Original Source: https://myspotfinder.com/how-to-lower-the-mobile-app-development-cost/

Today, there is an app for every purpose. If we are mentioning the phrase “every purpose”, it is literally that apps have covered almost all the functions we tend to perform in our daily lives. For instance, an app for food delivery, app for medical, app for laundry, an app for hiring transport or even an app for home and car cleaning.  

Mobile apps are everywhere, but it takes too much effort to build them in terms of time and budget. From ideation, design, development, testing to post-launch updates, app costs include all those functions altogether. So, in this write-up, we will put a detailed perspective and list 5 ways to reduce mobile app development costs. 

Now, the first thing that should click to your mind is that much does it cost to develop an app for your business. Well, it depends on multiple factors and here they are—

• iOS or Android app development or cross-platform app
• App features: Simple, Moderate, and complex 
• Cost of maintenance
• App hosting and server costs 
• App security costs 

The ways can be subjective as we can define every scenario in a single edition. But we have created some best ones for you-

Outsource Your App Development

Hiring in-house talents are not feasible for every business. And when you have the better option to tap the global talent pool and cost-effective development opportunities, then it is better to shed the idea to have a costly in-house team for development.  

Even a study by Forrester backed this idea and says that more than 38% of top decision-makers outsource their mobile app project because of the expertise offered by their outsourced partner.

But it is also not easy to hire an outsource partner. It should be reliable, have a good repute, and well-known history of delivering scalable and efficient apps related to your domain.  

Know the hidden costs

Money saved is directly proportional to money made. So you have to consider all the hidden factors that contribute to your budget to increase further. But if we talk about four basic services which you have to bear for app development, they are—Functional Services (Push Notifications), Administrative services (user administration and back-end), Infrastructure services (such as servers) and IT support services (such as testing and updates). 

Other factors which may cost you significantly sometimes are—Data Storage, Dashboard emulator, CDN, Access Control, API, Libraries, Tools, Image Data, and more. So basically you have to look for all these factors

Utilize App Design Template 

One has to devote a lot of time and hard work into the UI and UX design process during mobile application development. May building an app from scratch cost you more, so using free UI kits and templates is the best option to control the budget. Designers and UI developers can find—Simple, Elegant, and complex prototypes from these free kits of UX and UI designers and customize them as per the need of the project. 

You can download any number of free kits and use them to fulfill your requirements without having to invest further. 

Go for a Minimal Viable Product

If you are in some kind of dilemma if your app is worth your investment or not, then always opt for a Minimal Viable Product (MVP). An MVP of an app is the solution that helps you understand the whys, hows, and whats of your final product. You can say it is the smartest possible solution for the problem you are looking to solve with the basic functionalities in the app. 

It will help you to predict the requirements of the market, audience sentiment, get feedback and modify the final solution accordingly. Additionally, MVP can even be used to raise funds on crowdfunding platforms. 

Get a Cross-Platform App

Today, there are more than 2 billion users on the Android platform. On the same lines, there are about 3 billion active users on Apple. It depicts that one just could not develop an app focusing on just one OS. Still, if you go for separate development then it would cost you more. So it is better to go for a cross-platform app that runs on both platforms with equal scalability and efficiency. 

These apps have the same capabilities as you will find in native apps, but they run smoothly on iOS, Android, macOS, and Windows. They also come with a low cost of maintenance and reusability of codes saves your developers time. 

Here are the technologies developers use to build cross-platform apps:

• React Native
• Flutter
• Xamarin
• Ionic
• PhoneGap
• Titanium
• Cordova
• Framework7
• and more…

The Road to Summary

Now, we can see that app development can be reduced significantly by outsourcing it to a reliable mobile app development service provider. Talking about other factors that you have to consider before choosing any mobile app development company are already being discussed at length. For any other query, you can click to link to know from the experts.