Every autumn millions of people await new events from Apple and new iPhone presentations. No wonder, this device became a legend, a desired accessory and helper for most of us. According to statistics, 52% of all Apple revenue comes from iPhone sales. Can you imagine how many people use these devices and even upgrade them every year?
Such iPhone popularity made many businesses seriously consider going mobile and developing their own iOS solutions. And the first challenge they face is hiring a great ios app development company and estimating app development cost. When it comes to app development, it is hard to provide an accurate estimate at once since the final price depends on so many factors.
What influences iOS app cost?
Before any business owner comes to a development team and requests an app estimation, it is necessary to consider several factors that can influence the development cost. Here are the most important ones:
- Overall app complexity (the more complex you app is, the more development hours it will require – and every hour of developers’ work will cost you some money);
- Feature set you want to include ( some features are easy to create and some may require integrations with other services or else);
- Third-party integrations ( they can also cost you some additional money);
- Team composition and seniority level of hired developers (the services of senior developers are not so cheap, so sometimes it is not a bad idea to hire middle level specialists and get no worse app for less amount of money).
Most people try to calculate the price of iOS app development using different app cost calculators. However, those calculators do not take into account the factors mentioned above, so the outcome can be rather unreal. It is always better to get in touch with the development team, request a quotation and see what budget you’ll need.
As to the development term, it can take 3-6 month to develop a highly functional solution and submit it to the App Store. The submission procedure is tricky and it is preferable to ask your development team to help you with it. They will create all necessary screenshots, write app description and perform final quality and performance checks to make sure that the app is up to standards and will be accepted by the store from the first attempt.
Simple vs complex apps cost
As it was mentioned earlier, the cost of the app development can differ depending on the complexity of the desired solution. Developers divide iOS apps into three main categories – simple, middle, and complex. Simple applications created without using any advanced features or high-tech screens. So you just get a well functioning basic app with the essential feature set and user-friendly UX. It takes up to 2-4 month to deliver such an app.
Solutions of middle complexity usually have custom UI, interesting and more advanced options that can work in real time, more screens, and there are also integrations with different APIs. As you can guess, their cost would be higher than the cost of simple apps, and the development will last 6-10 months.
As to the complex applications, they have a multitude of options, integrations, and technologies. Their UI can contain animation, there can be a lot of additional services and many more. Complex apps are the most expensive since they require more time and human effort to be designed and developed. Their average development time is 8 months or ven a year.
What team is required?
If you made the decision to develop a custom iOS application, then you will need a cohesive team of technicians. The team composition can differ but the main specialists you’ll require are:
- Business analyst;
- Designer;
- iOS developer;
- Front-end coder;
- QA engineer;
- Scrum Master.
Every specialist has their hourly rate. So whatever vendor you are going to hire you will require to pay according to the rates of the specialists. For example, US companies charge $55-70 per 1 hour of iOS developer work while European companies ask for $45-60. The rates of other specialists differ as well.
Back to the real numbers
On average iOS app development requires 1200 hours of work, and its cost is expected to be $50,000 or more. If you are hiring a team with higher rates, then of course the cost will be higher. Therefore it can be said that the final price depends on the vendor, technology stack, and seniority level of specialists.
The price also depends on the type of app. For example, a food delivery solution may require 900h of work and $35,000, while a dating app needs 1400 development hours and has a $55,000-$70,000 price.
To summarize
iOS app development is very promising and can bring you a lot of additional revenue in the future. But before this happens you should be ready to invest in its development. Define what type of application you need, what developers you are ready to hire, and what your development budget is.
It would be a costly venture, and yet it always pays itself off. Just choose the right technical partner and make sure you set clear goals and expectations for the future application. Also it is always a good idea to roll out a minimum viable product and keep improving it with time than put your app idea aside because your budget is tight at the moment.
