If you’re already looking for vendors and freelancers to work on your MVP, you must have found a massive disparity in their quoted prices. Sometimes the disparity in the quoted prices is so huge that we can’t understand whether the quote was for the same MVP that you’re talking about or something entirely different. Therefore, it is essential to understand the cost to build an MVP product.
Understand what an MVP is
Before you can determine whether the quote is correct, you first need to break down the requirements and prioritize accordingly. This will help you better understand whether what you’re looking to build is genuinely an MVP or a prototype. In many cases, freelancers will be more likely to give you a prototype rather than the MVP that you’re looking for. Please remember that an MVP always comes after a prototype and before the final product itself. The complete form is Minimal Viable Product which is mostly a product packed with enough features without any augmentations.
Need for an MVP
If you know you’re going to build the next big thing, make sure to start the process with an MVP and get yourself a competent enough team to help you see the entire process through. Your MVP is practically the initial version of your product. Regard your MVP as wiser than building a fully finished product at one go, and also a cheaper version of it. The main advantages and benefits of building a minimum viable prototype are:
- It doesn’t require a significant investment to create and launch an MVP.
- An MVP makes it easier to enter the market and gets a foothold there.
- Business risks are significantly reduced by creating and launching an MVP.
- An MVP will help you get genuine and unbiased feedback and suggestions from target users.
- The entire creation and launch process of an MVP consumes far less money.
Related articles: How much does it cost to build an MVP product
What you should think of first
To build any MVP application, you need a genuinely sound marketing strategy and plan first. Ensure that you have all the tools, team, specifics, MVP development plan, and the full details in place. Decide what type of MVP you will build and the features you wish to include in the app. Never launch a fully-featured product as an MVP. Rather, you should adopt an iterative plan of action and approach the product development by adding additional functionality over time. However, make sure to be armed to the teeth with validated data.
Make sure you know what your end vision for your product is in reality. Test the fundamental assumptions needed to validate and prove that the ultimate goal is attainable. This has to be the main question that your MVP should aim at answering. Based on your needs and your budget, you can decide whether you wish to go for a single version MVP which you can throw away and which can be discarded completely as soon as you need to scale up your product. These are decisions that require total technical input and involve a lot of research and survey.
How much it may cost to build an MVP product
The trickiest thing about MVP mobile app cost is that it differs, and more so because it depends on various factors. While a freelancer may charge around $4000 to perhaps even $15,000 to build an app prototype, if you hire a development company, they may quote a price of anything between $20,000 to $30,000. It all depends on the scope of work. The only constant that you can find in all these estimates for your MVP price is that they all are based on an hourly rate. You may now have a question: are they all talking about the same MVP? Not at all. That’s what creates confusion.
The two most integral aspects of any MVP development are functionality and design. You will need to see what the user interface will eventually look like. You may need to ensure that this user interface can keep users engaged. It has to be simple yet eye-catching. The navigation should be simple, sound, and accessible. Several other things will cost you extra, such as customized gestures, transitions, and buttons.
You will look for an MVP that is a scalable, API-based platform. It must sustain many iterations of both front-end and backend improvements. To put it all in short, the cost of the MVP will be around $30,000.
Again, this is just an estimate. There are several variable factors to consider. Some of them are:
- The type of contract.
- The hourly pay rate of your development company.
- The type of development team that you’re assigning to build and launch the MVP.
- The technology stack that will be needed to develop and launch the MVP.
- The entire scope of development and design tasks.
- How much time will it take to develop and launch the MVP.
- What quantum of your work on the MVP will happen in-house, and how much will be outsourced.
- The cost of any third-party services required for the development process.
- How experienced and skilled the development team is.
- What platform the MVP will be developed for – a single platform or cross-platform.
Conclusion: How much does it cost to build an MVP product
So, from all that we have discussed, you will need to consider a plethora of factors to ascertain precisely how much it costs to build an MVP product. Of course, you will already know why it costs what it costs. Almost every other business these days is building an MVP product, and why not leverage the same before it’s too late?
