How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Web Application? Example with The Cost

How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Web Application? Example with The Cost

Dozens of web applications are released every year. The question is no longer whether a company needs to have a web-based version of their software product or enterprise business application but to know how much does it cost to develop a web application that would meet the company’s business goals in the era of the cloud.

Before we start digging into that question, remember that there is not one correct answer. Every solution and each need is unique and each and every requirement has to be carefully analyzed to avoid missing the application’s target.

WHO ARE INVOLVED IN THE WEB APPLICATION BUILDING PROCESS?

From the web application development lifecycle, we can identify the required participants in order to run this project smoothly. They are:

• The product owner, you as the client will be responsible to validate that the delivered project meets your expectations and needs
• The project manager: manage the project through its completion, mend the gap between the client and the technical team
• Front-end developer (UI/UX)
• Android developer
• iOS developer
• Back-end developer
• QA Tester
• System Administrator

PRICE RANGE

Let’s address the question of cost estimation. We are going to start with a simple task in order to understand the process then we will move to less detailed real-world web applications.

Note: all the following estimations are based on a middle developer.

Let’s have a look at web application development cost from the perspective of the cost of each small feature. Later this will help us to see the whole picture. For instance, we have to build a simple web-based CRM. This can be both the CRM which is supposed to be used only internally and the CRM that is developed for public release. CRM product can be a standalone SaaS platform or twin of the desktop CRM product to allow users to have the same functionality in their browsers as they used to have on their desktops.

In features that everybody needs for their web application, CRUD is almost always part of them if not always. CRUD stands for Create Read Update Delete, typically in an application there is always a need to create an entity like Employee for instance, to access (read) that entity, Update it let’s say you want to change the employee’s job title after a promotion and Delete a former employee from your database (actually in order to keep history we don’t delete data, we are sometimes implementing other rules to make the irrelevant data disappear from the user’s view).

Standard CRUD with a simple business rule

In a standard CRUD with a simple business rule, we are only dealing with a single entity where its creation does not need a set of rules, it is a simple insertion in a database. We can take the example of the creation, access to a simple research with a result in a data table, update and deletion of “work type”.

A work type is simple all types of work allowed: part-time, full-time etc. with its allowed daily working hours: 4 hours for part-time and 8 for full time for instance.

This simple CRUD can be divided into the following small tasks:

• Create a work type
• Search for a work type by name
• Display list of work type in a data table
• Update a work type
• Delete a work type

We are going to estimate the costs for this simple CRUD. Cost estimation involves time estimation and vice versa.

This task requires:

• Creating a simple interface to allow the user to create a work type
• Creation of simple interface to view the list of work type
• Creation of simple interface to edit a work type
• Creation of link in the interface to delete a work type
• The logic to implement in order to persist a new work type in the database
• The logic to implement in order to update an existing work type
• The logic to implement in order to delete an existing work type
• The logic to implement to list work type by name
• Test to validate that the persistence is working correctly for a new work type
• Test to validate that the update is working correctly for existing work type
• Test to validate that the research returns the expected work type or work types

We have seen that even the simple task of creating, reading, updating and deleting a simple entity requires a lot of development work.

Each task involves:

• One front-end developer
• One back-end developer
• One QA tester

This will be performed as the following;

• One front-end developer will work 4 hours charging $80/hourto develop the UI for this CRUD
• One back-end developer will work 4 hours charging $80$/hour to develop the logic
• One QA tester will work 2 hours charging $70/hourto perform the test

Note:The cost is calculated using an average hourly rate for the software development services in North America.

Remember that before getting to this task, there was time spent to break down every module into a single task. It involves a project manager. When the task is that simple, the project manager’s intervention may not be noticeable.

A standard CRUD with a simple rule will cost approximately $780, but it is actually not that often that we are dealing with a rule that simple.

Standard CRUD with a medium business rule

In this example, let’s create a job which will be described by its title, categories it belongs to (Category is a simple entity like a work type eg. IT, Finance etc.), level of qualification (another simple entity) and maybe some other simple attributes.

• Creating an interface to allow a user to create a job: with the list of available categories and all available levels of qualification
• Creation of an interface to research and view list of jobs
• Creation of simple interface to edit a job
• Creation of link in the interface to delete a job
• The logic to implement in order to persist a new job in the database
• The logic to implement in order to update an existing job
• The logic to implement in order to delete an existing job
• The logic to implement to list job type by title,
• Test to validate that the persistence is working correctly for a new job
• Test to validate that the update is working correctly for an existing job
• Test to validate that the research returns the expected work type or jobs

This will be performed as the following;

• One front-end developer will work full time for one day charging $80/hourto develop the UI for this CRUD
• One back-end developer will work full time for one day charging $80/hourto develop the logic
• One QA tester will work 4 hours charging $70/hourto perform the test
• One project manager working 2 hours charging $100/hour

A standard CRUD with a medium rule will cost approximately $1,760.

