- November 20, 2018
- Posted by: fyber
- Category: Development
The most important things to create a web application that you can’t predict the cost to create a web application because there are a lot of tiny details of the product engineering process. But we can try to estimate and get as close as possible.
Before creating a web application, maybe you already have a marketing strategy for the promotion or all you have is an initial idea. Although of how much you think you know about your app, you need to:
- Discuss it with the team
- Clearly set the task
- Estimate costs
Clients instantly want to hear an accurate figure and companies try to explain why it does not work like that. Hence cost estimation of the web application is a difficult issue because both sides insist they are right.
Through this article, I will explain why cost estimation is not that simple, how to make it easier, and how to estimate app development costs.
Web app: What does pricing include?
I don’t mean just coding when I say web app development. Here I am talking about the product. App development includes several types of engineers, analyzing, testing, design, and managing the process. Hence I want you to clearly distinguish between product development and writing a piece of code.
Now that you know the real motive behind this article, I give you four reasons for why should web cost estimates cover not only coding but also other areas of product development.
Budget planning
In addition to the development, you will require to test your app, analyze it and be ready to launch a solid marketing campaign. Plus, there are always different sorts of cost possibilities.
Assessing the idea’s viability
There are lots of apps like yours, hence you will need to think of a creative way to make it profitable. When you know the approximate amount, the question arrives that can you afford it?
Pitching ideas to investors
When you talk to the investors and you will talk to them, forget about words like game-changing application and huge market opportunities. Nobody’s interested in your unique concept if it can’t generate profit. You need the expected revenues and costs of your web app, supported by realistic and detailed assumptions and projections.
Unique products result from teamwork
Due to close collaboration among team members and with each expert being able to contribute to building an efficient app, quality applications are possible. Communication is also very important like development skills and management.
If you try to search on Google about web apps cost, you won’t find anything. Here’s why: it is difficult to figure out what point of development we can regard as the final one. Most of the web app consider done when it is deployed to production. However, when you go live, you will think of a new feature that you want to add.
Web Application Cost: Domains of Knowledge
There are a few things that should you know before estimating a web app cost. In this part of articles, I am going to explain you a common approach to describing an idea to developers and explain situations when it works and when it does not.
Most importantly, I will explain how to make sure your estimates account for things, you might not know about your future app.
Approach-Thinking about the end product
The most common and easy approach to estimating a web app is to imagine the end result and trace the steps backward to the current positions of a project. Now the question is arrives is: what do we need to do to achieve this? However, because of there too much uncertainty of the end product, this approach does not work for novel ideas.
Take Slack, for example. It looks like an ordinary corporate messenger,k and the end result might have been described as I want a messenger like WhatsApp, but for the corporate user. It is a good definition for end-users, but not good for people who create apps.
Now the question arrives in your mind is “why”? So the answer is, because it is incomplete, and Slack is not Whatsapp. In Slack case think about some points, for instance, what makes it unique? What problems does it solve? You need to be specific about these things so engineers will know the technologies which are going to use to build the product.
The designer needs to know your vision, marketers and product owners should know your audience and competitors before starting the first mock-up and so on. This is the only way by which it is possible to count the degree of effort the team will put into building a web application.
How to calculate costs in this approach
The calculation in this approach is pretty rough. You can use the order of Magnitude Estimates. It will be used like this: “I am approx 90% confident that the app can be completed in between 50 to 95 days. I am also 80% confident that the project will cost between $50,000 to $80,000”.
If you want to know the cost to create a messenger app like Snapchat click here
Web application: Things to do if you do not agree with the
cost?
If the web application development cost seems too cheap, then don’t hesitate to ask what the price includes, how many team members are involved in the project, and if everybody understands the scope correctly.
A low price can be appealing, but don’t fall into the trap of being forced to pay again and again on the name of more bug fixes and improvements. But if the cost is too high even you want to work with the team then there are two things that help you to reduce its cost.
- Cut the scope: Include only those essential parts of product development required to create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
- Find alternatives: Some expensive items may have cheaper substitutes. Quite often those changes do not affect the end product, but rather change the way the application functions and the services it provides.
If you want to accelerate the process and time happens to be a priority, then you need to stay calm, consider every step and be ready to pay a bit more than you expected.