Answer 1:

Having touched tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and developed over 30 apps online, there is no better person to answer this question than me.

This article is a million-dollar answer for people who want to do a good job with an app project! Because it's the experience we've spent millions of dollars in trial and error costs to try out!

In the app development industry since we are engaged in every day we receive a large number of customer inquiries. Among them are entrepreneurs, company project managers and so on. Before and after about 2 years of contact with tens of thousands of customers who want to do App. Found that 80% of the customers are prone to make some fatal mistakes.

The Internet is a magical big network, software customization is also a model, to provide the most detailed offer, if you really want to do, you can come here, this cell phone to start the number is a wood steak in the middle of the one one three three last is Surabaya seven Surabaya, in accordance with the order of the combination of the can be found, would like to say that, unless you want to do or to understand this aspect of the contents of the content, if it is just to get together, then don't come! .

◆◆Thought it was easy to make a software, so describe the demand and its fuzzy.

◆ Rush to want to quote, in their own uncertainty about the needs of the time to quote. Then you start doing it according to that quote.

◆ Do not know what they want, want to do a mall said to do is Taobao.

◆ Website and mobile app difference can not figure out. To do mobile App but said they want to do the site.

◆ Thought all the software have templates, and templates are very cheap.

◆ Lack of patience, do not understand and never thought about how complex what they want to do.

◆ They do not know the specific functions of the things to do, to rely on the developer to guess. And also this is the time to ask for a quote.

The facts tell us that these problems must lead to the following results.

◆ The project is done completely different from what you want.

◆ According to a survey by a foreign professional statistics organization, 52% of project managers in outsourcing projects are forced to leave/ demoted/ fired because the project is out of control/failed.

◆ When the project goes live, it is full of holes, and repeated tinkering will not solve the problem. The back must be redone. (DDT outsourcing back in the day encountered this situation, looking for outsourcing to do a mess. Do out not used once directly scrapped and redone)

◆ Mistakenly their own are not sure of the needs of the unreliable offer as a real offer to start doing the budget, resulting in the latter part of the capital budget can not keep up with the project, which led to the loss of control/bankruptcy.

We often encounter customers with us for the first time to consult with us said, before looking for so-and-so software company is too pitiful. Do something like a piece of shit, a closer look at the question. It turns out that he himself in the project before the start of their own needs are completely unclear and uncertain. So confused on the start, thinking that the developer will help him to improve the remaining things. In reality, these customers told me that none of the developers they met would help them midway through the project.

The reason is simple: the more carefully you think about the requirements, the higher the development cost. Generally according to the degree of refinement of the demand, the cost difference out of a few times to dozens of times is very normal. 100,000 to pick up the project, really want to deduct the details of the 1 million salary costs are not enough. This is also the general customers usually ask for quotes, different developers offer will be out of so many times the reason. Not just expensive and cheap. The root cause is that the understanding of the needs is completely different. If the customer is not clear, no one will be clear.

Responsible outsourcing companies will carefully ask you for details of your needs, irresponsible outsourcing companies up to give you a quote?

People always have inertia, once you have to think about things and to think about the time are lazy thinking. So customers usually hate this kind of patient developers who will carefully ask for requirements. Instead, like this kind of nothing to ask actually do not know what you want to do, but first reported a super low price to attract the developer to wish it into the pit. The final result is usually the kind of situation we mentioned earlier, the project directly failed. Or halfway by the black hearted developers slaughter a hand, midway hard price increase (the original 10,000 to do the function halfway to 50,000). Because you have chosen him, either do half to give up, or according to his continue to add money. Most people do not want to front half of the prepayment into the water, and do not know how much money will be added in the end so a feature. At this point there is no way to choose another developer to try. So will choose to do it.

The most common example I've seen is that a lot of people come up and ask how much it costs to make an app. Or ask how much to make a simple APP? Or I want to do a similar Meituan/Taobao/Jingdong/Dropshipping. How much is the same APP?

The first kind: ask how much to make an APP?

