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Phone app development charges/rates

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  • 12-03-2014 6:57pm
    #1
    kryptonmight
    Closed Accounts Posts: 295 ✭✭


    I was wondering, what is the going rate for phone app development? Are the charges per hour?

    I have developed a windows phone app and I am thinking of approaching a company to see if they are interested in purchasing it. The app is kind of basic but it may be something they are interested in. I am not sure how long exactly I spent working on it, perhaps maybe 10-15 hours max between initially developing it, maintaining it, doing some testing etc.

    Should it turn out they are interested, I'm just wondering what a reasonable fee would be.


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    #2
    BrokenArrows
    Registered Users Posts: 7,500 ✭✭✭BrokenArrows


    kryptonmight wrote: »
    I was wondering, what is the going rate for phone app development? Are the charges per hour?

    I have developed a windows phone app and I am thinking of approaching a company to see if they are interested in purchasing it. The app is kind of basic but it may be something they are interested in. I am not sure how long exactly I spent working on it, perhaps maybe 10-15 hours max between initially developing it, maintaining it, doing some testing etc.

    Should it turn out they are interested, I'm just wondering what a reasonable fee would be.

    It really depends on the product.

    I could spend 15 hours creating a garbage app that you couldn't give away. Another person might sell for thousands.


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    #3
    onemorechance
    Registered Users Posts: 3,078 ✭✭✭onemorechance


    kryptonmight wrote: »
    ...

    I am not sure how long exactly I spent working on it, perhaps maybe 10-15 hours max between initially developing it, maintaining it, doing some testing etc.

    Should it turn out they are interested, I'm just wondering what a reasonable fee would be.

    The going hourly rate depends on skill / experience, anything from -$1000's to +$1000's.

    The guy that developed flappy bird could probably get someone to pay him $1k + an hour to make them an app.

    A person who is terrible could end up wasting many hours with nothing to show for it and could essentially be worth -$1k an hour! :pac:

    Did you spend much time, or any time, on analysis / requirements before the 10-15 hours on dev / testing, or is it included in that time?

    'Some testing' hints that there may be some testing left to do. If this is the case, it's value is further decreased, and it's value as a ready-to-use app may be zero if major bugs exist.

    It's pretty much impossible for anyone to say what it's worth, as the previous poster said, the amount of hours spent making the app means little by itself.

    Unless the app is close to 100 % functional, tested and documented, I don't think it will be worth anything to a company which has dev resources available. 10 - 15 hours is less than two days of a developers time. Plus it's a Windows app, thus very low market share.

    It's not to say your app is not worth something, but you would need to provide more information than simply hours spent developing to have any hope of a being offered an estimate. Good luck and I hope it's a success for you.


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    #4
    Aswerty
    Registered Users Posts: 586 ✭✭✭Aswerty


    You are attempting to sell a product in this case as opposed to a service. So your approach of pricing based on the hours you spent on develoment doesn't make sense. You have to price the product based on its market value. I expect in this case the market value will either be much higher than the time you invested (based on an hourly rate) or it will be 0 (which is the more likely scenario).

    Phone app development is generally considered a service when you build an app for someone based on their requirements and you get paid either a fixed or hourly rate for it. Where this rate is specified before development begins.

    Also if you sell a product like this to a company that doesn't have in-house development expertise a support contract would be needed or else you have to explicitly explain that support will not be provided.


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    #5
    The Corinthian
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    Aswerty wrote: »
    You are attempting to sell a product in this case as opposed to a service. So your approach of pricing based on the hours you spent on develoment doesn't make sense.
    Ultimately it does make sense, although I'd agree he shouldn't be trying to use T&M to price his app.

    At the end of the day, even if it's a product you're selling, you're ultimately looking to sell it at a price point, that is supported by the market, that covers not only the unit costs of producing that product, but the risk and R&D you put into producing the first unit of that product.

    Nonetheless, he should really be looking at what the market can bare to pay, as this is what the price will be set at; they may only be willing to pay €10.


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    #6
    The_B_Man
    Registered Users Posts: 7,859 ✭✭✭The_B_Man


    I'm in the same boat.
    I was approached by somebody to make them an iPhone and Android app that consumes data from a web server, on which they also want a GUI to add/edit the data.

    Does anyone know if I should use my own add dev accounts or set up seperate ones? Maybe have him set up the iOS dev account and pay the yearly sub.
    Same goes for the web server. Should I be responsible for setting up the hosting and paying the yearly fees or should he do that?

    Also, how would I come up with a price for continued support and upgrades, since he asked for that too?


    Thanks.


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    #7
    The Corinthian
    Closed Accounts Posts: 19,777 ✭✭✭✭The Corinthian


    The_B_Man wrote: »
    I'm in the same boat.
    You're not. The OP is selling an already produced product, you've been approached to build a currently non-existent custom solution. He's just looking to hand over a finished app, you're going to have to do requirements gathering, requirements and technical specification design, development, testing and offer some form of SLA.

    So you'll be charging T&M.

    As to how to structure this; hourly rate, how to estimate the number of hours and potentially give a fixed quote, payment schedule, additional costs (dev accounts, hosting, licences, etc), bug-fixing and future change requests - I'll be honest, it would take me longer to write than I'm really willing to do at present. However, the above list of considerations are what you'd want to cover.


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