App development is a pain in the ass

[Jason Voorhees]

App development is much more expensive than web development. You can just use vercel, railway, cloudinary , supabase your way through it to deploy something for dirt cheap on the web but app dev is a different beast. Also the entire app development pipeline and maintenance is a pain in the ass too. Even basic to do list tier app costs upwards of $50,000-$300,000 to get it done. Not even joking

 

[Jason Voorhees]

@topology @Menas

 

[Jason Voorhees]

@Nexom @BigBallsLarry

 

[Willmogulater]

Give up and hunt theory

 

[BigBallsLarry]

App development is much more expensive than web development. You can just use vercel, railway, cloudinary , supabase your way through it to deploy something for dirt cheap. The entire app development pipeline and maintenance is also a pain in the ass. Even basic to do list tier app costs upwards of $50,000-$300,000. Not even joking

Why does it even cost this much? Don't you just have to code the app in, get accepted by app stores and that's it? I never paid attention to this stuff.

I'm guessing ads for the apps to get popular can cost some bucks, but not this much.

 

[Swarthy Knight]

Even basic to do list tier app costs upwards of $50,000-$300,000

So the clients pay you that much to create an app for them?

 

[SplashJuice]

really? where's the 50k coming from, the server costs?

 

[Nexom]

@Nexom @BigBallsLarry

I remember a few years ago when the NFT market was booming, one of my best friends came over and we lived together for like almost 3 months. We did our best trying app development (he was mostly working on the more technical side) but in the end we failed because we finished our project right as the NFT market came to a halt. It wasn't something huge but it would've been really profitable. We just slacked off a bit more than we should've.... Felt pretty sad in the moment but looking back it was such a nice experience to live through. (would never try that again it was still exhausting as hell )

 

[Jason Voorhees]

Why does it even cost this much? Don't you just have to code the app in, get accepted by app stores and that's it? I never paid attention to this stuff.

I'm guessing ads for the apps to get popular can cost some bucks, but not this much.

it's way more than just coding and submitting to app stores You need seperate dev teams for iOS and Android separately custom designs that look good on every phone, tons of testing on real devices, fixing bugs when new phone updates break things, and waiting days for Apple/Google to approve every change. All these costs add up. While on web dev evrything is right there with a click of a button and only one version of it exists on the browser that's it.

 

[BigBallsLarry]

it's way more than just coding and submitting to app stores You need seperate dev teams for iOS and Android separately custom designs that look good on every phone, tons of testing on real devices, fixing bugs when new phone updates break things, and waiting days for Apple/Google to approve every change. All these costs add up. While on web dev evrything is right there with a click of a button and only one version of it exists on the browser that's it.

makes sense, i didn't look at it from this angle the more you know i guess, thanks

 

[Jason Voorhees]

really? where's the 50k coming from, the server costs?

Typical breakdown for an app would be something like this. iOS development cost. $40k-$100k. Android app slightly cheaper due to less guidlines. $30-80k Backend + infra. The most expensive and biggest variable can cost from $500 to $100k QA testing, PM, design, maintenance. Recurring cost. Of around $20k-$80k. All in all minimum you need is $30-50k

 

[Jason Voorhees]

So the clients pay you that much to create an app for them?

Apps can practically print money if they get popular and have a lot of downloads. but web is generally easier and less risky to monetize sustainably.

 

[Sprinkles]

App development is much more expensive than web development. You can just use vercel, railway, cloudinary , supabase your way through it to deploy something for dirt cheap on the web but app dev is a different beast. Also the entire app development pipeline and maintenance is also a pain in the ass. Even basic to do list tier app costs upwards of $50,000-$300,000. Not even joking

what phone do u use

 

[Jason Voorhees]

Typical breakdown for an app would be something like this. iOS development cost. $40k-$100k. Android app slightly cheaper due to less guidlines. $30-80k Backend + infra. The most expensive and biggest variable can cost from $500 to $100k QA testing, PM, design, maintenance. Recurring cost. Of around $20k-$80k. All in all minimum you need is $30-50k

Btw I'm low balling the 30k figure. If you hire high end US/EU agency $50k is the absolute floor and might only get you a prototype. You need to look for offshore teams and they could build a respectable functional 1.0 of that app with medium complexity with some AI Integration.

@SplashJuice

 

[Jason Voorhees]

what phone do u use

Oneplus 13 on my my main phone but I also use an iPhone 13 that is 4 years old

 

[Jason Voorhees]

Bump

 

[Jason Voorhees]

@topology @Glorious King

 

[Deleted member 178409]

App development is much more expensive than web development. You can just use vercel, railway, cloudinary , supabase your way through it to deploy something for dirt cheap on the web but app dev is a different beast. Also the entire app development pipeline and maintenance is a pain in the ass too. Even basic to do list tier app costs upwards of $50,000-$300,000 to get it done. Not even joking

whats the app for

 

[Pento]

App development is much more expensive than web development. You can just use vercel, railway, cloudinary , supabase your way through it to deploy something for dirt cheap on the web but app dev is a different beast. Also the entire app development pipeline and maintenance is a pain in the ass too. Even basic to do list tier app costs upwards of $50,000-$300,000 to get it done. Not even joking

yep rlly good niche to get into rn too

 

[Jason Voorhees]

when you say print money, how much money are we talking?

A small sticky app with 100k MAU(Monthly active users) can easily do $30k-$50k/month.A mainstream consumer app with 1-5M MAU can easily cross 1 million dollars per month, at the higher end apps that make 10+M every month. And at the app leaderboards the numbers get absurd. Netflix makes $2.5B/month, Spotify $1B per month, Instagram $1B, Duolingo $300 million/per month. Candy crush $200 Million. Clash of clans $150 Million