In fact, you ask this question as if you go to a 4S store and ask, how much does a car cost? The car has 100,000 family sedan also has 10 million supercar. Depending on the purpose (sedan, off-road, sports car, racing car, public transportation is also a car), configuration, engine, device is not the same, the price and cost is very different. Similarly, it's the same when you come to ask for an app. You must express clearly what kind of APP you want, for what scenario, what problems APP solves, how to solve (what specific functions are needed). Just come to ask the price, no less than you go to ask the car 4S store, I just want a car, you tell me the price on the line. Others will definitely take you as a fool. Because you stepped on the horse did not tell people what car you really want ah soul!

If you just ask me how much money to do an APP? I can only tell you, a few hundred dollars to a few hundred million, are possible.

The second: I want to do a simple APP, how much?

Everyone's definition of simple is different. What degree of simplicity are you talking about specifically, and what things are you specifically trying to do, many people think that WeChat is also quite simple. It is recommended that you say the specific function every time you ask.

The third: I want to do a similar Meituan / Taobao / Jingdong / drip taxi. How much is the same APP?

Generally so asked entrepreneurs have a characteristic, a lot of what they want to say is not clear. May just fancy, for example, the map function of the drip taxi, but the description says it is similar to the drip taxi. The map function of DDT taxi itself actually only accounts for less than one percent of the function of the whole software system of DDT. Similarly, some of them see the group purchase part of Meituan and say they want to do Meituan. Some see Jingdong has online payment, said they want to be Jingdong. If you ask directly so, I actually do not understand what you want is the example you gave inside the specific what function. Because it's impossible to completely emulate a Meituan/Taobao/Jingdong/Dropshipping.

Why can't it be a complete imitation? You see what seems to be a simple Meituan/Taobao/Jingdong/Dropshipping/WeChat ...... Such APP, each of the software development costs are more than ten million, or even hundreds of millions of (especially the complex background). Because of the complexity of the details of these large companies APP and the complexity of the background beyond your imagination. Now the so-called a lot of software imitation Jingdong, WeChat and so on, said online can give you the development of WeChat Jingdong and so on the company, it can be said that the function can really do less than one percent of WeChat Jingdong. Give a few specific examples. For example, the most basic registration and login, may be divided into mailbox registration and login, WeChat authorization to login, QQ authorization to login, microblogging authorization to login, SMS verification code registration and login, password recovery is divided into mailbox to retrieve and SMS to retrieve. Here is a list of 7 cases, you do a kind or do 7 kinds of development cost may be 7 times or higher.

Another example is the search function, the simplest search function may be the development of a few hours of things, but this search may be in a few thousand, tens of thousands of commodity data can still run normally. But if there are millions of commodity data, this time will certainly crash. And not only product data will play a role, for example, your search function is to support fuzzy search (that is, the input keywords can be deviated) or precise search. Fuzzy search can be fuzzy to what extent, to tell are very big. Taobao Jingdong such a large platform search function, many large companies just a search function is the need for more than a dozen people to develop the development team year round to develop and optimize, the cost of raising these people a year is a few million tens of millions. You can now open Taobao's search function to take a closer look at how many details it (advanced search, geography, price filtering, search results sorting, etc., etc.). If you are interested, you can check the financial reports of these public companies. The cost of software development is tens to hundreds of millions of dollars per quarter. Large companies must be recruiting their own need for people, if they do not need to be sure not to recruit so many people. Due to space constraints, more detailed reasons and things to look out for will not be elaborated.

Here is a job advertisement for DDT, so if you are interested, you can see how many people are in the technical team behind DDT.

There are hundreds of tech jobs on the horizon for March alone. The average salary is between $200,000 and $400,000 a year for all of them.

Dropshipping jobs

Now can you all understand why you're so afraid of these questions? Because the entrepreneurs did tell me explicitly to make a Taobao/Jingdong/Dropshipping similar app, but the cost of such an app is astronomical. You may want just some of these features, or just want to mimic his operating model.

Some people may think, this is a big company so only need. Do I need to think about it so carefully in the early stages of my business? It's very clear that it's very much needed.

When you wait until a mistake is made and then you try to fix it, the cost is huge or it can lead to failure.

Big companies aren't just big because they're big, they're big because they're big.

