Have you ever imagined the benefits of creating a custom app for your product or service? How effective would it be for your customers to interact with your business through the app? Perhaps, you’ve even taken it a step further and researched how much it would cost you. One thing is sure; software development is expensive, and it’s even more so than companies and brands realize.
When companies think of building costs, they often only consider the software development cost. Few months after launching the app, the extra expenses, which they never anticipated, hit them. They don’t understand that developing an app is a process that involves building, deploying, and maintaining, and it’s bound to exceed the software development budget if not carefully monitored.
If you’re thinking of building your app, it’s not a “spend-once-and-for-all” project. There are usually other factors to consider. This article will reveal some of the hidden costs of building your software you’ve probably never even considered.
Software Maintenance
The launch of your app isn’t the end of the development project. Softwares need to be regularly maintained to keep the app running effectively and efficiently. Sometimes, the back-end code includes bugs that you can only discover with continuous usage. Therefore, the app development team must be able to provide constant support and software maintenance. Maintenance services may include regular backups, bug fixes, updates, etc.Software maintenance is essential to keep the app running. It’s necessary to factor maintenance in the budget because it’s usually not offered free of charge (except your agreement with the developer includes maintenance).
User Training
Training is another easy-to-forget expense that companies forget to include in software development budgets. New software usually requires that you train your staff on how to use it effectively. Software developers may consist of the training fee in the project’s budget. However, that doesn’t cover all of it. It’s easy to forget that no staff will stay with you forever. Therefore, when one leaves, you’ll have to hire another and train them to fit in. But companies forget this or only focus on training very few individuals. There’s usually a problem if these individuals aren’t available.
Hosting Service
Your hosting service is another thing to consider. Irrespective of what your app is designed to do, it’ll need somewhere to keep all your content and data. Hence, the need for a hosting service. You can either decide to host the software onsite or with the customary hosting service providers. However, onsite hosting often costs more because of the need to hire to maintain the server. Depending on your software’s capacity, you could consult several hosting providers for your ideal solution. Including these expenses in the software development budget from the start gives you a more realistic idea of the amount involved.
Upscaling and Transformation
Everything changes, and no industry ever remains the same. In keeping up with innovations and developments, an app has to evolve and change in scope. Sometimes, this change may result from new market opportunities, where there’s a demand for your software to grow to take advantage of these.
Feedback and customer usage are also responsible for an app’s transformation. It’s best to monitor your app and your customer’s behavior towards it. As you obtain feedback, you would need to make some adjustments to satisfy customers.
The best custom apps are flexible enough to satisfy both business and customer demands. However, flexibility comes at additional costs, and this is usually missing from the development costs.
App Security Expenses
You should always add security expenses to your development budget. It’s vital to build secure apps, free of loopholes that third parties can exploit. Therefore, it’s wrong to assume your app’s safety without procedural tests to ascertain that the system is truly secure. This may involve a barrage of tests or paying for third party security certificates to encrypt information on the app.
App security is usually one of the most unanticipated expenses. However, security consciousness demands that software has to be a secure space. Over time, your app may also have to adopt new security policies, which also implies newer expenses.
Preparing for the Hidden Costs: Tips
Now that you understand the hidden development costs, the following tips will help you better anticipate these expenses.
While it’s inevitable to spend money after launching your app, the above tips will help to anticipate and include hidden costs within your budget. However, there’s an even better way around it.
There’s a Better Way
Through Andromo, you can bring your app idea to life, building it from start to finish. Andromo is an Android app-making platform that you can use to design your app without knowing a single code line. The web-based platform makes the development process easy. You can easily add custom features unique to your business and even make money with your app by integrating monetization features. Save the stress and expenses involved in hiring a developer, build your professional app in less time, and avoid hidden costs.What if you can build your app and cut down on all the hidden expenses? Yes, what if you don’t need to pay software development companies or programmers to get your professional app?
