Mobile app development and its growing cost can, more often than not, feel like a burden for startups, small and medium businesses, and even enterprise giants.
Building a stand-out product within budget and on time, sometimes feels just out of reach. But, it doesn’t have to be!
Here’s how you can reduce development costs for a mobile app without sacrificing quality –
- Careful Planning
- Strategic Decision Making
But those are just overarching themes. What about other ways?
Here, we show you 5 ways to help you understand what’s bang for buck and cost-effective mobile app development and how to achieve it.
1. Choose Cross-Platform Mobile App Development
When building or developing an app, the best way to reduce the initial cost is build for all platforms. As a business you don’t want to commission different vendors for the iOS version and the Android version.
It’s more cost-effective and less resource intensive to build one app that works across platforms. Why? Because your developers are reusing a major chunk of the codebase, cutting down time and effort.
With Flutter, React Native and Xamarin frameworks creating robust high-performance mobile apps by harnessing a single codebase, the time and effort in updating and maintaining apps can also be reduced.
- Prioritize MVP Development First
Answer this question before you start out building your mobile app. Should it work well, should it be feature-rich? Or should it be fully functional? The answer – all of those things. But, what you need to remember is that adding too many features and layers of complexity in the early days, is a surefire way to bump up development costs.
MVP or Minimum Viable Product is a better suited approach to bringing down development costs. As an app version that prioritizes key functions and target audience needs.
In a nutshell, MVP development can –
- Minimize the risk of developing unnecessary features
- Allow for real-time user feedback and iteration
- Reduce development costs by focusing on essential features
3. Mix It Up with Off-the-Shelf Solutions
It’s a waste of time and resources to custom code every little feature and every little aspect of your mobile app. You need to mix in those off-the-shelf solutions, because it’s about cutting dev costs. If you’re building a payment gateway, it makes sense to integrate an app that offers user authentication and payment initiation.
Sometimes, the third party is the right party. Think about it, battle-tested tools and components that you integrate and take your app to the next level – what’s not there to like. It’s about striking the right balance, balancing on that tight rope of customization with the slack line of cost-efficiency.
Off-the-shelf to within the scope of your mobile app development, can:
- Supercharge development time
- Cut costs of building common features from scratch
- Ensure reliability and security with trusted third-party tools
4. Feature Thoughtful and Well-planned Design
Here’s a not so secret way of saving costs while designing your mobile apps—planning and thought. Who’d have thought? Well, you need to, and you must!
Planning and user experience orchestration can take your app to the next level, without breaking the company expense bank. Start from the top, from the group that matters the most—your target audience. Define why they will use your app, what functions the app will solve, and what its core features are, in terms of your target audience. Wireframing and creating prototypes can help speed up development and reduce costs, by identifying potential pitfalls early in the development cycle.
The key is clarity, and comprehensiveness. Your app design should predicate for both, which is the best recipe for customer experience success, and being pocket-friendly.
Thought and Planning can, and most definitely help –
- Minimize costly changes during development
- Ensure a clear roadmap for development
- Enhance user experience and satisfaction
5. Get a Reliable Mobile App Development Company Involved
Hiring a reliable and trustworthy mobile app development partner is one of the most major ways you can save money, and build a cost-effective solution. I cannot state the importance of this enough. While there are factors like geography and expertise level that determine the cost of developing a mobile app, you should diligently check on what’s the best option for your specific company goal.
But you know the saying- nothing can beat experience! And, it’s true. You want to entrust professionals who’ve been there and done that. Typically, experienced mobile app development companies give you access to a diverse and skilled team of professionals, which only hastens the process of development.
Choosing to outsource can –
Eliminate the need for in-house infrastructure, HR, and management costs
Reduce the overall development cost.
Choosing a trusted mobile app development company gives you-
- Access to experienced professionals at lower costs
- Reduced infrastructure and HR costs
- Faster time-to-market with a skilled team
Conclusion
Now that you know the top 5 ways to reduce mobile app development cost, right from choosing to go cross platform to hiring the right app developers, which way would you like to integrate in your development cycle.
Remember, reducing mobile app development costs does not mean cutting corners on quality. The goal is to build a functional, user-friendly, and successful app efficiently and cost-effectively.
