Custom app development: what it is, and what it costs

It’s an app designed and built for one business’s customers and staff, to do things the way that business does them. Nobody else gets a copy, and there’s no license fee to keep using it. You pay for the build, then for hosting and upkeep.

An app you subscribe to

Built once for thousands of businesses. You get what they decided to build, you pay every month, and when it doesn’t fit, you change how you work.

An app from a template or a no-code builder

Quick and cheap for an app that does one simple job. It gets hard the moment you need a step the builder doesn’t offer, or a connection to software it doesn’t know.

A custom app

You decide what’s on each screen and what it connects to. It costs the most up front, and it works the way your business does.

Custom says who it’s built for. It doesn’t say how. A custom app can be one codebase that runs on iPhone and Android, two separate native apps, or a web app in the browser, and which of those to build is a separate decision with its own price.

From about $24,000 for an app that does a few things for one kind of user, to $83,000 and up once several kinds of people use it and the office runs the business from it. These three are all iPhone and Android from one codebase, with a logo and colors in hand and nothing drawn yet.

A garden center’s members app: $24,000 – $35,000

Members sign in, get offers by notification, and find the nearest of three stores on a map. One kind of user, nothing for staff to run. 12–17 weeks.

A kayak outfitter’s booking app: $43,000 – $61,000

Customers sign in, book a boat and pay by card, and get a notification the morning of the trip. Staff check boats out and back in on their phones and photograph each one when it returns. The office runs bookings, prices and repairs from a web page, and payments go into QuickBooks Online. 15–21 weeks.

A moving company’s app: $59,000 – $83,000

Customers book a move, pay the deposit, message the crew and watch the truck on a map on moving day. Crews see their jobs and send their location. The office assigns jobs, pulls reports and sends payments to QuickBooks Online, and the bill of lading goes out as a PDF. Three kinds of user. 16–23 weeks.

Mostly what your own office runs from it. Drop the office’s web page and the outfitter’s $43,000 – $61,000 app is $12,000 cheaper, more than twice what dropping anything else saves.

• 01

  The office’s web page for bookings, prices and boats out for repair: $12,000

• 02

  Paying by card in the app: $4,000

• 03

  Staff getting their own screens: $3,000

• 04

  Customers signing in: $2,500

• 05

  Payments going into QuickBooks Online: $2,000

• 06

  A photo of each boat when it comes back: $1,500

• 07

  The notification the morning of the trip: $1,000

Those come to about 50% of the price. The rest is the groundwork every app pays for before it does anything, and each piece costs less than it would on its own because it reuses what’s already there. The office’s web page costs what it does because it’s a second product. In web-only business software, the number of kinds of staff counts for more.

About 12–17 weeks for the garden center’s app, 15–21 weeks for the outfitter’s and 16–23 weeks for the moving company’s. That’s from the first meeting to both app stores.

The moving company’s app costs more than twice the garden center’s and takes 4 to 6 weeks longer.

Yes, and the bigger the app, the more there is to hold back. The estimator’s first version of the moving company’s app is $39,000 – $56,000 over 14–20 weeks, 33% less than the full build.

The full moving app

$59,000 – $83,000. Customers, crews and the office each on their own screens, a full office web page, messaging, notifications and reports.

The first version

$39,000 – $56,000. Two kinds of user instead of three, a small office screen instead of the full web page, one report, one fixed bill of lading layout, and no messaging or notifications yet. Booking, the deposit and the truck on the map all stay.

What gets held back can be built later, on the same server. What an MVP should cost goes further into what belongs in one.

Through the App Store and Google Play, the same as any other app, after each store reviews it. Your customers search for it and download it.

An app only your own staff use doesn’t have to be public. Apple lets a business distribute a custom app privately through Apple Business Manager, so it shows up for your organization and nobody else. Your staff get it through your device management or a redemption code. The choice is locked once Apple approves the app, and switching later means submitting it as a new app, so say early on if that’s what you want.

When an app you can subscribe to already does what you need. If a product covers your business with a few settings changed, paying for it every month will be cheaper than having one built for years. Build or buy works out when building catches up.

Custom is worth it when the thing your business does differently is the thing the products can’t do. For the outfitter, that’s check-in. If no rental product checks boats back in the way their dock does it, with a photo of every boat, that’s the case for building one.

If you’re still deciding what the app should do, a written brief is the cheapest place to start. It’s also what any studio needs to give you a number you can plan around.