This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
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Today's question can be summed up in one sentence. How much should it cost to make an app? This is assuming, of course, that you are paying someone to make your app instead of making it yourself. This is assuming you're not a coder. And as you might expect, the answer is, you know, it's quite a range, right?
But let's try to be helpful to our caller who was quoted what seems like a sky-high price of $100,000 to create a working version of their app idea. Do you think it costs $100,000 to make an app? Well, if not, how much should it cost? And if you don't want to pay a huge amount of money, what else can you do? That's coming up in this episode.
Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name's Chris Guillebeau. Detailed question and my answer coming up after this quick sponsor message. [Music]
Hi Chris, this is Ellen. I've been listening to this show for a couple of seasons.
Congrats on making it to episode 2,000 recently. So I had an idea for an app and I went to look at hiring a developer in my area. I talked to a company that said they could do it, but the price was insane. They told me at minimum it would be $30,000. And in some cases, it's not unusual for it to end up at $100,000 or even more.
All that for an app, it doesn't sound right to me, but they explain there's a ton of work that goes into the design, development, and cross-platform compatibility. If this is my only option, I might need a new idea. What do you think? Thanks for any advice you can share with me. [Music]
All right, let's see what we got here.
Minimum $30,000. In some cases, $100,000 or even more. All right, so a lots to unpack here. First of all, it sounds like our caller was quoted a high rate because they went to a company or studio, right? And lots of firms, they specialize in corporate clients that do have these higher budgets.
So presumably, whatever you do next, like this one isn't probably the right fit for you. Now it is true that some apps can cost a huge amount of money. It really depends on what you want the app to do. So it's not like they're necessarily ripping you off by quoting you that. It's kind of like a website.
You know, a website can cost $10 to make. You can go get a website on fiber.com, maybe even $5. Or you can spend $100,000 or more on a website. Like companies do that all the time and anything in between, right? So this is why it's so variable.
It's why there's so much of a range. So assuming our caller doesn't have $100,000 to drop, you know, which they said if that's their only option, they might need a new idea. Well, I think you do have other options. One idea is to look at the world of no code apps. Now we've talked about this before.
We feature a couple of people making services that help side hustlers or anybody on a budget make working versions of their app using templates. And it's a really simple kind of drag and drop process. So check out episodes 1709 and 1823, if you'd like to learn more about that or just Google no code app. And you're gonna see like a whole little industry here, different companies, different solutions offering, you know, very affordable versions of working apps. Now, of course, there are trade offs to everything.
There's not gonna be a ton of customization. Your app has to kind of fit into a pre-existing package or template, but you know, it's a lot less than $100,000. It can be less than $1,000, you know, again, depending on what you want. So that may be your best bet at first, especially if what you're doing doesn't require custom programming. But one more thing, no matter what you're doing, be sure to think about maintenance because apps break a lot.
Like every time there's an update, which if you use an iPhone, you know, you're constantly seeing updates from Apple. Sometimes those updates cause various apps to stop working for whatever reason. So developers have to go and fix it. So this also needs to be part of your build plan, not just a one and done thing, but how will you support it when something goes wrong and you need to address that. So there's lots to think about, but it doesn't have to cost $100,000.
And do look at the world of no code apps, at least to get started. Definitely a quicker, easier fashion for lots of people, lots of people and lots of projects. Listeners, if you've got a question, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. We'll continue to feature them throughout the year, along with updates from listeners as they launch their projects. I'm so glad you're out there.
Thanks for tuning in today. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is Side Hustle School. [Music]
From the Onward Project.
