
In the app development process, the critical factor that clients consider is cost. Any startup or enterprise-level organization would think about their budget. Only after deciding the budget, they can opt for the app development process. If you’re an owner of a startup, then you will think about the cost factor.
The burning question for all startups is, How to reduce app development costs?
While factors like these determine your app development cost, there are ways you can trim your excess expenditure as your app project develops.
- Be Clear with Your Initial Requirements
- One of the major reason's app development costs tend to stray outside the budget is a lack of clarity on the exact requirements before a development project commences.
- If you make changes to the scope of work while the development is in progress, it will mean extra billable hours.
- So, to keep your running costs low, make sure you go in with a preset game plan and avoid surprising your development team with new scopes of work.
2. Know What Your Priority Tasks Are
- Being able to distinguish between your priority capabilities and extended features can help you outline very clear tasks and timelines for your app development project. It will help you set a budget and stick to it.
3. Keep Q/A Testing Agile
- Make sure the product undergoes a continuous testing process at each stage of completion so that you can fix the small bugs before they become time-consuming pests that are hard to get rid of.
- Adopting an agile methodology of quality assurance testing for your app development project also ensures that your team is kept on their toes at all times, and this will result in more optimal results.
4. A Simple UI/UX
Keeping a simple UI/UX can help you to reduce the app development cost. Most people that UI/UX should be, and it should contain plenty of animations. However, that’s not the case anymore. Nowadays, people love simplicity. So, you should go with a minimalistic design.
5. Cross-Platform Document
As a startup, you should always look forward to cross-platform development. It can help you to save a lot of money. Most of the time, people tend to opt for native apps, and that costs you much higher compared to cross-platform apps. So, why go for separate apps for iOS and Android OS?
Instead of that, you should opt for the cross-platform route. By doing that, you’re creating a broader user base. It will also allow you to create an app that works on both iOS and Android. So, start working on this aspect as soon as possible.
How does Zoho Creator reduce app development costs?
Creating a custom application from scratch, using traditional development methods, can be very time-consuming and expensive.
With a low-code approach, the app deployment is faster than the traditional development methods. As you may know, traditional app development is time-consuming and costly. So, it’s no surprise why most companies prefer low-code development platforms like Zoho Creator to build a custom business app due to its cost-efficiency & speed up the app development time.
One of the biggest benefits of developing apps with Zoho Creator is that developers can share code across platforms, which is a huge help when trying to maintain various versions of apps, across various platforms, and across various OS at the same time.
Zoho Creator’s easy-to-use visual interface and point-and-click wizards cut development time by over 60% and allow organizations to deploy their applications quickly.
The City of Thousand Oaks, for example, showed that with the right development platform, building custom business applications doesn’t have to be expensive. Using Zoho Creator, they saved almost $370,000 in costs had they built their application using traditional development methods.
Conclusion
Mobile app development has undergone a sea change over the years.The development approach that you pick for your apps influences the final cost. For instance, if you’re building a native app, then you’ll have to build the app for each operating system separately.
So creating a mobile app involves double the effort if the publisher wishes to make the app universally available — which also doubles the app maker’s expenditure.
However, if the app is being developed on a low-code platform like Zoho Creator, follows a “develop once, deploy anywhere” principle, which saves developers from the hassle of creating the same app twice, from the ground up
- You only invest in building the app once, and it automatically delivers a native app for different OSes, as well as being web compatible.
- Low-code platforms offer one-click deployment of features and built-in API integrations, reducing the time, effort, and cost involved.
- Faster time to market.
- Zoho Creator apps come with a preconfigured database called a mobile backend as a service (MBaaS). The database required for the apps built on the platform is automatically constructed and maintained by the platform itself.
- The platform takes the tedious task of security testing off the hands of app developers.
If you are still unsure about the potential of Zoho Creator, you can check out our Time Tracking app built using Zoho Creator.
Low-code development platforms like Zoho Creator are increasingly being utilized to build, manage, automate, and integrate business systems, enabling businesses to consolidate information and streamline processes in a meaningful way.
If you're interested in building custom apps for your business, our Zoho Creator developers can help you with your custom application development needs.
Hope this article provides useful information about how Zoho Creator reduces app development costs significantly.