And no one will think for you if you don't. Do not hope that you look for these software companies on the Internet, they will only tell you that this thing is very simple, you come on, come to make a fortune, the Internet people stupid money. You do not make it clear what functions you need for your APP, you must be the one who suffers in the end. Because you are not clear about what you want to do exactly what it looks like when you look for a software company even more do not know.

You're counting on them to give you the details to think about, and they're just going to give you a different concept and cut corners. Because by doing so they can give you a lower quote increasing the probability of you picking him.

Before a real example, a customer with an irresponsible developer only said that there is a registration and login, and did not and he said to do to retrieve the password, the developer did not remind him. The developer didn't remind him. And finally the software just didn't retrieve the password. If you don't want to encounter such a situation and be pitched, please think clearly about as many details of your App as possible.

For example, a shopping cart features include, add to cart, remove from cart, add / reduce the number of a certain product in the cart, directly enter the number of digital modification of the number of goods, batch payment. These features you said a lot of developers will only do one, most developers will not consider the other. And the general entrepreneurs will think, Taobao have ah, generally have ah why you did not do? (Entrepreneurs see the general kind of large companies are very mature products), you have to know, Taobao's development costs are hundreds of millions of levels. And after many years of iteration and update.

Alibaba Group's Q3 2015 quarterly earnings report showed that product development expenses in the third quarter of 2015 amounted to 3.225 billion yuan (about $507 million), or 15 percent of revenue. You read that right, 3.2 billion dollars a quarter in development costs. That's more than $10 billion a year.

For the most part the details you don't mention to the developer, usually don't. If someone else will think of it for you the more comprehensive it is, then development costs are bound to be high.

Here I list three major blocks of the most affect the APP software quality and cost of things. I hope you must keep in mind!!!! Convenient to find the right developer and control the quality of the project.

1. Function of the development method

Now on the market there are several development methods are as follows:

a. web page shell generation APP

web page shell generation APP development method, first spend hundreds of dollars to buy a ready-made cell phone website template, in the shell packing an APP only takes 5 minutes, but the effect of doing out! It takes only 5 minutes to pack an APP in a shell, but the result is very poor, traffic consumption, poor browsing experience, slow access, etc. Some developers take advantage of customers' lack of understanding. Part of the developers use customers do not understand, this 5-minute quick things, as the original development of APP to cheat entrepreneurs. Sell thousands to tens of thousands of dollars. And entrepreneurs many times still think they are picking up a bargain (asked a dozen this cheapest).

b. Web page + original ecological hybrid (web part accounts for more than 80%)

Mixed way of APP effect is slightly better than the first. But if you want to make the effect close to the original, you need to keep optimizing and revamping, and the money spent is not less than the original. And if you don't optimize the web page and system, just simply put together. Then the effect is almost the same as the web shelled.

c.HTML5 development

The cost is about 50% to 30% of the native APP, but also closer to the native development can achieve the effect of a way. But there are many limitations. The compatibility of major platforms is still insufficient, relatively speaking, is still in transition, and at the same time more system resources. In the low configuration of the phone more card. Mobile Taobao's APP is currently HTML5 + original mix, relatively speaking, in many low configuration of the phone is still more card. It's been optimized a lot lately, but the early performance was very unsatisfactory. facebook and jingdong both tried HTML5, and at the same time ate the immaturity of the loss. the future of HTML5 may be bright, but the cost of trial and error during this period of time is not necessarily affordable for small companies.

d. Original development

It is currently the most common and mature way. The more attention to detail the higher the cost. Generally according to the specific functional requirements of an APP development costs from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars.

2. The way the function is realized (the complexity of the function and the number of users)

For example, the search function mentioned above, the specific cost of the search function requirements will make the cost difference out of tens of thousands of times. Not only search, to give a few more examples. For example, WeChat inside the chat, divided into text, picture chat, recorded language chat, voice in time to speak, video chat.

Voice and video chat are only briefly mentioned. These are things that cost millions and millions of dollars to develop. WeChat and QQ and even now their own language intercom and video chat are a lot of problems, such as simultaneous multi-person chat will have a lot of echo, current, noise. It's not that Tencent doesn't know, it's that it knows but it's hard to fix.

