How much does an app cost, and do you need one?
The honest starting point: most businesses that ask for an app do not need one. A website that works properly on a phone does the same job for a fraction of the money, and nobody has to be persuaded to install it.
That is not a reason to avoid the question, though. There are real cases where an app is the right answer, and when it is, the cost is worth understanding before anybody starts designing screens.
When an app is genuinely the right answer
- It has to work without signal. A driver in a lift, a stocktake in a cellar, an engineer in a basement. A website cannot do this properly and an app can.
- You need the phone itself. Camera used constantly, barcode scanning, background location, Bluetooth hardware, push notifications people will actually act on.
- People use it every day. An icon on a home screen beats a bookmark, but only for daily tools. For something used monthly, the install is a barrier rather than a convenience.
If none of those apply, the money is better spent making the phone experience of your site excellent. We argue the same thing at more length in what app design and development actually involves.
What moves the price
- One platform or two. iPhone and Android can share most of a modern codebase, which is a genuine saving, but testing, store submissions and device quirks are still doubled.
- Accounts and logins. The moment users exist, so do passwords, resets, data protection and the question of who can see what.
- What it talks to. An app on its own is rare. Usually it needs a back end, and often it needs your existing systems to agree with it continuously.
- Offline working. The single most underestimated line. Working offline means two copies of the truth and rules for what happens when they disagree, and that is proper engineering rather than a setting.
- Payments, if any. Apple and Google take a cut of in-app purchases of digital goods, with their own rules about what must go through them. Worth knowing before the business model is fixed.
The costs that come after launch
This is the part that catches people. Apple and Google both change their platforms every year, and an app that is not maintained stops being accepted and eventually stops working. There is an annual Apple Developer Program fee and a one-off Google Play registration fee, store review each time you release, and a steady trickle of updates to keep up with new operating systems. An app is a commitment with a yearly cost, not a purchase.
What we do
A fixed price against a fixed timeline, in writing, within 48 hours of understanding what you need, and it does not move afterwards. Before that, we will tell you plainly if a website would do the job, because an app nobody installs is the most expensive thing in this trade.
What building one involves is on mobile app development, and if the answer turns out to be a better phone experience instead, that is web design.