Frequently Asked Questions
It costs exactly £19,026. Unless your app is blue. In which case we’d have to up that to £21,184. Oh OK, we’ll take this seriously. The answer is that is actually depends. It depends on what you want your app to do. Whether it needs to have logins or access requirements. If you’re planning on taking payments through the app. If you want to get insights into how the app in working and what your users are doing. How advanced it needs to be. If it has push notifications or is collecting personal data. There are a huge number of variables. Some projects will start off from as little as £5000. Others could cost in excess of £250,000.
Most of our app development projects are in the £20k-£100k range. But as we mentioned, it depends on what you app needs to do. It is pretty rare for us to take on projects that kick off for less than £10,000, so if you’re not already armed with a budget of around that, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to help you. We offer free 30 minute consultation calls to discuss your project and give you a really rough ballpark figure though, so do hit us up and we’ll help out.
Cheeky! We recommend that our clients launch their app as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to get their app to market quickly and cheaply. Once you’ve validated the market, got some customers on board and started making some money you can start to build on your basic app. Add features and functionality. More polish. Building an MVP is going to keep your upfront costs down, and we can then decide on budgets moving forward.
A MVP in tech jargon is a Minimum Viable Product. In American sport it’s the Most Valuable Player. It’s a techy way of describing a simple app, or at least an app that has been pared back to its most basic state. Let’s say you want to build a fitness app. You could start off with an app that lets you enter basic information, before adding step detection, bluetooth connectivity, push notifications, paid subscriptions etc. That way you can get a basic product into the marketplace before you start to scale up. Walk before you run if you will.
See above. Could be £10,000. Could be more. Could be less. Tell you what. Drop us a line and we’ll let you know.
Of course. We pride ourselves on our ability to drop the tech jargon and speak to you like a normal human being. We can do the jargon if you want. Some people feel more confident when their developers seem to be speaking in another language. Apptaura are lucky enough to have a brilliant commercial team who can speak your language and can interpret when things get technical!
A good question. We’d probably say both. Back when apps were a relatively new tool there was an attitude within the development community that suggested that iOS was the place to be. Apple was first to mass market appeal with apps. Apple users spent vastly more on apps than their Android equivalents. So people built apps just for iOS. Things have changed. Android now caters for roughly 2/3s of the world mobile user base. Apple has a little under 30%. And whilst Apple users do still spend slightly more than their Android using cousins, the huge numbers of Android users means that you’d be ignoring a massive chunk of your potential user base if you don’t develop for Android.
It can be a bit tricky to get an app onto the Apple app store and Google Play. Apple in particular are very demanding about what apps can and can’t do if they are to be listed on the app store. But the Google Play store isn’t the Wild West anything goes playground it once used to be. You need to jump through a fair number of hoops to get your apps out to Android phones too. It’s part of the service that we provide. We build your apps in native code, and have indepth knowledge of the 100s of pages of T’s and C’s that you need to conform to. We’ll get you app on the store.
It’s about the way the apps are coded. A native app is built specifically for one platform, and in a language best suited to the devices that run on that platform. We code in Kotlin for Android (which is the recommendation by Google) and in Swift for Apple. A cross platform app is one that is built to work across multiple platforms. Our belief is that whilst it might be cheaper to get a cross platform app out the door in the first place, the sacrifices that are made will come back to haunt you with OS updates etc. We only build native apps. It’s the best way to ensure that you and your clients get the very best experience. It also means that when Apple drop a surprise OS update your app won’t require a complete overhaul and dozens of hours of expensive development time to get it working with the new OS.
This will depend on your own business and requirements. We’d probably say no. But if 46.4% of your users currently rock a Huawei handset then it’s something you might need to consider. Particularly given the current legislative issues with Huawei and the Google Play store. As for the other stores managed by handset manufacturers… we’ve never seen a decent business case for doing so. Most users only ever use it to update the system apps (and the bloatware) that comes pre-installed on their phones.
