How to get your app and save money?

If you’re in need of a software product, but your budget is limited and your deadlines are tight, you might choose some ready-made solutions that are fast to develop. But is it actually a smart development? It could be cheaper to choose the quickest short-term solution, but as a result, it can cause more problems and the need to reinvest in the new development process. 

In this article, we are going to show the case of the business owners who had to pay more for choosing the cheapest solutions. How can we create a high-quality product and save some money? 

Three options to develop a software product

The growing number of freelancers, access to remote work, a variety of agencies, and specific companies offer great opportunities to businesses worldwide. The main thing is to choose which option suits the purposes of your company best. 

1. Building an in-house team 

The in-house team usually is part of the company’s staff. If you are trying to build a strong company with values, goals, and mission, then hiring an internal team is your option. In this case, you need to thoroughly estimate the costs and budget as hiring full-time experts will take time and additional costs to offer competitive salaries and benefits. You also need to take into account the time spent on training an expert and risks losing costs in case the team member leaves.  

2. Hiring freelancers

A freelancer is a person who performs a specific job remotely. This specialist can work on several projects at the same time, while not being a full-time employee in any company. If you have a small budget or need to complete one-time tasks, then it will be a better and cheaper option to hire a freelancer.

3. Hiring an outsourcing agency/company

This outsourcing model is popular nowadays for different business industries from IT Industry, Marketing, Infrastructure, Real Estate, Service Industry to Healthcare. The development team, in this case, becomes a part of the bigger project that enriches the key team. This completely changes the entire dynamics of the whole working process.

In-house engineers vs freelancers vs outsourcing company

There is always a point when you start thinking about choosing the right solution for your business. And it’s unavoidable to consider whether it’s better to invest your budget in building an in-house team, hiring freelancers, or finding an agency/company for your product. The truth is, there are pros and cons to each option and the final decision will depend on numerous factors as well as the needs and purposes of your product. 

In-house team

Pros:

  • Full involvement in the project: working on one project allows you to understand the niche and focus on the market.
  • Participation in the strategic development of the company and the opportunity to directly influence the development of the company
  • Well-established business processes: communication with other departments, transparency of processes, and simplified reporting
  • More freedom of action and opportunities to implement your ideas
  • Stable budgets for promotion, independent cost planning

Cons:

  • You have to take care of the recruitment
  • Expensive to maintain the team: organizational, retention, and other spendings
  • You need to find work for the development team once your product’s development is finished
  • Decisions on the technical stack are on you
  • Onboarding, team cohesion, and other HR practices you have to care of

Hiring a freelancer

Advantages: 

  • The cost of work is usually much lower than that of an agency or a company
  • You have a direct communication
  • Freelancers easily adapt to the needs of the client
  • A freelancer can get the job done much faster than an in-house specialist

Disadvantages:

  • There is no guarantee that the work will be completed on time
  • No guarantee of quality work
  • Working with a freelancer is only a part-time partnership
  • Freelancers in most cases are specialists in one particular area

Outsourcing

The outsourcing model works perfectly well for such kinds of projects:

  1. Big multi-part projects that require some additional technologies;
  2. Smaller side projects that the company doesn’t want to give to the in-house team because they are involved in the main business process; 
  3. Current projects that need additional resources because of their expenditure. 

Among the most essential advantages and disadvantages of hiring an outsourcing company/agency are the next

Pros:

  • The whole teamwork is easier to synchronize
  • It enables the communication between the team members to be efficient
  • The workflow within the entire team is more clear and transparent
  • Mutual cooperation creates equal responsibilities
  • The development capacity can be easily scaled
  • The team is motivated as it focuses on long-term cooperation
  • It’s a fast way to form a team. All specialists are ready and processes are in place

Cons:

  • Finding a good agency or company, especially in a specific area may be a difficult and expensive task
  • It can be difficult to communicate directly
  • Lack of direct control and close communication during the development process can lead to a lack of trust
  • Difficulties with system maintenance and compliance
  • There is a risk of information leakage
  • At the initial stage, you will have to spend time trying to establish a cooperation process
  • There is a risk of reduced flexibility

Choose wisely 

The risk of spending too much over poorly-made product

UppLabs experienced a case when a client approached us with an application that was developed by different teams of freelancers. The client requested to evaluate the tasks needed to fix bugs and finalize existing functionality. The project could not be launched since there was no launch documentation, and the standard launch methods did not work. The main problems of the project were:

  1. It had lots of code that was created by different teams with different technical levels
  2. The backend and frontend code was mixed together
  3. There were lots of legacy code
  4. The structure of the application was poorly organized

To perform tasks efficiently, it usually takes a lot of time to understand the structure of code and how it should work in the result. Since this project had lots of code, it wasn’t possible to quickly understand it.

