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09 Jun, 2021

Cost of Developing a Mobile App Vs Cost of a Mockup

What is the exact app development budget? This is one of the five most asked questions by clients. We tried to discover an answer to this.

What is your hardware of choice? Playstation 5 or a smartphone? As per June 2021 mobile user statistics, 4.8 billion people in the world own a mobile phone. This means the world chooses smartphones over PlayStation 5. As it is the most cherished hardware to users now, there can not be a better time to consider creating your own app.

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LEARN THE PRICE OF YOUR APP

Shall we discuss the app development budget?

How much money does it cost to develop an app? How do you create an app development budget? Perhaps, your clients like to ask these two questions when planning to buy services from you. Of course, they would like to check out app development costs before getting into this profitable app market.

In all honesty, development prices vary from $20,000-$250,000 depending on the amount of time and effort the developer puts into the job.

Building mobile apps can be costly. It takes ample time from teams of software engineers and UI/UX designers to design its GUI layouts, icons, menus, and so forth.

But, how to cut the cost and save some money? How can you effectively manage your app development budget?

App development budget

ADLC: Application Development Lifecycle

What is a good mobile app? Do you think an app that is built on a popular tech stack is a good app? Or an app that is built on a unique idea and has a user-friendly interface is called a good app?

Whatsoever application you choose to develop; you will want to ensure it works properly and serve industry standards. As far as the quality is concerned, you cannot launch a successful mobile app unless you follow a defined app development lifecycle.

So, how do you start developing mobile apps? And what is the right app development budget?

Application development lifecycle usually consists of the following steps:

  1. The Design Phase of a project
  2. Requirement Gathering
  3. Software Equipment Requirement
  4. Software Analysis
  5. Design Iteration
  6. High-level Design (HLD)
  7. Detailed Design & Engineering
  8. Design Handoff
  9. Application Testing
  10. Conduct User-testing
right app development budget

But, as per modern ADLC, it is recommended forcefully to design a prototype right after the application architecture & system design are sorted.

‘Solving one problem brings another problem you will need to solve.’ Is this how you feel right now? Look, as per the stats, the right app development budget is around $20,000-$250,000. What if after spending this much money you are not able to successfully pull it off? Wouldn’t you prefer to having a dummy model designed to check and test?

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Cost of a Mockup?

Is $800 a good app development budget?

Imagine the situation – your team spends hundreds of hours in the development of an application but somehow stakeholders don’t approve it. You will go back and think about what went wrong. Just to avoid the scenario, you can have a dummy app/prototype designed for testing purposes.

So, you can control the app development failure cost by having a mockup designed.

Cost of a Mockup

Prototyping Methodology: Guidelines for you

It is difficult to comprehend how a certain app will be used by a user before its launch. Still, developers try their best to craft user requirements to reduce the uncertainty of what an application should do. This can only be thinkable if a prototype is available.

Thompson, Wishbow says, rapid prototyping permits the development team to ensure whether the product’s interface can easily be learned and used.

So, depending on your product, the prototyping procedure goes like this:

Step 1: You define the goal of your project; brainstorm development ideas.

Step 2: Stick with 1 or 2 features, to begin with.

Step 3: Create your design on paper i.e called a low-fidelity wireframe.

Step 4: Hold discussion with partners or stakeholders knowing there will be revisions.  

Step 5: Revamp your design as per their feedback. Here you design a mockup. 

Step 6: You create a prototype out of a mockup.

Step 7: Consult with stakeholders to ask if any revisions are necessary.

Step 8: If the outcome is approved, you add an additional feature.

Step 9: You will obviously be documenting everything.

MVP is a minimum viable product; an advanced prototyping process that can help you gather solid feedback from users. You can get to know about the market you’re aiming to enter to see if there is a demand or not.

Another better way to address complex application development is the use of a scrum framework. The Five Scrum Values are:

  • Courage
  • Focus
  • Commitment
  • Respect
  • Openness

If I conclude what we discussed above, the ideal app development lifecycle must be: Research, Visual Design, Creating Wireframes, UX Design, Prototyping, Branding Design.

Cost of Developing a Mobile App Vs Cost of a Mockup: A Conclusion

To give an approximate idea; a price tag of $200,000 to $350,000 for an application having multiple features. And $10,000 to $50,000 for n application having basic features. The number can easily increase if you create flawed applications. But can be controlled if you use the above prototyping techniques.

Move your concept one step closer.