How To Successfully Choose A Mobile App Developer
I’ve been running Cloud Ten Labs (a mobile app development company) for almost three years now, and in that time I’ve learned a whole lot about the process of hiring people for mobile app development projects. Understanding certain aspects of app development is critical to choosing the right person or team. Below is a summary of some key points I think can help you make the right decision.
Agencies are better than freelancers
Far too often I see projects on Upwork saying something like “Freelancers only — no agencies!” Giving this just a little thought you will realize something very enlighening: virtually every single app on your phone was built by a team of experts, not by a freelancer. The logic behind this is pretty basic as well. The chance of you finding someone who is an expert at backend and database design, user interface design, user experience design, iOS development, Android development, and quality assurance is almost non-existent. That’s why the apps you use on a daily basis were built by teams of experts, not just by one or two people. Hiring a team of experts for anything will almost always result in significantly better results than only hiring one person.
You get what you pay for with mobile app development
It’s common for me to see projects where the budget is unrealistically low. $35 an hour or $1,500 for a mobile app sounds great until you realize what you get for that low price. The freelancers who are willing to build an app at these rates mostly live in very poor countries and in very poor conditions. You never want to have an app developer working on your project in the slums of India who went to a college that cost them $500 for a degree. It simply does not work out well in the end. These type of freelancers are infamous for delivering horrible code. You may even be convinced they will deliver a great product because their online feedback is good. This can be misleading because these freelancers often convince their clients to leave positive feedback in exchange for some huge discount after an unsuccessful outcome. Here’s an example I often see: A client hired a freelancer at $35/h to build them an app. The freelancer quoted them $3,500 and said the project would be completed in 2 months. Sounds great, right? Well two months later they are nowhere near completion, so the freelancer lets the client know there has been a personal emergency. Their mother unexpectedly passed away. You feel horrible about this tragedy. The freelancer requests you end the project and begs you not to make their life any more difficult than it already has become, so they discount the project by $1,000 if you will agree to leave them 5 stars. You are a good person, so you agree. After you leave the feedback they deliver you the code, which you give to another developer to complete the app. The new developer takes one look at the code and notifies you it is completely useless. You’re now out months of time and thousands of dollars. Worse off, you left the developer 5 stars for the horrible work and they almost certainly lied to you about their personal emergency.
Bugs are common, very common
Before I started Cloud Ten Labs I ran a quality assurance company for mobile apps. One of my biggest clients was a very famous entrepreneur. He had recently sold his company for $3 billion and was building a new mobile app to help people build professional networks. Due to his previous success he was able to raise $12 million to build the app. The team of developers he had were some of the best in the World, yet when I began testing his app I found almost one thousand bugs in the first week. Why is this? Software development is extremely complex, and no matter how good a developer is there will always be tons of bugs. Most people don’t expect this so I make sure to let them know early on that bugs are very common. You will always run into tons of them, and they will at times become quite frustrating. It’s part of the process though, so being prepared for them will make it a lot less upsetting.
Building apps takes a lot of time
“I need an iOS and Android app built and on the app stores in the next few weeks.” I get this request pretty much every week of my life. Our average app takes on average 200–300 hours to build, so allow a good amount of time for it to be built. You may find people who will agree to push your 200 hour app in 3 weeks, but I promise you the only way they can do that is by coding as fast as possible. Quality over quantity in very important in app development so you should never try to push a developer to rush code out.
The success of an app lies in marketing, not development
Another common question I get is “What is the most successful app you’ve ever built?” This question holds no value in regards to app development, because the success of any app lies in how it is marketed after it is built. Of course, you want a good quality app built but any app won’t become popular unless the marketing is done right. So my advice to clients is always this: have an iron-clad marketing strategy in place before the app is completed, or it will just sit on the app stores and go nowhere.
Building a scalable app should be standard
Most clients I talk to always want to know if we will build their app to scale quickly. They are concerned that if the app gains traction the structure may not be able to keep up with the growth. The cloud-based systems used now scale with ease. For example, we use AWS for almost all the apps we build. AWS can handle 100 users at start, and if the app gained traction and got 100,000 users in the first week we could adjust the server system to handle this with maybe 10 minutes of work. So you should expect all developers you talk with to be able to scale as a standard part of any app project.
Basic maintenance and bug fixes should be free
Any good developer or agency will always offer free bug fixes for at least the first month after the project is completed. If anyone tries to tell you they charge for bug fixes you should take this as a red flag. The only reason they would do this is because they know a lot of bugs will surface and they don’t want to fix their work for free. So make sure you always ask for free bug fixes for at least one month after the project has been completed.
Conclusion
Building a mobile app is a very complicated and timely process. Expect to pay a good amount to get a good product. These apps take hundreds of hours to build by large groups of experts. Even then, the best developers are still human. Expect issues, delays, and technical hurdles. Any good team will overcome them, and trust me when I say that once everything is done the joy of seeing your dream come to life is worth everything you invest in making it a reality.
