Effective App Development Planning: Maximizing Your Investment

The average cost to build an app can range from $8,000 to $150,000, $250,000, or more. Analyzing factors like business goals, company budget, competitors, app platforms, and developers is the only way to effectively plan an app development budget. It is an integral part of the app development planning process. It allows a business to better understand project requirements and set goals for ROI tracking.

A proper way to plan the development or increase the development budget is a valuable skill in the current app market, the global revenue of which is estimated to reach $641.10 billion by 2027. It makes every new startup, investor, and app development company invest their time and efforts in the most productive strategies in software development, one of which is budget planning and maximizing app development budgets.

Therefore, we are going to dive into the ways you can plan and increase your app development budget better.

Ways to Plan Your App Development Budget

Users expect a visually attractive and high-performance mobile app with convenient ease of use. That is why during app development planning, most startups and even large enterprises aim for maximizing the app development budget to incorporate more innovative elements into the project and build a high-tech mobile app.

Evaluate Company Budget

Whether you are a startup or an established company, you must have a specific budget available for all the mobile app development steps. While some companies may have a flexible budget, most will have a fixed one and a limited one if you are a startup. It is why the first step is evaluating the minimum and maximum budget your company can provide for the development project.

Such evaluation will help you plan the next steps of app development and budget planning more effectively. For example, knowing which materials you have and can get for building a boat can help you determine how far the boat can travel and how many people it can fit.

Similarly, estimating the company budgets helps you identify the potential strengths and weaknesses of your app development planning strategy and budget.

Determine App Goals

App business goals help you estimate the exact cost to build an app by making it easy to identify every project requirement. For example, if you are building an app for millennial users, you need a strategy targeting only that group. However, if you are building an app for millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, then you need a development strategy that can meet the needs and expectations of all these groups.

Such factors are mobile app goals that you must research thoroughly before you start with any mobile app development steps.

Ask questions like:

1. Who is the target audience of your app?
2. What do target users expect from your app?
3. What are the USPs of your competitor apps?
4. What are the core features of your app?
5. What type of UI design would appeal to the target user base?
6. How many competitors have a loyal user base?

Questions like these allow you to identify app goals and create a strategy that can promise a lucrative outcome. It allows you to estimate and plan the development budget and prepare for unexpected spending as well.

Determine Project Requirements

What type of app are you building, is it social media, e-learning, healthcare, or a fintech app?

What technology stack do you need (Java, Kotlin, Swift, Flutter, React Native)?

How many third-party APIs do you need for the app (For example, Google Maps APIs and Apple Pay JS API)?

Which type of development team are you hiring, in-house team, freelancers, onshore, or offshore?

What is the estimated project timeline, 4 months, 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years?

What type of QA will your app require, functional testing, speed testing, penetration testing, UAT testing, or all?

These are just some of the many factors you must analyze to identify the exact project requirements for your app and determine the budget accordingly.

Choose a Platform

Whether you are building an iOS, or Android, both with Native, or a Cross-platform is another factor that helps estimate the overall app development costs. You also need to determine the platform for properly planning all the mobile app development steps.

Choosing Native for iOS and Android would lead to higher development costs, but lead to a high-performance and user-friendly app. The native app development costs can range from $45,000 to $150,000. Building a native iOS app can also be a bit of a hassle as you have to prepare for the extremely tough yet mutually beneficial app review process on the app store.

Choosing cross-platform development allows you to build an app with a single reusable codebase which you can use to build apps for multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Web, and macOS. It is an ideal option for startups as it can increase the reach of your app business at a lower cost.

The cross-platform app development cost can range from $20,000 to $38,000. Building a stable app at affordable/reasonable costs is possible with cross-platform development.

Create a UI/UX Design Plan

During app development budgeting, you will realize that the user interface and UX of your app will take up a significant portion of your budget. It is because UI and UX determine how the app will look and feel to target users.

According to Sagi Schrieber (co-founder of Hacking UI), UX can take a good product and multiply its value. And that is why you must plan and manage the UI/UX design process carefully to ensure it goes smoothly and does not cost more than expected.

For example, if you build a basic/MVP app, the UI/UX design may cost $5,000 to $7,000 or $8,000. But if you are building a complex/advanced app, the UI/UX design cost can range from $25,000 to $65,000 or more depending on your requirements.

Planning the app design process and estimating its cost is the only way to effectively manage and contain the budget required for it.

Determine App Features

How many and types of features you include in the app determine the number of development hours, the type and number of third-party APIs and libraries required, and app testing duration, all of which can help you determine the exact project cost based on the required resources and development hours.

