App Creation Experts: Costs on the Market in the Current Year

Vitaly Kuprenko -

Today's mobile-first development tendency is conditioned by the need to have everything in a handy gadget. Global entities make use of this point by implementing phone applications to engage and retain the audience efficiently. To ensure a top client satisfaction rate, you should thoroughly select and employ a tech partner, in particular an app developer. However, this process is pretty complex, and finding a credible expert requiring reasonable costs is challenging for many businesses.

This guide will describe the points determining the cost to employ app architecture engineers, resources to start the search with, as well as the complete roadmap covering the key phases of the partnership concluding.

Expertise Level and Specialization as Impacting Factors

Each separate technical project requires a certain specialization and level of qualification in software architecture. The grade of hard skills the software engineer possesses changes the app development cost.

As for specialization, this aspect is exacerbated with application developers because orientation to a particular platform/technology is an essential condition for implementing such digital products. To be able to evaluate the technical expertise of programmers, we’ve outlined the knowledge they have to possess according to the grade.

Junior software engineer

Such a level implies executing plain, with no engagement in complex, major assignments and tech responsibilities. The tech employee should be aware of the points below to be called a junior specialist:

  • Plain competence databases

  • Possess primary knowledge concerning the integrations

  • Expertise in one minimal programming language

  • Competence in most widely-used frameworks

Middle software engineer

Having some experience already obtained, experts of this level are able to verify the tasks completed by the previous grade’s programmers. Nevertheless, sometimes their performance involves proficients of the higher level to handle difficult tech challenges. Within the application architecture, they should be competent in points as follows:

  • Operating several databases

  • In-depth competence in elementary third-party integrations

  • Accomplishing multiple assignments at once

  • Script alteration for enhanced readability, optimization, efficiency, and flaws elimination

  • Designing basic unit tests

Senior software engineer

As the grade becomes higher, the amount of responsibilities and requirements grow in parallel. Seniors should be able to come up with critical resolutions within the digital product realization flow. What competence does the senior grade cover? Here are the key aspects:

  • Coping with complicated tech issues

  • SOLID comprehensive knowledge

  • Frequent script monitoring

  • Compound tests creation

  • Profound project pipeline view

  • Management of previous grades’ experts

Team lead

The vast experience required to get this grade enables such tech professionals to build and operate a tech team. They are also capable of reasonably allocating human resources, distributing the assignments wisely among the employees, as well as monitoring the accomplishment progress. The indispensable part of team leads’ knowledge is abyssal expertise in server solutions, as well as on-demand architecture approaches. Here is the expertise necessary to obtain such a high level:

  • Assess the work scope, deadlines, and essential financial resources

  • Building the proper realization strategy

  • Implementation tracking, reviewing, and management

  • Designing digital specification documents

  • Script monitoring

Solution Architect

This grade refers to experts competent in custom software architecture, operating the realization roadmap, guiding the tech employees within the implementation, and handling documentation challenges. Below you may find key points of solution architects’ competence:

  • Vast professionalism in product creation

  • Dealing with a range of tech architecture frameworks as well as digital instruments

  • Revision control software knowledge

  • After analyzing which level is required in accordance with your project, you should determine the most relevant hiring option.

App Programmers Employment Models

Depending on your business workflow, you should select an option that complies with the complexity level, the scope of tasks, and the type of work to accomplish within the app creation.

Freelancers employment

Advantages:

  • Decreased spendings

  • Charge only for the scope of assignments performed with no regular expenses

  • Covering of perks is also liquidated

Disadvantages:

  • Management and guiding complexity

  • Potential privacy loss

  • Possibility of quitting after the prepayment

Staff Augmentation

The greatly adaptive model that provides the opportunity to extend the expertise for the project allowing your employees to concentrate on their other responsibilities and wisely distribute the human resources. This may refer to short as well as long-term employment of a certified app development expert, and the choice in terms of regions is boundless due to the fact that this option implies remote partnership.

