How Much Does It Cost to Make an App? Share: Small Planet Date Published 24 January 2019 Categories Blog Reading Time 5-Minute Read It depends, but making a good one usually takes real money. One of the great things about managing business development at Small Planet is responding to the steady stream of inbounds from big companies, small companies, startups, and just regular folks who want to make apps. We get inquiries in all shapes and sizes and end up having conversations with all sorts of interesting people with compelling ideas. It’s fun, and it keeps things fresh. The majority of these inbounds do not lead to projects, with us or anybody else, and the reason in most cases is pretty clear—making a good mobile application usually costs real money. Especially if the app is critical to the success of a brand, business model, campaign, or enterprise. We’ve designed, built, and launched over 90 iOS and Android apps for clients in the last eight years. And we’ve done hundreds and hundreds of updates to these apps, adding features, tweaking interface designs and optimizing functionality, all in the name of continually improving the user experience during a product’s lifecycle. We’ve done this work with many different types of clients, and across many different verticals, in service of all sorts of different business objectives. We have a body of knowledge and a track record of success—we’ve seen and done a lot in this space. That’s my way of saying that this discussion is informed by a ton of real-world experience. Well, Good for You, but How Much Does It Cost? Even “simple” apps and we hear that term used a lot, can quickly become six-figure projects. Our typical client projects run well into the six figures—a $350K cross-platform (iOS/Android) application is not unusual at all, and that’s for the initial version-1.0 launch. Apps that require the creation of backend systems to do things like securely manage user accounts and process payments, or require a CMS to populate new content, may cost significantly more. How Do You Figure? While no two mobile applications are the same, the good ones all benefit from a number of things done thoughtfully, whether they are being made for the consumer market or for the enterprise: Strategy and Concepting UX and Design Development Testing It is not unusual for Strategy, Concepting, UX, and Design to take up just as much time as Development, even for clients that have a clear vision of what they want. For many pieces of work, it is the conceptualization, experience design, and interface design that require the most time and energy. So while many folks are out there looking for a “developer” for their app, I think that language often sells short a major piece of the work at hand. “I’m looking for a strategy, design, and development partner” would be more accurate. In 2017 our average client project lasted 20 weeks from kickoff through version 1.0 submission to the App Store and Google Play. The mobile applications we made and updated during the year were for a diverse set of clients and spanned all sorts of categories: Internet of Things, real estate, entertainment, commerce, lifestyle, health and wellness, publishing, market research, games and more. No two projects were alike, but on average it took 20 weeks for that first iOS and Android version of the app to get out the door. Most every project we did was cross-platform, which in our world means mobile apps delivered for both iOS and Android. Sometimes we leverage tools like Unity and Xamarin and code once, and sometimes we code independently for each platform—that decision is influenced by a number of factors and does influence project cost. What Kind of Team Is Needed? For typical projects at Small Planet, a team usually looks like this: Producer (product and project management) UX Lead/Product Strategist Graphic Designer Developer 1 Developer 2 QA Associate Larger projects require more hands on deck, or individuals with specific skill sets, but this is a decent representation of a team that can produce great work. We pay our staff fairly. We are not an offshore company or a company that cobbles together a network of freelancers and contractors. We do all of our work with our staff here under one roof in Brooklyn, NY, so our cost structure may be higher than many other parts of the world. I’m quite sure, however, it’s pretty typical for the US. And our staff works like a well-oiled machine, having delivered together for years. We are super-efficient and move very swiftly. Payroll/benefits costs alone for a small team like the one above run us about $12K/week. So payroll alone can easily get over $240K to cover the hours put in by this team on a 20-week assignment. Add any additional staffing and overhead like rent, communications, equipment, insurance, etc. and a $350K+ app happens really fast. Can you go out and do it yourself offshore or with your own freelance team and do it for less? Probably, if you can find people that you trust and are available and work really well together. Doing it this way is a lot riskier if you care about excellent work and time to market. And I bet it still won’t be cheap, not at all. Quality freelance talent costs real money as well. Offshore? Maybe, but we haven’t heard any real success stories from folks that have gone that route. What Happens after Launch? All this is about getting an app out the door. In many respects launching an app is like having a baby—it isn’t over, it’s just getting started. Marketing and user acquisition costs may be significant, and delivering updates with new functionality or features may be just like starting a new project, and require a significant budget. Gavin Fraser is Small Planet’s Chief Executive Officer. Follow him on Twitter @gavinmfraser.