What’s the minimum cost to get your business an App?
The cost of simple mobile apps
Let’s be real: not a lot of shop owners can say their business is going great. Not you though, because your business is bigger than ever, with clients returning and new ones coming in almost every week. Let’s say you’re a coffee shop and you want to try your hand on making an app for your business. App builders, of course, are all available online, and we’ve listed down some that caught our eye.
App Institute offers an online App Builder where you can make your own app for your business. It has a drag-and-drop format, allowing you the flexibility to add or remove whatever from the app. The interface of the builder seems a bit dodgy and unresponsive but makes up for it with customisation. The downside, of course, is that you will have to create your own Apple and Android developer accounts, register your business on the platforms, spend hundreds of hours creating an app only to be denied for some mistakes you overlooked. Not to mention the monthly fee of $60 ($95 if you want to be optimized for both Apple and Android), which is one of the cheapest available.
There are other apps that offer customer loyalty plans via their own app. Stamp Me works as a digital punch card, where you can set up a loyalty program at a small fee. The most basic is at $25 a month, but if you’re a serious business with an influx of customers, the $49 seems like a better deal overall, allowing you up to 5,000 users, push notifications and various integrations that will benefit your business.
Z1 Design Studio has its own app calculator, which won’t make you an app but will estimate the cost for building an app. You put in different features you want such as platform, design, login features and the like, then an estimated cost for the app. At its most basic, the lowest you will have to pay is $19,800, or $56.25 per hour for two months’ worth of work. Yes, it is expensive, but the good thing about this is that you will not have to worry about development, backend work, or design.
We understand that money is important to businesses, which is also why we made this list so those who are keen on developing an app for their business has something to study before they actually choose. The app services we listed above are just examples of the ever-growing options you can choose in building an app. Do note that there is no cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all option for app development, so each option has its own pros and cons. Monthly fees for app builders and support might seem cheap initially, but the monthly fees will add up and will make you attached to them, so it will be harder to transfer should you choose to do so. In the end, it is entirely up to the business owner on how to make their business move forward.