The use of apps and iPads compared to phone users is actually pretty small. You’re looking at single digit percentage points. So again it may very well depend on your business and your idea. If your app is one that encourages people to get out and about and identify the types of trees in their local park… then a tablet version probably isn’t needed. If you’re app is about consuming video content on the sofa… then it probably is. But we’d suggest you launch with phone apps first.
We do a fair amount of design work ourselves as part of our fees. For a lot of our clients who are building internal apps or apps for very specific markets that’s usually sufficient. If your app is being pitched to a wider market, then we have a great design agency who we can put you in touch with. Although we have preferred vendors, we are happy to work with your external design and branding agencies too. Whatever is best for you and your project.
The apps we build will work on older handsets as well as the most up-to-date devices. However there are some limitations to this. There are some really well-aged phones still out there today. In some cases the OS they operate on is simply too old for us to support. In fact sometimes the platforms are so out of date that they would actually represent a security risk. In those rare cases our app wouldn’t be supported. From the time we launch your app we can provide support and maintenance of your app to ensure it continues to comply with all necessary security and privacy measures and works on up to date operating systems.
Yes… sort of… there are some workarounds. You can essentially download Android APKs direct from the web onto a Huawei device. Or you could load your app onto the Huawei store. It will depend on your user base though. If your app is built to be used by your internal sales team and they all have Huawei phones then it’s worth doing. If most of your users are Apple or Samsung customers then it might not be worth it.
We love apps. That’s why we do this. But not every business needs an app. One of the things we’re passionate about is making sure that everyone we work with will see a tangible benefit from having an app. We’re not going to sell you on an app concept if we don’t believe it is going to benefit your business in some way. In fact this is one of the questions we ask ourselves whenever we consider taking on a new client.
A really basic app could be created in a matter of days or weeks. The more complex the app the longer it will take. We’ll also have to get your app scheduled in to our delivery process. If you want to get a designer to come up with some design concepts that will add time to the mix. On average one of our apps goes from the initial proposal, through a design approval process to development, testing and MVP launch in 3 months.
Whenever we quote to build an MVP product, we’ll also lay out the structure for adding new features to the product and a rough costing of those added features. It isn’t strange for our initial proposals to have 3 or 4 banded feature development sections included. Providing the cost for a single feature is complicated and will depend on the type of feature it is. Let us know during the proposal phase what sort of future features you’re thinking about adding and we’ll give you a ballpark estimate.
Yes we can. We’ve been building apps for years and our development team have decades of cumulative experience in building apps. So if you have a problem you want to solve with an app, and if you have a budget in place to develop that app, we can help.
Nope, we do all of our development inhouse. All of it. Nothing gets offshored or nearshored or contracted out. Our full development process is run out of our offices in Basingstoke, Hampshire. We love building apps, and take huge pride in developing apps for our clients. So we don’t subcontract or use development houses to create any of the apps we build.
We can. But we won’t. Blackberry now represents a tiny proportion of mobile users, and most Blackberry devices these days can run regular Android apps. It would take a pretty hefty business case to convince us that you actually need any sort of standalone app for Blackberry.
Did you know that Microsoft stopped providing support for Windows phones back in 2019? That means no security updates, no OS updates… Do you really want to spend your hard-earned cash building an app for an obsolete device?
Ok, ok, this is getting silly now. No-one bought one of those. Next you’ll be asking us if we can build an app that works on your fax machine.
No. Go AWAY!
The top 200 apps in the appstores make around £61,410 every day! That’s around £22 million a year. BOOM! Kerching. Show me the money etc. But hang on… what if you’re not the latest Faceflixagramcraft? The top 8000 apps in the stores make on average £2,605 every day. Which comes in at a not unhealthy £950,825 per year. However, the challenge with averages is that they are still weighted heavily by those huge apps raking in bank like it is going out of fashion. You can make money from apps, but it is a journey getting there. It won’t just be an if-you-build-it-they-will-come situation.
Rather than asking this – perhaps ask yourself how many people you need to download your app. We specialise in making apps for very specific purposes. Some of these apps have been downloaded less than a hundred times but are still an incredible success for the business that commissioned us to create it because it does exactly what they need it to. Of course there are apps out there with billions of users. So how many users do you need to make your app successful?
