How much does it cost to make an App?
Discussion
I've built countless websites over the years but never an App. I have no idea how much they cost, are they cheaper than websites, about the same and do you need 2, one for Android and one for Apple (does that double the cost?)
Just interested. I know there are some App experts on here and thought it might be an interesting insight from those guys...
Just interested. I know there are some App experts on here and thought it might be an interesting insight from those guys...
It's a very long piece of string.
At one of end the scale you can format websites to look and behave like an App for not much more on top of the cost for the website.
But to give you an ideal at the other end....
I'm working with a bunch of international consultants who've developed a concept for an education game type app for waste managers in low and middle income countries that works in a similar way to that FarmVille thing on Facebook - using game play (or gamification) to demonstrate the consequential connectivity between decisions and so on. The last time I looked the production budget for that was knocking on the door of £80k.
At one of end the scale you can format websites to look and behave like an App for not much more on top of the cost for the website.
But to give you an ideal at the other end....
I'm working with a bunch of international consultants who've developed a concept for an education game type app for waste managers in low and middle income countries that works in a similar way to that FarmVille thing on Facebook - using game play (or gamification) to demonstrate the consequential connectivity between decisions and so on. The last time I looked the production budget for that was knocking on the door of £80k.
StevieBee said:
It's a very long piece of string.
At one of end the scale you can format websites to look and behave like an App for not much more on top of the cost for the website.
But to give you an ideal at the other end....
I'm working with a bunch of international consultants who've developed a concept for an education game type app for waste managers in low and middle income countries that works in a similar way to that FarmVille thing on Facebook - using game play (or gamification) to demonstrate the consequential connectivity between decisions and so on. The last time I looked the production budget for that was knocking on the door of £80k.
Also depends if you app is going to be purely offline or you are going to need web services to provide data and content and handle transactions, the supporting infrastructure can easily cost 10-100x the apps dev/maintenance costs.At one of end the scale you can format websites to look and behave like an App for not much more on top of the cost for the website.
But to give you an ideal at the other end....
I'm working with a bunch of international consultants who've developed a concept for an education game type app for waste managers in low and middle income countries that works in a similar way to that FarmVille thing on Facebook - using game play (or gamification) to demonstrate the consequential connectivity between decisions and so on. The last time I looked the production budget for that was knocking on the door of £80k.
Depends what you want it to do. How long is a piece of string?
I'm one of a three person team building an app in our spare time. Our developer would have charged us about £50k for the work he's done so far, if it weren't for the fact that we all just have a share of the project instead of anyone getting paid. Also, before we got the dev guy we were looking at various options for getting the app built. I'd done all the design work to determine how the screens would look and how the app would behave when someone was using it and the general consensus from the agencies we spoke to was that this scoping work would have cost about £50k if they'd had to do it. So we're now up to £100k. Then there's ongoing hosting costs - currently fixed at about £75 a month to support the three of us while we tinker with it, but then add about 5p per month per user once we start racking up users. Doesn't sound like much but a million users would be £50k per month. Once there's a big enough data set from usage we can monetize that, but until then it's up to us to find the money to keep it running until it reaches that point. So, like I said, it depends very much what you want the app to do and if it can be monetized from day one or, alternately, if you're going to have an expensive void to cross before you can start to bring in revenue.
I'm one of a three person team building an app in our spare time. Our developer would have charged us about £50k for the work he's done so far, if it weren't for the fact that we all just have a share of the project instead of anyone getting paid. Also, before we got the dev guy we were looking at various options for getting the app built. I'd done all the design work to determine how the screens would look and how the app would behave when someone was using it and the general consensus from the agencies we spoke to was that this scoping work would have cost about £50k if they'd had to do it. So we're now up to £100k. Then there's ongoing hosting costs - currently fixed at about £75 a month to support the three of us while we tinker with it, but then add about 5p per month per user once we start racking up users. Doesn't sound like much but a million users would be £50k per month. Once there's a big enough data set from usage we can monetize that, but until then it's up to us to find the money to keep it running until it reaches that point. So, like I said, it depends very much what you want the app to do and if it can be monetized from day one or, alternately, if you're going to have an expensive void to cross before you can start to bring in revenue.
anonymous said:
[redacted]
indeed. From developer account costs and your time for a basic Fart App to quite a lot for building and testing an App with a scalable back end, testing it, validating the UX to requirements - the sky could be the limit. Don't forget operational costs if it has a back-end requirement using some elastic computing and/or storage. That's just the beginning.... we build our own Apps in-house with monthly releases and it runs into the hundreds of FTEs for the front/back-ends plus business people defining the requirements, security testing for each release, you name it.I'm not a developer but I've worked within internal teams developing apps for one of the high street banks, at the time they had a target to release monthly updates across their 3 main banking apps, across iOS and Android devices, you also have to consider screen sizes for the differing devices from an iPad to a Galaxy mini, there's a huge difference in real estate...
