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Jason Hunter
Jason Hunter

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Estimating The Cost of A Mobile App

So I've been in the mobile app development industry for quite a while now. More than often, I come across ambitious people that want to get a mobile application developed for their business (or any other type of app for entertainment).

Of course I'm always happy to pick up new tasks. But there one question that (quite frankly) really gets on my nerves.
And that is: "What's gonna be the cost of this mobile app?"
OR, with some added specific: "what's gonna be the cost of my virtual reality makeup app?"

Like we're in the initial 3 minute of the on-boarding process and the customer really expects me to give them an estimate of the cost.

You can't exactly predict the cost of a mobile app without the below mentioned information (If I'm forgetting something, please leave a comment. I'll make the edits).

Information Required for Estimating The App Development Cost

The Features You’re Planning On Including

Some examples of basic features:
-Are users required to manually register on you account or can they register using their social media profiles
-Will users have to create their personal profiles
-What will be your monetization strategy (in-app purchases, ads, paid app etc.)
-Does your app need to be connected with a website
-Will there be push-notifications
-Are you planning on making it multilingual
-Are you going to integrate a social sharing option?
-Will your app have offline capabilities

The development process

both front-end and back-end development take time individually

The complexity of your app’s functionality

Detailed functional requirements can help estimate the cost

The complexity of your app’s features and design

basic design, individual design, or custom design

Prototyping and wire-framing

The operating system you’re going to use

-Apple iOS
-Android
-Hybrid mobile app

Market Research

The cost will also depend on the market research required for analyzing and creating a successful business strategy. This step helps to evaluate if there is any demand for the customer's product in the market.

Cost of testing / quality assurance

The number of pages in your app

The Developer/Company

Cost also Depends on the app developer or the company you’re going to hire (costs vary with different companies and developers).

No matter which type of app you're developing, you need the above information to effectively estimate the cost.

So once I have acquired the above information, then I calculate the total cost.

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