Yes, absolutely. All the apps we build are bespoke and built from the ground up for you. Once it’s built it is yours. Want to take future development to a new app agency? We’ll be devsastated to see you go, but we won’t stop you. The app code is yours. We could even help you whitelabel you solution if that’s the way you’d like to go.
Yes we do. Put simply we want to keep your app up and running for as long as you need it out there. We offer a range of options for support, from our basic monthly service agreement, which includes a small amount of development time through to our top level monthly retainer which gives you access to 5 days of development every month. Our services include research into upcoming OS changes and testing your app in new OS environments so we can let you know if there are any changes that need to be made.
We offer a range of support services. Our basic service package costs £475 per month and provides ¼ of a day per month for bug fixes together with some reporting, research and testing work. We then offer retainer packages that range from providing between 1 and 5 development days per month, payable across a year-long subscription. We can also provide one-off quotes for specific feature development as required.
We will research upcoming OS updates as well as test your app on the new OS systems when they arrive. Wherever possible we’ll do this work well in advance so that we can give you as much warning as possible about upcoming changes. If you are on a retainer package with us we’ll manage any urgent OS development requirements within your monthly scope of work. If you are not we’ll be able to quote for any work that does need to be done.
Yes, we’ll test your app prior to launch. We’ve got a whole range of devices and emulators that allow us to evaluate your app and how it works on different handsets and tablets. We’ll get you (and your family, friends, neighbours etc) involved with test apps to try it out in the ‘real world’ too. Of course if you want us to test your app on a specific model of smartfridge last manufactured in 2011 we might not be able to do that. Though we’ll try our best.
We’ve already mentioned the benefits of launching with an MVP and then improving your app, so the short answer is yes! In fact we’d encourage you to keep updating your app, that’s what will keep your customers coming back and there are always improvements to make alongside new feature releases. Even if your app is doing exactly what you want it to do already there is always some extra work to do in the background to keep it secure and up to date… and working on newly released devices. How does your app work on the new folding Samsung phone?
Our developers need to eat from time to time. Yeah, we thought they were machines too, but it turns out that they do need sustenance. It doesn’t really matter how brilliant your idea is, we’re in the app development business, not the app business business. So unfortunately if you’re looking for an agency to develop your app for free (or in return for equity) we’re not the ones for you. We might know some people who would consider it. Or you could, you know, head on Dragons Den?
Of course… in fact we prefer to get NDAs signed and sealed right at the beginning of the process. That way we don’t have to do that elaborate dance around the project as you decide whether you are comfortable trusting us with the brilliant ideas you have. It’ll also allow us to ask a few more questions that in the end will help us build a much, much better product.
We try to keep jargon to a minimum. Agile development means you break a project down into segments and work through them individually. It means you can work continuously as a team without waiting for key project goals to be delivered before you can work on something else. Waterfall development sees you deliver completed segments of work before moving on to the next section of work. Both are development methodologies that we’ve used in the past. We tend to choose the method that best works for you and your project. Agile works really well if you as a client have loads of time to spend with us working through the development process. Waterfall might serve you best if you already have a day job and your app is your side hustle as we can deliver big chunks of work at regular intervals. Or something like that.
We’d recommend that you update your app frequently and usually suggest that there should be at least a couple of significant updates per platform per year to adjust to new OS releases and security updates. App stores also tend to rank regularly updated apps slightly higher in their rankings, so if you’re after customers it could be beneficial to run regular updates. A lot will also depend on your business plan and feature development schedule. If you’re app is already working perfectly for your customers you’ll only need a light touch. If you’ve launched with an MVP you’ll want big updates every couple of months.
Whilst we’re not an app marketing agency we can give you some ideas and feedback that will help you get your app in front of more people and downloaded onto more phones. We’ve got a marketing team who have experience in driving millions of downloads for major consumer apps, so let us know if you’d like some hints or tips.