Specifically here, for example, the recording is sent, generally speaking, we listen to a 60-second music is about 1M. And WeChat's a 60-second voice compressed to a few dozen K, to ensure that the speed of sending and receiving. At the same time also do voice noise reduction (reduce the surrounding noise) and so on. If these do not take into account, just simply send a voice. It's not unusual to see a difference of several to hundreds of times in the development cost between the two. In the same way, you will find that your app is slow to send messages, consumes a lot of traffic, and so on.

3. APP compatibility on the phone

I believe that when you use the cell phone APP, especially Android phones. Surely you will find that some APP will flashback, stuck and so on. This is because part of the function of the APP is not compatible or has bugs on this phone.These problems are very many and difficult to solve. When you are just a user, you won't feel it so strongly because most of the products you use are very mature products developed by big companies. But you have to think about it when you are an entrepreneur yourself. Because no one wants to develop their app and have it flashback on 8 out of 10 phones. But the fact is true again. Many hundreds of thousands of cost developed APP everywhere flashback.

Compatibility is very cost-impacting (can be up or down a few times to hundreds of times the cost). For Android alone. There are over 10,000 models of Android phones in the world, and all the different phone brands, resolutions, and OS version numbers all have an impact on program compatibility. Many times the cost of debugging compatibility is greater than the cost of software development, really want to do mainstream cell phone compatibility, just buy a test phone to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy. An APP if developed, do not do compatibility debugging development. And do compatibility debugging development, the cost is also out of N times.

Additionally talking about templates, many times some projects can save a lot of cost if there is a mature template solution.

But the template is also the same price there is a huge difference. The same a mall template may be up and down the price difference out of dozens of times, the reason is also because the details of the function is completely different, may be more than a dozen times the difference in function. If you do not carefully observe the details of the function before you buy, then there will certainly be a big cry after the purchase of the situation. The system may be crippled throughout the process, not to mention the fact that you're taking this crippled system and running it.

Additionally not all APPs have templates, generally speaking only mall-related APPs have more templates. And there is a difference between mature and immature templates, really mature templates development cost and time is huge, a company can not have a lot of good templates at the same time. Because the number is large, it must not be refined. The cost of developing a good template is already huge, but to have more than one at the same time means that the cost and effort invested in each template will not be too much.

March 30 update on a few common pitfalls of outsourced app development.

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Common pit one:

Customers ask the outsourcing company do you The customer asked the outsourcing company you have any well-known cases? The outsourcing company said that there are ah, the United States, the public comment, Ctrip, the first store (name a first and second line, or the third line has a certain degree of popularity app example) is what we do / is our case.

90% of this case is to steal the concept or pure fraud. It doesn't matter if the company you're looking for is really a big company with hundreds of people or a small company with only a few people.

The reality is that any app you've heard of that's famous is basically an internet company that recruits its own people to do the work, and it's unlikely to be outsourced. You can search in Baidu for any app name you've heard of or internet company name + recruitment 2 words, you can see that they are hiring a lot of programmer engineers for a long time, at the same time, the company long-term stocked dozens to hundreds, or even thousands of people in the technical team.

Even if you really look for outsourcing, it may be the first phase of the earliest startup looking for outsourcing, but they later became famous for that system with the initial outsourcing to do, has not been the same thing is not a thing, the business code has been completely different.

Outsourcing is a low-cost trial-and-error thing, and it's likely to be scrapped as soon as you don't use it. The earliest outsourced development is to find a dropshipping before, but basically not officially used directly scrapped to recruit their own people to do it again. But this outsourcing company may be in the N years after the drop car bullish will jump out with the customer said: drop car is my customer case, drop car is what I do. The use of the concept of stealing and customers do not understand will not be more serious. DDT currently looking for them to do is not because they are bullish, but DDT may also be pitched by them.

There are also some outsourcing companies in this very famous app company team startup, with the team's founder bragged about it, but also just a little bragging, may not have actual cooperation projects. Then this outsourcing company N years later found that the year together with the bragging about the guy did successful, this time he jumped out to say XX is my client, XXApp is our client case.

