It is best to test the waters before taking a dip.
The minimum viable product helps you do exactly that. It enables you to develop a product with basic features, test it on the ground, make changes according to the market analysis, and finally launch the final product.
Custom Development Costs Composition
The cost of custom development of MVP varies and starts usually at ~$15.000.
And it's just the start, so proper product development is much higher. But let's what that pricing includes and what it depends on:
Application Type & Technologies
First, the cost of developing an MVP is mostly determined by the type of app, followed by its complexity and features. In other words, the lower the complications, the lower the expense of creating an app, and vice versa.
At the same time it is super dependent on the platform you build the MVP for, would it be a mobile app or Web, I probably you do a desktop application
Designing
The design part may add up to a hefty portion of MVP app development. In truth, how you choose wireframes, UI, and hiring experts all contribute to the high app/website design cost. This is why you should plan and estimate the development cost ahead of time to know exactly how much it costs to build an MVP.
The price of design depends based on the location, global rates vary from 25$/hour (in Asia region) to 150$/hour (USA)
Development team
Custom development you can do only with a team of skilled specialists. Depending on the technology you need a team of 2-4 specialists.
The standard setup for a team is:
- Developer (single full-stack or two: frontend + backend developer), at least 25$/hour
- Quality Assurance (manual), at least 30$/hour
- Project Manager (Often playing the role of Business Analyst), at least 35$/hour
- Optionally it could be a Business Analyst, usually joining the MVP part-time, at least 35$/hour
So for a team of 4 on outsourcing you would pay an average of $20,000/month, you can make this amount smaller if you go for freelancers, but it will be much higher if you build an in-house team.
Approximate Totals for 2 months MVP
It's possible to deliver an MVP faster, then it will be $15.000 - $20.000
Post MVP Release Activities
You will need to spend money on brand awareness and sales. Even if you don't invest money in paid ad campaigns, you'll need someone to handle your social media, online presence, and other promotional activities.
Why is marketing crucial? A robust marketing strategy can help you create buzz around your product, attract early users and first clients, and help the company become a name.
You also need to think about maintenance which is typically 20% of the initial MVP development budget. Remember, it is entirely dependent on the team’s location and product complexity.
All postrelease cost could be various from $1.000 to $15.000 per month...
Classical Custom Development Totals
As we can see marketing and sales are a bit more on top of the development costs, so it's important to consider this when you join the development process. The cheapest option is $15,000 and it could go easily go above $100,000
What is wrong with the custom development approach?
Well, it works, most startups today people developed that approach, but let's make a closer look at the process itself.
Cost of failure
There is a huge number of startups appearing every year, and quite a lot of them fail, which means that the cost of failure is a minimum of $15,000, if the startup goes for custom development, and it's just a minimum.
Cost of repetition
At the same time, quite a lot of startups reinvent the wheel, most of startups implement similar functionality and pay for them. For example, each startup needs a login page and user management, and every startup will pay for this. And we can continue, there are a lot of things like this that could be easily reused.
Longer timeline
At the same time: lack of re-usage means a longer timeline, more bugs to create and more dummy work to do, more dummy work.
How can we solve this?
Combine different SaaS
Today we have a variety of technologies we can combine to make an MVP is up and running without development! Sure, it depends on the startup we going to build, but we should start with a simple web-site builder and simple-wait list solution that allows us to research if there is any interest. For instance we can use
-
a bit more advanced options like
The cost of a typical lending page is 20$-50$ per month. You still need some marketers and designers to help, but it will be in total not more than $1.000 - $2.000 to validate the idea and estimate the interest.
If interest is growing we can go next and use a no-code solution
No-code solution
No-code apps and tools enable people without coding skills to create software using graphical user interfaces in place of writing code. Before no-code solutions, website and app development relied on programmers. Removing that barrier has opened the door to many more people, enabling them to build beautiful, functional websites and apps without writing code.
The Webflow team did a great overview of no-code apps here.
Let's try to do some pros and cons
Pros
- Simplicity
- Possibility of simple customisation
- Super cheap, for instance, Buble.io starts at 29$/month
- No deployment and infrastructure support
Cons
- The complexity of the support
- Complex customisation requires more time compared to custom development and full-time developer
- Lack of data migration mechanisms
- Issues in environments switching
- Lack of monitoring
So in simple words, it could be an awesome and cheap start, but not an infinite success. You would not be able to pivot a lot in other to find your niche and/or scaling would be blocked by the development timeline or limited by the platform.
Low-code solutions
A low-code platform (or low-code development platform), besides providing a GUI-rich development environment, borrows heavily from visual programming principles to simplify, augment, and democratize traditional programming.
So Low code solutions try to keep the pros of no-code at the same time they try to be closer to a custom development approach.
The following platforms have high ratings amongst various software development circles:
1. Appian
2. Quickbase
3. Zoho Creator
4. Salesforce Lightning
5. Microsoft Power Apps
6. Nintex
7. MarsX
Fleexy Approach
Fleexy is a product company specializing in the development of easy-to-use micro apps for businesses.
Our micro apps are backed by thousands of hours of development and continuous improvement, ensuring that your project stays up-to-date with the latest features and advancements.
The global vision of the company is to build the hugest foundation of micro apps.
Fleexy team builds micro-apps on top of relatively the new platform MarsX, which combines code and no-code together to unlock maximum flexibility.
What is a micro app?
A micro app is a little block that helps you to create your solution quickly. You can use it to build a platform for selling art, an e-commerce shop, or anything else you want.
So it's a reusable piece of logic. No need to develop it again and again, just use it out of the box.
How expensive it is?
It all depends on the app you want to build, the lower input is 299$ per month. It's enough to build a curly hair service marketplace like https://www.thedaba.com/. Just imagine, you get a product ready to go, which is possible to customise and update from a UI perspective with such a small amount of money.
How simple to customise?
If changes are complex and micro-app doesn't support the changes you want to apply then it will be required some coding, then it will be equal to custom development. Otherwise, you would just configure settings and make it work.
For instance, Auth Microapp Fleexy team has allowed the integration of more than 10 kinds of authentification providers.
Budget in case of this approach
How does the budget of the average MVP look like with Fleexy Microapps
As we reuse a lot of things from the foundation we need to develop much less. What we need still to pay for is for project scoping and for custom development - to make the product unique. Usually, it's enough to have just one month to build a product on top of micro apps, including some customisation and configurations.
Where is the Design/Marketing/Sales
They are optional as there are many templates you can use out of the box, as for marketing and Sales it's something we offer our clients to start from: "do basic research and find the niche".
Conclusion
In conclusion, developing an MVP is essential to test the waters before launching a final product. However, the custom development approach may have some downsides, such as the cost of failure, the cost of repetition, and a longer timeline.
No-code and low-code platforms can be a solution for these downsides, allowing for cheaper and faster testing while still having customization options.
Fleexy approach, with its use of micro apps provided by MarsX, offers a unique solution combining code and no-code development.
It unlocks a cost-effective and quick way to build a unique product on top of pre-built and reusable logic. Ultimately, choosing the right approach depends on the product needs, timeline, and budget.
Top comments (2)
good analysis
Thanks John