profile customisations is a must. And that can take 20 to 30 hours to implement for each. A basic messaging feature can take your development team 150 hours to complete. Another essential feature for an e-commerce app, search, would take nearly 15 hours to add. If you want your users to be able to filter the search results, it’s going to take longer. Best way to keep your users engaged, push notifications, would need almost 30 hours to add as a feature. Your development team would spend nearly 120 hours building admin panels for payment & user management and push notifications. Also, a geolocation implementation would need another 50 hours in app development. Along with the time and money spent on implementing new features to your app and the budget allocated for release costs and maintenance; the cost of an e-commerce app could total at $30.000 or even get up to hundreds of thousands of dollars for fully-fledged multi-platform e-commerce applications.
No-Code Changes the Game
Yes, the time and resources spent to build an app from scratch is pretty high, but if you’re after building an e-commerce app for your business, we have a game-changing deal. The no-code e-commerce app builder Mowico is developed exclusively to build an e-commerce app within hours. The best part is, anybody can do it! With a much more affordable cost, Mowico turns your e-commerce website into a mobile app in hours and gives you the ability to implement and remove features as you need. Thanks to Mowico’s drag-and-drop interface, app development is now an accessible process. You can send your users push notifications, create geographically targeted campaigns, improve customer retention with loyalty points, and engage with your users in-app messaging. From wishlists to AR implementation in your e-commerce app, you can build anything with Mowico. The best part is, it costs incomparably less than starting from scratch. Explore all features of Mowico, and start building your app now for free.