There is another situation is, such as a large Internet company, such as Ctrip or Dianping or store, they usually develop the time will be too busy, and occasionally will find some outsourcing company for part of the personnel outsourcing to a few technicians to come over to help do a few months of temporary miscellaneous work. Generally are miscellaneous contact point marginalized no technical content of the things, not in touch with the core part of the business code. But this time the outsourcing company will say, "We do the public comment. It's all about changing concepts and making yourself look good.

There is also a little relationship is not involved, forced deception to enhance customer trust. The first thing you need to do is to get rid of all the stuff that you've been doing.

In fact, you can do a simple experiment, you in Baidu or any other platform company looking for app outsourcing development company, you will encounter N official website has a public review, or at home point, Ctrip, the United States and other apps is his customer case, or their business personnel personally with you to blow such bull.

In fact, these Internet companies do not know that they have been cooperated with, there is a terrier is said to have eaten a KFC is KFC's strategic partners, and once the oil is Sinopec's strategic partners. In the field of app outsourcing really do so many companies, not to mention the small, and even a large number of outsourcing companies have been listed to blow such bull. The company's goal is to make sure that the company is able to provide the best possible service to its customers.

Common pit two:

Outsourcing company to your contract must be carefully read, many times the customer is deceived by their own company is a legal but also the same deceived. Because your legal and lawyers simply can not read those seemingly specialized technical words. So do not know whether he is bullshit or reasonable. By the acceptance criteria and development requirements of these blocks. Basically, if the party company does not understand the technology, even if there is a professional legal affairs is too easy to be cheated.

Generally reflected in the contract on the needs of the description of the contract is not detailed or the root of the contract did not mention the needs, only to do a so-and-so app, how much money when the delivery. Such a contract is not useful at all, you discuss between you to do a so-and-so app only your own verbal discussion of the needs, but if you do not have a very detailed implementation of the contract, the final outsourcing company to give you a random thing can also be delivered. It's not even the earliest thing you've discussed, because there's no evidence in the contract to prove what you're trying to do.

Similarly, there are development methods (native or hybrid, H5 or shell), acceptance criteria are what these if not mentioned, every time in advance was buried bombs, encountered a liar you go to court are blind. Simply can not sue people, is a legal fraud.

Generally responsible companies in the contract will be very detailed to a very long demand for documents, according to the size of the project at least dozens of pages, which have their respective prototype diagrams and requirements. The technology used, the project structure, development methods and so on are very clear.

This document is a very important attachment to the contract, which describes in detail what your project is going to look like. If there is no this, both sides signed the contract are actually blindfolded. To do what there is no definition, when the time to take a mess of things to deliver is not a violation of the contract.

This seems to be common sense things in fact, most laymen do not know, I have seen at least a few dozen outsourcing development every year was cheated is pit in this place.

Party A if you don't pay attention to this, even if you are cheated and sued to where it is useless. Because others did not violate the contract. Your contract is simply a scrap of paper.

The app outsourcing pit is very, very deep. The best way is that the party's own company has a know-how technology can be involved in the selection of developers and gradually hand over. In the future, there is time to slowly update, I hope to help people who really want to start their own business.

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Recently a lot of friends asked me whether to do development, if the project development demand can directly private letter me or wechat me to exchange. Specializing in O2O e-commerce and intelligent Internet of Things direction?

A two:

From the 2013 founding of the Internet development company has been more than three years, for the App development cost estimates are involved every day one of the work. Because App development according to the complexity, the number of function points, platform requirements and other factors, the price will have a lot of differences, so ignore these factors for the time being, from the personnel input to assess the cost of App development.

Assuming that the development of an App, the workload invested in 200 man-days of work (according to our contact with most of the App project, most of the App project workload man-days invested in an average of 150-250 days or so), the need to develop the Android side, the iOS side, the back-end management system (referred to as the CMS) of the three platforms, in the event of their own team, the project requires staffing. The project requires staffing: a product manager, a project manager, a UI designer, two background development engineers, two Android development engineers, two iOS development engineers, two testers. According to this staffing, according to the average market salary of each personnel accounting, you can get the following list:

Product Manager => Monthly salary: 10K Commitment: 10 days

Project Manager => Monthly salary: 12K Commitment: 10 days

UI Designer => Monthly salary: 8K Commitment: 10 days

Project Manager => Monthly salary: 12K Commitment: 10 days

Project Manager => Monthly salary: 10K Commitment: 10 days

Android Development Engineer => 10K/month; 50 days

iOS Development Engineer => 10K/month; 50 days

Backend Development Engineer => 9K/month; 50 days

Tester Engineer => 7K/month; 20 days

Testing Engineer => 7K/month.