Pros:

  • Utter concentration on your solution

  • Enhanced cost-efficiency

  • Solid confidentiality

  • Rapid employment

  • Top flexibility

Cons:

  • Introducing the specialist to the internal processes may take some time

  • Possible failures within the peculiarities of internal processes

In-house team gathering

This type of cooperation implies hiring application developers in a physical office and providing all the necessary conditions for effective performance. Due to this aspect, we can conclude that in-house is considered to be one of the most costly options of employment. Aside from this, the responsibilities of hiring and verification of skilfulness fall on your shoulders. Let's briefly outline the pros and cons of this model.

Benefits:

  • Rapid tasks execution

  • Optimized newcomers’ onboarding

  • Comprehensive hiring process

Drawbacks:

  • Higher investments to cover rent, payrolls, hardware, and software facilitation

  • Increased time consumption to establish the working environment

  • Raised operational costs

Outsourcing software vendors

This option represents the cooperation with the external IT provider taking over all of the project implementation responsibilities. The demand for outsourcing services is driven by the opportunity to pay exceptionally for the fulfilled work scope and no need to conduct tiring interviews, as the company has a team of high-qualified app development professionals. So what benefits make outsourcing the best modern cooperation option on the market?

Profits:

  • Reasonable investments. You are able to choose the vendor globally, picking the most optimal hourly rates with no final product quality damage.

  • Boosted time to market. The time-consuming hiring process is fully eliminated.

  • Flexibility towards requirements. The number of app programmers operating within your project may adapt to the number of tasks required.

  • Higher app sophistication. Unlimited specialization delivered by outsourcing makes it possible to choose any solution or sought-after technology for implementation in your software.

  • The vast amount of options. The distant partnership conditions the fact that you may conclude a partnership with any outsourcing provider all around the world.

Flaws:

  • Cultural peculiarities

  • Insufficient English knowledge

  • Time zone difference

App Creation Experts: Market Overview in Diverse Regions

It’s time to delve into the IT market offers to research the app development services’ cost globally. The further list describes the annual salaries of app software engineers by country.

  • The UK: $47,000 -$92,000

  • The USA: $64,000-$139,000

  • Germany: $49,000-$68,500

  • Netherlands: $56,000-$99,000

  • Estonia: $18,000-$50,000

Due to the cost-efficiency of the last option, many global market giants outsource to software development companies from Estonia. Developers from this country are profound in application architecture tailored to specific business demands as well as excellent further product maintenance.

Specialization as a price-determining factor

The tech competence of necessary experts depends on the platform you build the app for and may drastically change the product implementation price. The programming languages, as well as the digital toolkit, are diverse for each operating system- for iOS, integral solutions are Swift and Objective-C, while Android requires Kotlin/Java for app creation. Let’s observe how the cost changes from region to region according to the OS your software is targeted at.

Talking about the younger iOS programming language, which is Swift, and the app implementation price with its usage in the US, we may receive the following rate: $40-$60. As for India, the sum substantially decreases: $20-$40 for the same time period.

In case you aim at Android users, the range will start from $50 and end at $100. Let’s not forget about the cross-platform frameworks to satisfy the audience of both platforms. One of such solutions is Flutter, and the USA app builders experienced in this solution charge approximately $75-$120. On the other hand, you are able to receive services of the same quality for $45-$65 in case you decide to outsource to Estonia.

Strategy to Employ the App Building Specialist at an Adequate Rate
Here are some key hints on how to choose an app development expert at optimal cost while avoiding main challenges:

  1. Research the reviews from previous customers using credible resources like Clutch, Glassdoor, and GoodFirms

  2. Define the difference in time and which ways the tech vendor applies to overcome this challenge

  3. Determine the best tools to establish top-quality communication and accessibility between you and your partner

  4. Query about the privacy and security catering as well as the special contracts for it

Wrapping Up

Application developers are nowadays highly demanded due to the mobile devices usage prevalence over desktops. The modern market is full of beneficial offers affordable for every budget without the limit to a certain country as modern technologies provide an opportunity to cooperate with any software architecture vendor all around the world. We highly recommend considering outsourcing due to the flawless performance at adequate costs as well as the great number of other benefits it provides.

Author’s bio

Vitaly Kuprenko is a writer for Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile app development company with headquarters in Ukraine. He enjoys writing about technology and digital marketing.