Cost or Investment for the Future?
Are you approaching your mobile project as an expense or an investment for future? If you see it as just another expense in the budget, there are many professional app development firms who will get the job done, but we focus specifically on the college and university app niche and understand that investing in mobile development is critical for the future of your institution.
Collegiate Apps Experience:
Return on Investment (ROI) is incredibly important to the success of your mobile app projects and we focus on strategies to maximize it for you! Whether its in dollars like sales revenue, merchandising, sponsorships, and advertising or in other metrics like downloads, users, time-spent, and market-reach, we present you with an analysis of all your options.
Before we even start on your project, we’ll make a plan that will show you how and when your mobile app will start paying returns on that initial investment. In our experience, the following factors will play a role in determining your mobile project’s total cost:
- Platforms chosen (iPhone, iPad, Android, Mobile Website, etc.)
- How many features your app offers
- Will the app integrate with your current content management systems or utilize our API’s (monthly fee)
- Will you host your own content or use our service (monthly fee)
Estimating Development Costs with Other Firms:
After seeing all of the benefits mobile apps can provide your college or university, the next logical question relates to cost. To get a general idea, check out the following articles from around the web:
- iPhone Development Costs - OS X Daily
“it’s not unusual for an iPhone developer to charge well over $100/hour to do contract iOS development, but realistically the hourly range is anywhere from $50/hour to $250/hour”
“Relatively Simple or Small App: $3,000-$8,000″
“More Complex or Recognized Brand App: $50,000-$150,000″ - Want to build a mobile app? Here’s how to convince the CFO – Silicon.com
“A Forrester report last year [2009] set the price of a no-frills app at a minimum of $20,000 – and reckoned a more sophisticated app could set you back up to $150,000.”
- How Much Will my Mobile App Cost to Create? - Accella, a mobile app development company
“Simple, static apps typically fall in a price range of $8,000.00 – $20,000.00 (per platform) depending on the amount of information that has to be displayed in the app. Dynamic apps generally average from $12,000.00 – $30,000.00 (per platform) depending on the complexity”
- The Cost of Building an iPad App – PadGadget.com
“For a nice but simple app…your total budget is around $35,000.”
“For a nice high end app…at the end of the day, your app will likely cost you at least $200,000.” - iPhone App Sales, Exposed – TechCrunch
“the average total development cost [iPhone only] amounting to $6,453″
So to sum up, a relatively simple app is going to cost you a minimum of $6,000 per phone platform (iPhone, Android, Blackberry)
On the other end, a more complex app is going to cost you anywhere from $12,000 to $30,000 per platform, leading to total project costs upwards of $150,000.