It usually takes a significant amount of time to research the code, find the main problem, figure out how it should work (because the client does not usually have detailed description of processes), and only then the team can start solving the problem.

The bug could be insignificant, and if our team was building the project from the very beginning, we could find and fix it faster. But as it was an already developed project, it took us much longer to estimate the issue. Besides, you can never be sure that one fix will solve all problems. In fact, It can cause new problems and bugs, as we don’t know all the specifics. 

As a result, the client who spent about $20 000 for project development completed by different teams of freelancers (who rebuilt the fixes of previous teams) could spend less if hiring a right outsourcing team from the very beginning. There wasn’t team cohesion from the start. The client was left with about $7000 that wasn’t enough for rebuilding the product.

If the client investigated the development timeline and budget and knew about every option of engaging developers, the money spent could be less, and the product’s quality could be better. 

So before starting development, remember that ‘lower price’ isn’t always the best choice. 

Who can work on your project? Pool of talents

Regardless of the collaboration model, it is essential to investigate where your perfect developers, – be it freelancers, in-house teams, or outsourcing companies, – could be found.

An increasing number of companies are considering Ukraine as a primary location for hiring external or internal team for their software development needs. The critical factor which makes software development more expensive in Europe and the USA compared to Ukraine is salaries. 

The statistics of the software development market in the US and Ukraine show interesting facts regarding the state of freelancers and outsourcing companies this year.  

  1. The pandemic situation greatly affected the freelancer market this year. The research, conducted by Upwork and Freelancers Union, surveyed more than 6,000 U.S. workers and stated that Americans are starting to spend more than 1 billion hours per week freelancing.  
  2. Statistics show that, in fact, the market size of the outsourcing industry in the USA in 2020 is $132.9 billion and it is going to grow by 1.6% the same year.  
  3. According to the open polls of developers in Ukraine, there are over 166,000 developers in Ukraine and 11,932 IT companies this year.
  4. The Ukrainian developers’ rate for software development is $34-64/hour average and $25-149/hour –  for app development.
  5. ¼ companies work 100% remotely this year.
  6. The average age of a software developer in Ukraine is 21-29, while the average age of QA engineer is 23-29 years old. 
  7. 40% of developers from Ukraine speak English fluently.

Ask UppLabs for a quote 

Our benefits as a company that provides outsourcing services, and why companies like ours can save clients’ money

Whether your project is at the initiation or the execution stage, our professional team can meet your needs. Moreover, we can help you with choosing your tech stack and validate your business idea. If you doubt about the business prospects of your app, we can provide you with IT consulting services. 

UppLabs is the right choice for those who expect to get the web/mobile apps of any complexity at the highest quality. We specialize in working with startups and SMEs (small/mid businesses).

While working with us you can gain:

  • Expertise in technical requirements and development of roadmap formation;
  • Requirement analysis;
  • A quick prototype to validate your idea or an optimized scalable platform;
  • Transparency of the work processes;
  • Accessibility to team members who are working on your project;
  • Result-oriented and high-quality work; 
  • The code that is written following best practices;
  • The functionality that is manually tested by our QA specialists; 
  • A dedicated development team or developer for your project/tasks;
  • Efficient communication;
  • Solid results and good vibes.

Our team has been working in the web development sphere for many years, and have dozens of successful projects and satisfied customers from all over the world. Our aim is to implement the latest innovations in providing the best solutions for all stages of project development, timely technical support, and a high level of maintenance for our customers’ businesses.

Team cohesion, highly experienced and result-oriented employees, innovators in product development, focused on the success, delving deep into the issues and needs of the customer’s business to solve set tasks – these are the values that allow us to be effective in the development of any complex digital products.

Calculate the cost of your app

We in UppLabs think that pricing should always be transparent and clear. That is why we developed a mobile application that helps you to understand an approximate cost and a timeline to develop your web or mobile product.

This free MyAppCost application includes different options, key features, and integrations your application could have. Choosing different types of applications, platforms, and even additional parameters, you will be able to see the approximate price and timeline for your app development, and what is included in it.  

How mobile app cost is formed?

UppLabs is always ready to answer all your questions!

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