We are developing an iphone app for business but we are finding it very hard to put a price to the app? Does anyone know a rule of thumb, have examples or have any tips on what we could charge. I know it is hard without knowing the product. But for instance would they pay an initial license fee and then a monthly or yearly maintenance fee? And ball park what could that be - it is on the basic side, no augmented reality or any fancy stuff?
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Have a look on the Apps market and see what comparable products cost. That is the comparison your potential customers will make. |
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Regarding base price: http://theymakeapps.com is the best resource. I suggest charging 50% upfront, and 50% upon binary submission (after the client tests it and clears it for submission). Let the client know very clearly that Apple has the final say in app approval; that is why you must charge at binary submission and not approval. Of course follow all guidelines and make sure that the app is actually compliant with all of Apple's rules. Set a monthly maintenance fee that is 25% of the base price, divided by 12 - the standard ad agency rate is to charge an annual 25% maintenance fee for their web based properties. This fee covers any adjustments should the app be rejected, updates to iOS 5, bug fixes, etc. |
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Hey there, I want to suggest you the great book "Don't just roll the dice" by Neil Davidson. It's great and it covers topics about how much pricing the software we love to write... and we love to sell to the world :-) It's free to download so it's a good resource. By the way thanks Neil for writing this one! |
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I've taken alot of jobs through taskcity where my team has developed apps for others. We always charge on a per hour basis estimate. So we look at other apps we've created and then get as many details as we can about the app we will develop, this helps us estimate the time we will take to create the app, then you have to see about testing. Sometimes clients want us to test for them and other times they prefer to do the testing on their own. After testing we will usually make any adjustments that are needed although there are times that the client has people that can to this. We charge a slightly higher fee per hour for "polishing" an app. Once the app is ready, there have also been clients that require us to submit it to the app store, this is always a flat fee unless we feel there are special circumstances. Finally we also offer updates and maintenance at a similar hourly fee to that of dev cost. Since I represent a US firm that works with a beijing r&d team, it's hard for me to comment on what your cost should be though. We can often undercut most bids though your not going to get too far ahead that way. We have done basic apps for anywhere from $500 USD to large game dev for tens of thousands. Most apps fall around the 1000-5000 price range though. Hope this helps, good luck. |
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