TL;DR: The costs for building apps vary widely depending on the type and features. Expect to pay between 5,000 and 50,000 euros for a basic app, and up to 10,000 euros or more for additional features.
Building mobile apps has become nearly as vital to businesses as building company websites. Developing mobile apps may seem like a simple thing to do, but it’s far more complex, time-consuming, and expensive than you might think.
How much does it cost to build an app with modern features? This infographic from the app development company APP3null GmbH provides insight into high-quality app costs.
Let’s start with what has the greatest impact on the costs of building mobile apps. Here according to the company are what will help either drive your costs up or down, according to how you use them:
- Your app development team and project manager
- Your app development platform
- App design (user interface, user experience) and functionality
- App features and testing (i.e., offline ability, push notifications, etc.)
- App hosting (on-premise or cloud) and security
- App updates and maintenance (long term app development process)
Taking all that into account, your mobile app development costs can vary wildly. Do you need an iOS app, an Android app, or a cross-platform app? Does it need to work offline? What features do you need?
One of the most important factors that determine your ultimate costs will be the kind of app you want to build. APP3null GmbH says these are the average costs of app development for different app types.
Average Costs to Create:
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Simple apps: 5,000 to 10,000, euros
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Apps with a database: 10,500 to 50,000 euros
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Mini games: 10,000 to 15,000 euros
Even those rough estimates are just a starting point. If you want to add features to a basic app you’re going to have to pay for them. Here are the additional costs you can expect to pay for each app.
Additional Costs for Special App Features:
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In-app purchasing: 2,000 to 5,500 euros
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Web service: 5,000 to 10,000 euros
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Social sharing options: Starting at 1,000 euros, depending on the complexity
The Costs of Marketing an App:
Keep in mind that developing an app is just the first step. You’ll also need to market it as well, and the costs can be considerable. The article, The Cost To Market an App: A Complete Super Cheesy Guide offer solid advice on what you can expect to pay.
Marketing expenses start with the pre-launch phase. So you’ll need to do market research, to get a handle on who you need to reach and how to reach them.
- Expect to pay between 4,500 euros and 13,000 euros for marketing your app.
Before the launch, you’ll also have to handle app store optimization (ASO). This, the article notes, “ensures that an app will draw the attention of its potential users by tuning title, keywords, description, icon, screenshots, etc. of the mobile app and motivate them to download the app and actually use it afterward.”
- Expect to pay between 20 euros and 1,400 euros per month for app store optimization, depending on the complexity of what you’re doing.
How to Cut Your App Development Costs
What if you could develop, design, and test your apps completely for free, then only pay for app deployment? Not having to pay for your development software saves you thousands of dollars and allows you to start your mobile app development without any investment outside of your development team.
- Alpha Software offers free low-code app development software to build apps entirely for free. You only pay when you deploy the app to the cloud, for as low as $99/month. Alpha Anywhere Community Edition is a free low-code software platform that allows you to build as many apps as you need at your own pace, and only pay when they're ready to deploy their apps to the cloud. The software produces cross-platform apps that run on any device and has built-in offline apps, one of the most expensive features in app development.
Remove the cost risks from mobile app development:
Develop apps for free with Alpha Anywhere Community Edition.
Alpha also offers a free step-by-step guide on how to build your first mobile application.
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