For example, if you decide to include only 10 core features in your app, the development costs could range from $8,500 to $18,000. However, if you decide to add 10 core and 10 advanced features to the app, the cost can significantly increase and range from $55,000 to $90,000.

Choose a Development Team

The most crucial step that can drive the cost of your app development project is your development team, especially because most developers charge by hours. Their hourly costs can range from $45 to $75 depending on where they are from.

If you hire an in-house team, the development costs can range from $180,000 to $300,000 since you have to provide resources like utilities, internet, and computers to the team on top of planning and executing the project.

If you hire freelancers, the costs may range from $35,000 to $55,000 but you face problems like late deliveries, difficulty managing, confidential data theft, or leaks even if there is an NDA.

If you hire onshore developers, the development costs can range from $100,000 to $150,000. The cost is high but you get benefits like easy management, easy project tracking/monitoring, and fewer or no cultural barriers.

If you hire an offshore development team, you get the full package. You get developers that understand the global industry, respect, and value the NDA, provide top-tier development solutions, and offer services at reasonable, lower, or affordable rates. The development cost for a standard app can range from $35,000 to $ 50,000.

Plan App Maintenance and Support

App maintenance and support do come after you launch the app, yet you must plan the cost for it beforehand. It is to prevent or deal with bugs, errors, crashes, downtimes, and launch updates. App maintenance for the first year after deployment can be half of the development and then the cost will decrease by 15 to 20% every year.

For example, if the development cost was $50,000, then the app maintenance cost will be nearly $25,000, a little higher or lower depending on the technical issues it has.

4 Ways to Increase Your App Development Budget

Bootstrapping, Bank Loans, Crowdfunding, and Personal Network Funding are some ways to raise money for an app project which you can use for maximizing the app development budget, although methods like bank loans can put your business in debt.

Therefore, the best solution reevaluates the project requirements and budget to identify and remove unnecessary elements from the project, reducing costs and increasing the budget which you can use to incorporate value-driven factors into the app.

Build a Prototype

Building a prototype is the most effective way to estimate and plan the budget of your app. It is a mockup that visually represents the screen and functionalities of your app through simulated elements, helping you identify its strength, weakness, and overall potential in the market.

For example, social media apps witnessed a 60% uninstall rate between September and October 2022, while shopping apps witnessed a 35% uninstall rate.

Avoiding such an outcome can be possible with an app prototype that helps you find any flaws in the app or development strategy, making it easy to remove unnecessary/disadvantageous elements. It can ultimately reduce development costs and improve the app development budgeting for your project.

Prioritize App Features

Prioritizing app features is highly necessary as the development process and resources for features are what drive the cost and project duration. Most apps today need features like biometric authentication, location tracking, and social media login. However, not all apps require AI-based personalization, augmented reality, or AI-powered chatbots.

You must analyze the requirements of your mobile app to determine the most essential features for your app, whether they are basic or advanced.

It will help you determine the APIs, development hours, and costs required to incorporate those features into your app. Such requirement analysis will also help you remove unnecessary features from your app, reducing development costs.

As you lower app development costs with such methods, you can use the money for improving your mobile app where it is most necessary.

Plan User Acceptance Testing

While user acceptance testing is primarily associated with mobile app development steps, it does play a big role in app development budgeting if you use it to your advantage. User acceptance testing is a testing method that includes target users in the testing process.

It allows you to identify flaws, design issues, and functionality errors from the perspective of end users. On top of that, UAT only requires 10 to 12% of project resources and timeline while preventing 45% of waste.

If you incorporate UAT from the early stages of development, you can direct the development process with a user-driven approach, and increase/decrease costs according to user feedback and needs.

Outsource App Development

Outsourcing offshore developers from countries like India or Ukraine is one of the best ways to reduce costs and increase the budget. An offshore development team can conduct better app development planning as they have a better understanding of the global app industry. As a result, they can help you with maximizing the app development budget with better requirement analysis.

Additionally, offshore developers are cost-effective to begin with, compared to an in-house team or onshore developers. It is why the IT outsourcing global revenue is estimated to reach $587.30 billion by 2027.

In short, hiring offshore developers will allow you to better manage the development costs and increase the development budget.

Conclusion

App development budgeting and planning are fairly easy when you understand your business goals, target users, and competitors well. These factors allow you to determine the exact app requirements for market success, helping you plan a strategic development approach and estimate the average cost.

While using methods like bank loans and bootstrapping are helpful ways to increase your app development budget, the effective way to do it is by removing unnecessary and risky elements from the project, which allows you to reduce the development cost.