The budget was £1M per month per app, that included all of the dev time, SIT/UAT testing, security/pen testing etc etc, invariably they never hit the monthly release as issues were identified somewhere within all of the testing cycles, so code would be rolled up into a bigger release.
I also worked for another company developing a security application for mobile years ago, it was to be part of O2's bolt on's and was to be released across all of O2/Movistars major markets, but again things like language, screen resolution/real-estate, plus different markets had different preferred devices, so it unfortunately only went to market in Germany, the development team couldn't keep up with each countries requests and got pulled about 18 months into the project.
The budget was £1M per month per app, that included all of the dev time, SIT/UAT testing, security/pen testing etc etc, invariably they never hit the monthly release as issues were identified somewhere within all of the testing cycles, so code would be rolled up into a bigger release.
I also worked for another company developing a security application for mobile years ago, it was to be part of O2's bolt on's and was to be released across all of O2/Movistars major markets, but again things like language, screen resolution/real-estate, plus different markets had different preferred devices, so it unfortunately only went to market in Germany, the development team couldn't keep up with each countries requests and got pulled about 18 months into the project.
If you're not just talking about a responsive website in an app wrapper, or a website converted to a PWA, but a proper mobile app built with a framework like Flutter, React Native or NativeScript (so just one codebase), you'd conservatively be looking at 2-3x the cost of a similar website.
If you want a full on native experience, so two codebases, one for iOS and one for Android, then I'd expect you'd only need/want that for some very specific requirements, so probably looking at mid-to-high 5 figures minimum.
If you want a full on native experience, so two codebases, one for iOS and one for Android, then I'd expect you'd only need/want that for some very specific requirements, so probably looking at mid-to-high 5 figures minimum.
StevieBee said:
It's a very long piece of string.
At one of end the scale you can format websites to look and behave like an App for not much more on top of the cost for the website.
But to give you an ideal at the other end....
I'm working with a bunch of international consultants who've developed a concept for an education game type app for waste managers in low and middle income countries that works in a similar way to that FarmVille thing on Facebook - using game play (or gamification) to demonstrate the consequential connectivity between decisions and so on. The last time I looked the production budget for that was knocking on the door of £80k.
To take the example even further we have Uber who are currently $30 billion in the hole. At one of end the scale you can format websites to look and behave like an App for not much more on top of the cost for the website.
But to give you an ideal at the other end....
I'm working with a bunch of international consultants who've developed a concept for an education game type app for waste managers in low and middle income countries that works in a similar way to that FarmVille thing on Facebook - using game play (or gamification) to demonstrate the consequential connectivity between decisions and so on. The last time I looked the production budget for that was knocking on the door of £80k.
MitchT said:
jammy-git said:
If you're not just talking about a responsive website in an app wrapper...
The Apple App Store won't even allow these. You have to submit an actual app.At least, any app wrapper has to add significant extra functionality to the website to be considered.
Yes, you can probably do that, but a responsive site just wrapped in an app which itself is nothing more than a window displaying the web app is a no-no. We were originally going to build a responsive web app and then wrap it in iOS and Android apps which were really just frames containing the web app but we quickly discovered that Apple won't allow it.
All the costs described about are far too high.
You can get your next door neighbours grandson to do it for £100, he's learning how to build apps at school you know.
One thing most people have missed... most mobile apps either need a web based equivalent or a web based interface to manage the app, so the cost of that needs taking into account too.
You can get your next door neighbours grandson to do it for £100, he's learning how to build apps at school you know.
One thing most people have missed... most mobile apps either need a web based equivalent or a web based interface to manage the app, so the cost of that needs taking into account too.
Edited by TheBinarySheep on Tuesday 8th June 07:16
Edited by TheBinarySheep on Tuesday 8th June 07:16
Like others we also make apps for some big companies (and some start-ups), but to answer your questions :
1) How much do they cost? Depends on what do you want it to do, we have done them between £10k and £500k
2) Are they more expensive than websites? Yes
3) Do you need one for iOS and one for Android - yes, but not necessarily at double the cost
1) How much do they cost? Depends on what do you want it to do, we have done them between £10k and £500k
2) Are they more expensive than websites? Yes
3) Do you need one for iOS and one for Android - yes, but not necessarily at double the cost
Frimley111R said:
I do wonder why PH isn't an App (business opp for someone on here?! 
)
It's been pitched to them some time ago, with specific use cases that benefit from being app based. )
Part of the reason is wasn't taken up is the question you asked in the thread title. It's also not a business opportunity for a third party unless they can get access to the APIs and other interfaces/content that PH uses (hence you need to cooperation of the PH team).
Frimley111R said:
Thanks, some interesting stuff here. I do understand that, as with the websites, it is a bit of a 'how long is a piece of string'. I do wonder why PH isn't an App (business opp for someone on here?! )
An app would only serve to limit their audience. You are essentially putting an obstacle in the way by asking people to instal an app to do something simple like read articles or chat on a forum. A terrible idea if you are relying on advertising revenue.)Most of the time an app is not the answer. It needs to offer extra functionality or some sort of return benefit or convenience to the user.
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