• 4 ways to cut down your app development costs | MaxMobility

4 ways to cut down your app development costs | MaxMobility

Posted By Max Mobility
On 20-Sep-2016
  • Business Mobile Apps

Application development isn’t a costly affair. But who hates optimizing the process and saving a little bit of money? There are mistakes which many first timers commit, like not having a proper team or outsourcing to a company which fails to deliver or perhaps not having a proper blueprint of what they intent to achieve with the app. However, there are more tips to reduce cost to up to 50%:

Choose hybrid model over Native:

  • If you need to save money, Hybrid apps instead of native apps works just well without compromising with the quality.
  • Web technologies (HTML 5, CSS, JavaScript), used for hybrid applications, offer some significant advantages. Firstly, those are platform independent; you can write the same HTML5 code for Android and iOS without spending resources twice for the same thing.
  • Secondly, HTML 5 offers cleaner code, better graphics control and it’s also optimized for mobile app and mobile web development which makes it perfect for hybrid app development.
  • Thirdly, web technologies are easier to understand and require much lesser specialized training compared to native languages.  You need not hire any HTML 5 expert; your developers can take care of it themselves.
Hybrid applications tend to take much lesser time to develop than native apps. If you hiring people on work hour basis, the hybrid apps can save you some good amount of money by crunching the amount of time required.

1. Go for ready-made solution:

You can cut down app development costs by using open source cross-platform development frameworks and modules. What you need is probably already done by someone else; you just need to use them in your code. For example, if you wish to add “chat” feature in your app, opt for Facebook API. Another such instance is Phone Gap. It is an excellent open source app development framework that allows you to create apps using the best web technologies including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This framework enables you to use standardized APIs so that you need not to hire more people for writing the same codes from the scratch.

2. Go for iterative solution: save extras for the future.

Treat your app development like an iterative solution rather than one-time wonder. Develop a prototype first with basic features; sort out any issues related to those features and save “flowery” features for later. The perks of the Iterative method, it makes the process much faster; cut down extra costs and improve the overall quality of the app. Developers often make a common mistake by trying to build an app without prioritizing and ultimately wasting resources on features that hardly ever going to be used. In a lot of cases audiences even don’t want those features in first place. But with the iterative approach, you can make core features perfect with minimal resources and add optional features later on after studying your audience’s actual preferences. It is a win-win situation for both parties; your end product will cost you much lesser and the audience will relish it.

3. Outsource your development:

App development outsourcing is a matter of debate. Some embrace it with open arms, some are just skeptical. However, as we have discussed here, outsourcing is an effective cost and time-saving strategy. It relieves you from setting up infrastructure and spending thousands for hiring professionals on a long-term basis. Short term commitment is another advantage of outsourcing. You can hire a skilled professional for a short period of time at a fraction of the annual salary of an expert of his/her caliber. Moreover, the qualities of work for the good freelance developers are impressive. If you can communicate your expectation clearly; outsource development quality will be as good as in-house development.