What is the cost of Website or Web Application Development?

“What is the cost of this website/web application Development” is the first question we hear from prospective clients.

And our answer goes with many other questions.

• Can you share the complete requirements?
• Is the requirement in above question 100%?
• Do we expect some changes in requirements as the application development progresses to reflect market/users need?
• Do you want us to use a particular technology stack or you’re open to our suggestions?

Every unique detail, be it design or a feature, means a certain amount of time and talent of a specialist. That means that before telling you even an approximate price we need to evaluate your project and calculate main stages of its development. So, Getting down to the cost is perhaps the last thing we do after completely understanding the requirement.

Some clients need a fixed cost, some monthly/weekly/hourly costs; which is described below; Not every project can be done with a particular cost method because of obvious reasons we will discuss.

Let us consider a correlation with building a House or an office. If I ask you What is the cost of constructing a house /office? Well, the obvious answer from you will be IT DEPENDS, Depends on the map, depends on materials you want to use, depends on the interior, depends on the area, etc etc. Similar is the case of constructing or developing a web application but with different factors.

Cost of a web application Development:

Web application cost can be either fixed cost or time-based cost.

Fixed cost web application Development:

• As the name suggests, cost of development is fixed here.
• Not only price, the requirements needs to be fixed as well. The equation is simple, Fixed cost = Fixed work
• Not every project with fixed requirements can be done fixed cost. Most projects can be done but occasionally we encounter across works which need us to do R&D. A typical example can be project using block chains, block chain is a concept used behind bitcoins/dash/ethreum and needs R&D for developers.
• The advantage of fixed price is you don’t need bookkeeping in terms of hours worked. Simply get the application delivered and pay the invoice.
• With a fixed price, the requirement is frozen before starting the development. This limits the ability to respond to the change in ideas / respond in accordance to market or users needs. At the end of the day, a web application is developed to ease a time-consuming task and not to limit it.
• In fixed-price approach, the project is verified by the client after certain stages are fully complete. In fact, we don’t have a possibility to verify the requirements as they go.
• When charging a fixed rate, the agency must calculate any risks and problems, what can lead to overcharging. Charging hourly rate is actually cost-effective because you pay only for the real work done.
• Do we recommend this option: Fixed cost is good if the requirement is completely known and no changes are expected. But it limits your ability, ideally, we find as the application development progresses there arise few new ideas to ease the use.

Monthly / Weekly / Hourly charges:

• Charges based hours of work done.
• Based on the requirement provided by you, we provide a rough time estimate for the project.
• Generally, Agile Development methodology is used for such web application development.
• Charging hourly rates allow you to change priorities at all times. Agile gives us full control – we can pause what we do at the time and simply change direction. Constant tracking of the outcome enables us to improve the project on the go – sometimes the best ideas come up in the middle of the work.
• There is a chance that hours may be increased by the company, but choosing a right credible and transparent team helps to eradicate these misleading hours.

I heard you saying…

Now that you have explained fixed and monthly charges, how can I know Cost/Budget for my web application? I don’t have a 100% requirements, but need an approx estimate for budgeting.

With our experience, we created a hybrid pricing solution. When we receive your requirements with complete outlines of the features, we do our best to analyze the requirement and provide rough hours needed (+-) a small delta N% of hours.
With this, you know the rough maximum budget that can go for the application.

Conclusion

Developing a custom web application/SaaS/Enterprise application is a long-term goal. So choose a right development team is important. Don’t look for the cheapest, but the best solution provider. For custom applications, choose agile methodology because of the full transparency and flexibility it provides.

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Let us know your thoughts and suggestions!!