Standard authentication estimate

A very common feature in a web application is the authentication, in this estimation, we are going to deal with a standard one.

HubSpot is a pretty good example of the simple yet beautiful login page with the light and clean appearance.

In a standard authentication, we will have the login page and a redirection to a simple blank page. This redirection can be changed later once the web application has some more pages.

Once the user enters his credentials and hits the login button, the user will first go through an LDAP authentication and once it succeeds he will be authenticated against the application database.

• Here, the authentication page is very simple: one input text, one password, and one button
• The logic is a little bit complex: LDAP authentication then basic authentication

The development of that page will cost:

• One front-end developer working 2 hours charging $80/hour
• One back-end developer working one day charging $80/hour
• One QA tester working 2 hours charging $70/hour

A standard authentication will cost approximately $940.

Environment configuration

Sometimes the client requires for certain technologies to be used, usually to standardize the tools and environments on which his team is accustomed to working, this is often the case of a client who has within it an existing IT infrastructure. In this case, there is no cost associated with installing the different environments, sometimes the client does not yet impose any constraint but asks in return the complete installation of the necessary environments with technical advice on the equipment etc. Sometimes, the scenario is something in between.

A complete installation and configuration may require up to 5 working days if we are starting from scratch, if there is already some basis to start with, the necessary time to do the configuration may take a little time sometimes just up to one to two working days.

– A complete server and environment configuration will cost approximately $2,800.

– A custom server and environment configuration will cost approximately from $560 to $1,120.

The following table gives an overview of time repartition by phase and by actors.

Now that we are more familiar with the estimation process, let’s apply this process with a real-world example.

EXAMPLE: HOW MUCH IT WOULD COST TO DEVELOP A WEB-BASED CINEMA BOOKING SYSTEM

In this second estimation, we are going to consider a web application that allows customers or potential customers to book and/or pay for a movie ticket using an online service. In this example, we are going to take a medium movie theatre.

Typically, a movie ticket booking application includes the following features and functionalities:

• Fee management
• Pricing management
• Booking system management
• Movie management (list of movies etc.)
• Movie theatre management (calendar, capacity etc.)
• Payment management
• Administration

Based on the features of this movie ticket booking web application, we can have the following estimation.

• 2 back-end developers working full time for 3 months charging $80/hr = $76,800
• 1 front-end developer working full time during 2 months charging $80/hr = $25,600
• 1 android developer working full time for 2 months charging $80/hr = $25,600
• 1 iOS developer working full time during 2 months charging $90/hr = $28,800
• 1 graphic designer working full time during 2 months charging $60/hr = $11,760
• 2 QA engineers working full time during 2 months charging $70/hr = $19,200
• 1 PM who manages the project from design to project closure during 3 months charging $100/hr = $48,000
• 1 System Administrator working full time during 2 weeks charging $70/hr = $5,600

A medium movie ticket web application will cost approximately $241,000.

TABLE: HOW MUCH IT WOULD COST TO BUILD WEB APPLICATION IN DIFFERENT LOCATIONS

Let’s compose this data into the simple table to see how much it would cost to build a web application for booking of the cinema tickets and compare the development costs in Noth America, Western Europe and offshore location, Eastern Europe in this particular case.

Sometimes, organizations already have a budget allocated for a given project. They can make an in-house estimate or ask external vendors with relevant experience to make their bids to learn how much it would cost to build a web application. In case of the predefined budget, both in-house teams or the software development vendors are usually asked to prioritize according to his budget. In the opposite situation, when the budget is a matter for discussion, the client’s needs are the starting point to get the estimate.

CONCLUSION

In order to perfect the estimation process, we are tracking the time we spend on each task and use this knowledge to help us do our next estimation. While developing a web application, it is always important to set a budget. But the budget is just a first stage of the project, the key for a successful web application is the implication of all the actors. The client’s role is very important both during the design and preliminary discussions as well as during the validation phase. During the validation process, the accuracy of the delivered application against the product requirements document is checked.

Moreover, needs may evolve during the development process, you don’t want to end up with a product that doesn’t fit well your needs. There are some aspects of web application building that are covered in this article involving other costs such as the cost of the required infrastructure. Most of the time, clients want the web application to be done very fast, there is an additional cost incurred in that case.

Existek is a professional offshore software development company with vast expertise in the development of robust web applications. If you need to build your own web-based software or get the estimate for your development costs, contact us directly and we will be glad to help you.

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