Note: The above staff salaries are based on the salaries in Guangzhou at the beginning of 2016 as a reference standard, and it is assumed that all staff have about two years of work experience. Different cities, different experience levels, the salary will have a relatively large difference. For example, the salary of the North will be higher, more than three years of experience in the development of staff wages are generally more than 10K.

This calculation, a 200 person days workload of the App project, the development of the labor required for the basic wage expenditure: about 10W, plus employee social security, welfare, equipment, venues, personnel management and other costs, should be almost close to the cost of 14W, for the time being! Not counting the personnel gap, recruitment costs, project risks and other factors. This is for a company that already has a mature App development team needs to pay the price, for the complete lack of App development team and related development experience of the company, this cost is estimated to need to at least double, the development cycle to pull a long time, basically in order to achieve the former similar effect.

In terms of most App projects, the development of an app standard project requires the development of a set of backend management system (CMS) + Android client + iOS client, the development cost of most projects ranging from 12 - 25 million, depending on the complexity of the function of the App, the quality of the requirements, the development of which platforms and other factors to determine the specific price. In addition, individual part-time, team or studio, or professional app development company, the cost of the offer will have a relatively large gap, the quality of the development will also have a relatively large gap, the general cost of the offer: individual < team < company, and the quality of the offer is also directly proportional to the price: individual part-time < team < company.

So, what is the app in the quote as a specific quote reference standard? Whether it is an individual, a team, or a different company, the industry's offer evaluation method is to the amount of workload to determine the cost of the offer, that is, the entire project needs to be invested in how many person days development, each person day by how much money charges, the two parameters can be multiplied to get the total development costs. For example, the development of an O2O App project, Android (50 man days) + iOS (50 man days) + background management system (50 man days), the total number of developer days that is 150 people, if each person day by 1200 charges, the total development cost of the entire project that is 18 million.

Many outsiders may not understand how to develop an app with such a high cost.

Standing in the line of people to understand the situation, simply do a dissection:

The development of an App project staffing is more complex. The development of a website only requires one end of the developer that can be, and the development of apps require three end of the developer, usually also relative to the same function of the website development cost of three times the workload. app project staffing basic configuration: product manager, project manager, a UI designer, backend development engineers two, Android development engineers two, iOS development engineers two, testers two. Here is the professional App development company, the general individual or team may be a person will be multi-tasking, so the development of the project quality can not be guaranteed;

App development of labor costs relative to the website to be higher. Usually a developer with one or two years of experience in Android or iOS development, the cost of labor to reach about 10,000 (due to the current market environment of the higher demand for development talent, making the technology development of the labor cost is also higher). Usually the basic labor cost of an app project will reach 6-10 million, plus employee benefits, equipment, venues, personnel management, marketing costs and business communication costs, basically the basic input cost of an app project will go to about 12-15 million. This does not take into account the staff of the gap period, the cost of recruitment, project risk and other factors. This is for a company that already has a mature app development team needs to pay the price, for the complete lack of app development team and related development experience for the company, the cost is estimated to need to at least double, the development cycle to pull a long time, basically in order to achieve the former similar effect.

In summary, how much money is needed to develop an app, the need for a comprehensive assessment of the app's functional requirements, quality requirements, the need to develop which platforms end, in order to assess the need to invest in how much manual design and development, you can basically estimate the cost of development of the app. There is an old saying that "you get what you pay for", which also applies to the custom app development industry. Of course, it is recommended that when looking for app development team, comparison of several, after all, there are still some contracting teams in the industry to raise the price of the situation, there are also a lot of low-priced malicious competition, which has led to the development of a lot of projects out of the quality of completely uncontrollable, resulting in a number of entrepreneurial projects halfway to death.