How To Reduce the Cost of Mobile App Development for Business?

To create a unique brand identity among customers is the ultimate goal of every marketing effort put forth by businesses. However, modern age marketing is nothing like how we used to do it. The invention of technology and rapid changes in business conditions are driving the new marketing tactics and strategies. Companies used to spend on newspaper advertisements and local radio channels for new product launch or season end sales are gone.  

Now is the time of smartphones and mobile applications.  

Like after the boom of the internet, there is an underlying understanding that every business must have a website. Due to the rise of mobile phones in the last few years, every business is moving towards smartphone apps.  

As a mobile app development company, the most general concern of all our SMB clients is the cost of developing a mobile app for business. While it takes a lot of time and effort to build a high-performance mobile app, there are always certain methods and development approaches to reduce mobile app development cost without sacrificing quality.  

Here we have mentioned some useful suggestions for reducing the mobile app development cost with a bonus tip at the end. Keep reading.  

1. Plan carefully  

The cost of mobile app development depends on several factors. First, it is always recommended to plan the details of your mobile app. Writing down the exact details and planning your business app can save you a lot of money from dropping the development or change course and strategies in the middle of the process due to new ideas.  

For instance, before venturing into mobile app development, you should have a clear idea of what features your business app needs. Because the cost of mobile app development depends majorly on which features you want in the app and their complexity. As a general rule of thumb, the more features your app needs, the costlier it will be.  

Also Read: Why Should You Choose Offshore Mobile App Development Over In House Development?

Planning your requirements can also help in deciding the best development platform for your business. Before finalizing which platform, your app will be available for, it is important to know which platform your audience preferred. For example, if most of your users have an android device, then developing the app for iOS and Android will cost twice as much as developing for the latter.  

Additionally, you can also sketch the design for your mobile app. i.e., the design and user interface. The UI/UX features can also increase the cost of mobile development if not clearly discussed in the beginning.  

2. Outsource mobile app development  

The most common way for mobile app development is to hire an in-house team or outsource to an established offshore mobile app development company. To outsource your business app development is a good choice that will yield better results in lower investment. Also, in-house hiring teams is not feasible for every business. 

One popular misconception around outsourcing and in-house development is that high price hiring means high-quality apps. This is not true. If you go with the lowest price, it can lead to unnecessary expenses and disturb your app budget in the long run.  

It is a much smarter investment to outsource mobile app development as it will save money. An offshore mobile app development company has multiple years of experience up its sleeve and expert developers in every domain. Getting your app developed under expert guidance ensures the superior quality of the product.  

Also Read: How to Get Started With Hybrid Mobile Application Development?

Never compromise the quality for short term savings.  

Also, offshore hiring gives you the chance to explore the best talent and price out there for your project. Compared to in-house development, offshore hiring is much more cost-effective. With an in-house team of developers also comes the added expenditure of bills, infrastructure, salaries and others. While outsourcing, you can pick the best company at flexible pricing.  

3. Use app templates  

If your app concept is not entirely new, chances are there are pre-existing templates for many features. For example, if you want to build an app like Robinhood, most of its features have a pre-configured template that can be used to build similar features in your app. The same is true for other apps as well.  

Developing an app from ground zero is highly expensive. But using the existing technology and tweaking it to fulfil your business purpose is a much better way to go than writing code for each feature separately from scratch. Many platforms offer such pre-built templates at a very nominal price. Like push notifications, chat support, geolocation integration and more.  

Like templates for features, there are free kits for UX and UI, which can be customized as per your needs. From elegant designs to versatile and complex prototypes, all kinds of design kits are available.  

One drawback of using such templates in your smartphone app is the future instability of the app. So don’t just pick random third-party plugins. Instead, consult an expert or hire an offshore mobile app developer to help you do in-depth research and help you to build a stable application.  

4. Go for an MVP  

MVP is a minimum viable product. It’s the best way to figure out whether an app is a worthy investment for your business. It will help you to understand the whys, hows and whats of your final product.  

MVP is a basic prototype of the final product with all the vital features and designs. An MVP is used by many businesses and start-ups to validate their app idea by testing with actual customers to gain real-time insights about engagement and interaction.  

Also Read: Why Small & Medium-Sized Businesses Need A Mobile App?

Once you’ve tested the waters, you can add advanced features later. MVP is a blessing when it comes to saving development costs and fixing any bugs or other hindrances in the app’s working.  

5. Build a Cross-platform app  

Native apps over cross-platform apps have higher performance, more stability, more speed, and better designs, but developing mobile apps for different platforms (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac) is very expensive. For most businesses, it is the first time they’re developing an app for their services or products and cross-platform development is the better option to go with. It will reduce the app development cost considerably.  

Once your app is launched and doing well with the customers, you always have the option to switch to native technologies later.  

Cross-platform apps also reduce support and maintenance cost. These apps can be updated easily without manual interference. Cross-platform development does not require complex technology integration and thus takes less time to build. They don’t offer a great user experience as the native apps, but it is still the best alternative for cost reduction.  

Some of the technologies to build a cross-platform app: 

• React native  
• Flutter 
• Xamarin  
• Ionic 
• PhoneGap 
• Titanium 
• Cordova  
• Framework7  

Hire a professional outsourcing partner with hands-on experience in cross-platform technologies for the best product.  

6. Known the hidden costs  

Mobile app development requires skillful integration of multiple technologies at once to create the features, UI, and UX design. To get the exact functionalities and features you are looking for in your app, you will have to take many services into account like data storage, dashboard emulator, CDN, access control, API, libraries, tools, image data, servers and more. Most of these services are paid for. So, either you pay for them yourself or hire an offshore mobile app development company; they will do it for your app.  

Bonus Tip  

One important thing to always keep in mind is that you don’t compromise on the features when trying to reduce your app development cost. You will find many freelance developers and outsourcing Android app development agencies that quote a much higher price and reduce it significantly. What really happens here is that they reduce the number of features to be included in the app. Don’t fall for such traps. Be clear on what features you want and how you want your app to look like and ask the pricing accordingly.  

Also Read: Why React Native is Better than Flutter to Build your Business App in 2021

Final thoughts  

Developing a mobile app for your business is a significant step, and there are many ways of cost-cutting for it. However, the most important step to control for a successful final product is to choose one of the top android app development agencies.  

Start your mobile app development journey with us. Whether you need a cross-platform app or native app, our mobile app development team can create the most powerful and user-friendly apps for your business.