For large organizations, spending a substantial amount of finances on creating a mobile app may not be a big deal (due to their wealth). They can easily spend around USD$ 30K to 50K to develop a classy mobile app.

However, when it comes to startups developing a mobile app, they may find it difficult to develop a world-class app a financially strong organization can easily make.

Moreover, since they have limited capital, spending that amount of money on a mobile app can lead them towards financial losses and eventually closure.

Out there, there are approximately 9 million mobile apps present. The fact that developing an app is expensive is something that surprises many. Why is it so? It is because there is a scarcity of skilled developers in most major markets around the world.

Moreover, the complications of creating a robust, well-functioning mobile app can cause the hourly rates for developers to rise substantially.

Moreover, the costs of developing mobile apps have a wide range. For instance, it would take between USD$ 40,000 to USD$ 60,000 to develop a small app.

When it comes to developing a large and complicated enterprise-level mobile app, the minimum cost to develop it is around USD$ 125,000. It can go up to a million dollars, depending on the app’s needs for features.

Moreover, there is another thing that most organizations keep forgetting;

Even if businesses looking to develop a niche app are quite establishe, they may observe that the costs of app development are quite higher than what they had estimate at first.

Here is a brief guide to why this happens and in what ways can organizations avoid spending too much money on mobile application development in dubai.

Reasons why mobile app development can be quite costly

Experts working at various mobile app and software development firms based across various cities in the Middle East and North Africa have decided to reveal key reasons why the development of mobile apps is a costly thing.

Support needed for multiple app platforms

The number of smartphone users on the planet is almost 3.6 billion. Out of this population, American consumers spent almost 90% of their time on mobile apps.

It is thus apparent that companies would love to have some access to the screens of their target audience.

But the mobile platform market share comprises three operating systems namely Android, iOS, and Microsoft Windows mobile.

This indicates that mobile apps can never be designate and made for just one operating system only. They are made to work on multiple mobile platforms.

Moreover, each platform has multiple versions of its own selves used by various kinds of customers around the globe.

Organizations must hence have an app that can look and behave identically on all versions of each platform present. This can raise the time and cost of app development.

The demand for mobile app developers is high

With 87 percent of smartphone users having their devices by their side daily, creating an app of immense value is hence a requirement for companies desiring to be seen, heard, and remember by their customers.

The boom of mobile apps has helped new concepts to emerge. Among them are mobile-first design, on-demand models, and launching with an app for creating traction. The demand for app development services providers creating top-class apps is quite high. As a consequence, their charges are also high.

Companies are often under pressure to app top-class features

Consumers expect a lot of top features to be the bare minimum regardless of the category the app is in, whether it is a ride-sharing app, a gaming app or a news app. Push notifications, emails, payment channels, social media integration, and other features require subscriptions to deliver services that can cost a substantial amount of money each month.

Moreover, if a company sells products or offers subscriptions via the app, the app store (say Apple’s App Store) will charge a certain amount of money as a transaction charge. Organizations working on app development need to consider this in their app development costs too.

The hourly rates of app development professionals are rising sharply

A lot of companies hire out-house agencies and firms to develop their apps i.e. they outsource them to an app development team or firm who are paid for their services. The app costs could then boil down to the developer team’s hourly rate multiplied by the number of hours being taken by the project.

This hourly rate differs from one country/region to the other. For instance, THe United States of America, Canada, The Netherlands, and the United Kingdom have higher hourly rates in comparison to countries like Sri Lanka, Egypt, India, Lebanon, Jordan, Kenya, Belarus, Thailand, The Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica, and The Bahamas.

Focusing on ensuring a secure backend system

For storing images, graphics and other content will require a good amount of space. Moreover, integration with content delivery networks having the ability to share localized content with users around the globe is also compulsory.

Based on these factors, the cost of an app hosting server ranges between USD$50 and USD$350 per month. Moreover, a lot of companies outsource app hosting to large organizations like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or another one that is in line with their costs.

The market lacks experienced app developers

While basic app development skills can be learn with ease, however not every developer is present with the capacity or will to constantly learn, adapt and pick up the need skills to offer enterprise app development services or commercial app solutions.

On the other hand, companies that wish to make a mark will opt for experienced developers over inexperienced ones. As a consequence, the few top-notch developers present will come with quite a price tag, and this raises the cost of app development by a margin no one expected.

Hidden costs surround app maintenance and repairs

A lot of companies often develop their apps by outsourcing the services to a low-cost app development service provider. The outcome is that these companies withdraw the app because of glitches, faults, and crashes.

The repairing process is often outsource to developers that are much more skill than the firm that develope the app. Needless to say, these developers come at a very expensive price tag.

When a company avoids paying extra to get the app development done right, it ends up paying a lot more later for repairing the app.

If the app does not need to be withdrawn (due to the fact it was well develope), the maintenance tasks like hosting and monitoring require skill developers to carry out these tasks. They hence have high hourly rates. Maintaining a medium-sized enterprise app requires firms to spend between USD$ 5000 and USD$ 11000 each month.

Factors firms should consider when planning app development costs

Negative facts do surround mobile app development but they should not deter anyone from developing a classy mobile app. To curtail the costs of building an app here is what development teams and firms must do:

Conclusion

Creating top-notch mobile apps is never affordable and that too for the right reasons. Firms should consider starting with a minimum viable product if they are facing budget constraints.

A hybrid app is also worth considering and allows companies to launch them on both Android and iOS at the same time.

It should also be understood it is not just about the app, but rather the product or service the company is offering.

Even if the app is a simpleton, it can succeed in the market as long as the offering is among the best.