How do you build an app on a budget? What if you’re committed to your app vision, but you have to keep costs low? Where do you start?
When it comes to the price of app development, there are things that you can do to slightly lower the price.. If that happens to be you, I want to help you. But I am also going to be realistic and honest with you (for better or for worse).
App development is expensive, it’s just a fact. If you are overly conservative with your money, app development might not be right for you. There, I said it. There isn’t much I can do to help if you are not willing to take some risks.. For those who are willing to take risks, willing to do what it takes to make an app, here are some insights I hope will be helpful.
Doing App Development Right
There is a right and a wrong way to build an app. Building an app is much like building a house. You can play around with some levers to alter the price, but ultimately, you still need a foundation, walls, a roof, and an interior. If you decide to go with a cheap foundation, chances are, it might crack, your roof could collapse, or your pipes might burst. Yes, you can do some things yourself, like paint the house or lay your own tile, but for other things, it would be smart to trust a professional and spend the money.
So how much should you be prepared to spend on app development? I would say the lowest that you should be willing to go is $20k. Anything less won’t be enough to cover a viable, scalable, functional app. We charge over $3k just to do the requirements definition, and if you’re not ready or willing to spend three grand to start the process, you’re not ready to build an app. Period.
Finding the Loopholes of App Development
If you’re really limited to less than $20k and your app experience is pretty basic, there are some really good no-code options out there like bubble.io that will let you build deployable apps by using ready-made components. This can be a great solution for simple app concepts with basic features. You may still need to have someone code in some of the integrations with other systems like Stripe or Quickbooks, but even a lot of those common integrations are available with bubble.io out of the box.
Although no-code options are getting more sophisticated, you might not be able to scale an app like this and do everything that you want to do. However, this is an extremely viable option if you are aiming to keep costs down. After your no-code app is running and making money, you can use that cash to build out your next generation product.
Taking Things Into Your Own Hands
With everything considered, if you really had to cut down the costs as much as possible, but still create the best app you could, here is what you could do:
First, learn everything you can for free, or as close to free as possible. Study user story writing, requirements gathering, and UX design concepts. Watch videos, attend webinars, read books, and ask other software entrepreneurs about their experience. There are a lot of resources out there.
With your newfound knowledge, you could then write your own user stories, and then pay an experienced analyst to review them. Or if you happen to have connections or favors, reach out to them. Ask your analyst friend who writes user stories for a living to review yours as a favor. Find some way to return the favor and add value to others. Afterall, what goes around comes around.
With the user stories done, try your hand at drawing your own wireframes. Make basic depictions of the different screens in your app. Be careful not to spend too much time here, otherwise you might develop “analysis paralysis.,” the analyst version of a writer’s block. Draw out the screens and buttons that a user would need to complete their journey through the app. Try to get it done in one day. When it’s finished, set it aside and come back to it every so often to revise it. While you’re away, think through your ideas to make sure they flow, and don’t only think through the positive cases, think about the negative scenarios as well. Get as much done as possible so when it comes time to meet with a UX designer, you can show all that you’ve done. After seeing all that you have already created and written up, they might be impressed and be more willing to come down in price.
Next, you’ll want to pay an experienced UX designer to create your high-fidelity, full-color mockups. Use their experience to catch the things that you missed. If you work with a mediocre UX designer, then be prepared for a painful, longer-than-necessary engagement, because the developer will struggle with things that were not fully thought through. Money spent on UX design is a great investment.
Find an experienced, senior developer who is passionate about your app concept and can agree with you on a fixed price basis. This is another one of those things you don’t want to cheap out on. Lock in your pricing as early as you can, but you can only do this if your requirements and designs are well done. And if you can, have the same person build both the front and back-ends of your system. They may be willing to give you a volume discount if you give them more work.
Coming to the close of the app development process, you’re going to need to begin testing the app. Now, I’m slightly hesitant to tell you to test it yourself because there are some obvious downsides to DIY software QA: you won’t test as many scenarios as a professional would, you may not have as many devices as the tester would have (making you unable to test different variables like devices and operating systems), and lastly, it will be quite time consuming.
If you decide to do this yourself, study up on software testing techniques. You can do most of the “functional” testing yourself by basically using the app and logging bugs. In that regard, functional testing is like laying your own tiles in the house. You don’t HAVE to have special credentials to do it; it might be fun for some or torture for others. If we are being honest, unless you have experience as a software tester, someone else would probably do a better job than you. But of all the things to cut out of your budget and put in sweat instead, testing would be the one.
There are other types of software testing, like unit, integration, and performance testing. To learn more, read The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Software Testing.
Some “DONT’s” of Lowering App Development Costs
There are some “thou shalt not’s” when squeezing the most from your app development budget. “
Simply put, there are four things you should know: do not select the lowest bid, do not go offshore just because it is cheaper, do not work with inexperienced developers, and do not do all the UX design yourself.
To learn why you should avoid those four points, check out this article, Things to Watch Out for When Requesting Software Development Quotes.
App development is expensive and it is a long process. But if you do it right, it doesn’t need to break the bank, so to speak. Learn all that you can. Invest in good professionals. Be prepared to spend money and make mistakes. Do whatever it is you need to do, but whatever you do, don’t let go of your mission to change the world, it will be worth it.
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