How much does it cost to
build a Mobile app?

The development of a professional Mobile App by a specialized mobile app development company with an average global hourly rate would cost anywhere from $4,099 to $242,633. Total costs depend on selected platforms and technologies and a developer’s hourly rate multiplied by the time necessary to deploy the functionality.

By analysis of 962 specialized Mobile App Development companies, the average rate to hire a company for mobile app development services is $48.83 per hour.

Mobile app design can take multiple forms, from wireframes, paper prototyping, Hi-fidelity / pixel-perfect designs, to clickable prototypes and animations. Wire-framing tends to be relatively inexpensive, however, could lead to some lack of visual cues if you translate them directly into the development process. Hi-fi designs, on the other hand, can resemble the final output correctly, but may not show the UX flow as well. Animations can really help describe the experience that users may witness and when built can really improve the perception of your app, although these can be a pricey addition.

Typically, most apps would benefit from at least Wireframes and Hi-fidelity designs, since developers would be better able to estimate the build time required as well as sort out any kinks in the user flow. Tech Alchemy takes the design-driven development approach since our Startup clients like to see the visual representation of our work and it helps everyone to have aligned expectations for the final output.

Most companies may choose to omit the support/maintenance costs in quotations you receive. Although this is an important factor, as once a mobile app is delivered to you, several factors can cause the Mobile app to break such as Third-party API changes or poorly thought out functions in the code. At Tech Alchemy, we strongly believe in our work and alongside our mission to guide startups, all our quotations include 3 months of bug support to cover any bugs that may appear once the mobile app has been developed.

Server costs for a Mobile App can vary massively, but essentially it depends on how many users are using your application and how much data is being stored and transferred. On average, for most MVP apps you can expect the costs to be no higher than $200 per month when you have < 500 users. However, if your app contains features like Video streaming, Payment processing, Instant chat / calling this can increase costs quite drastically. At Tech Alchemy, we factor these costs into our development planning process and always advice clients to apportion 20% for this.

Once your app is released publicly, it is a myth that your app will go viral organically with little effort. At Tech Alchemy, we suggest being active on social media and forming brand partnerships to increase adoption. There are many PR companies that help in App SEO and publicity campaigns that can increase your monthly active users and downloads for your product.

Depending on your app, other costs should be considered that may result from SDK’s or libraries used in the app such as Stripe (for payment processing), Mixpanel (for User analytics) and various others. Moreover, in order to publish on the App Store, you would need an Apple Developer Membership (typically costing $100 per year) and for the Play store ($25 per year).