Slack is a popular messaging application that offers instant messaging facilities. It has numerous features that make it a well-structured application perfect for interacting with your work partners. Having gained excellent recognition, it has become an inspiration for every chatting app development company. Thus, if you are looking to create an app like Slack, you can seek all the details regarding its excellent features and the cost associated with its creation.
In this article, we shall discuss all such required information that will cover the entire budget-related information to create an app like Slack.
Total App Cost Determination
Since there are no set standard costs for creating any apps like Slack, we can never define an ultimate cost for the app. However, you must know that developing such an app relies on numerous factors like the OS on which the app will be published, app complexity, a desired number of features, and the chosen development team.
If we talk about rough estimates, the approximate cost to develop a chatting app begins at $10,000 and may go beyond $50,000 as per all the above-mentioned factors.
When you plan and plot the cost aspect of the messaging app similar to Slack, there are four prime elements to deem, namely, planning cost, fixed cost, maintenance cost, and hidden costs. Let us discuss all these elements in detail.
1. Planning cost
To get an idea about the planning cost of the messaging app, you first need to decide how the users of that app will see, send and receive the messages. With answers to some common questions, you can easily get the range of the planning cost. First, you need to know how the app will notify the users in the room. Do you want the sender of the message to receive read recipients? Will everyone in the room have access to communicate with each other directly? What about the control access of the room? What are the payment options for the users?
Having answers to all these questions will allow you to estimate the planning cost. The approximate range for the phase will be $2800 to $3200.
2. Fixed Costing
After the planning cost phase, the basic fixed costing comes. In this, you have to break down the app into vital parts like design, frontend, backend, and marketing and the time taken to complete these sections. The designing part will consume approximately 150 hours and will range between $18000 and $22000. The frontend part will consume 250 hours and the backend part will consume 360 hours and the range of cost will be $30000 to $35000 and $50000 to $60000 respectively. At last, the site marketing will consume around 100 hours and cost will lie between $8000 and $12000.
3. Maintenance Costs
No matter what app you are developing, maintenance costs are the part and parcel of the whole process. There are tons of reasons when you need to provide support like OS upgrade, bug fixing, updates, new technology, new features, etc. Depending on the changes, the cost can range between $3000 and $12000.
4. Hidden costs
Some hidden costs come at the time of the development like bug fixing cost can vary, app promotion strategies can elevate the cost, surging demands of the whole development team, etc. These are the hidden costs that depend on the purpose, ideology, and criteria of the app. It may also include the initial marketing service cost that is offered by the company itself.
Some Tips while budgeting with the development team
Follow these given tips to stay safe from any cost discrepancies throughout the development lifecycle.
- Break down the cost into different categories and ask for the exact cost per additional functionality added.
- Ask about clear maintenance costs beforehand to avoid getting over-charged later.
- Never settle down for any hideous costs, be clear in communication from the beginning.
- Seek a contract of all the costs associated with development.
Conclusion
Now that you know about all the factors on which your chatting app like Slack will be created, it is time to look out for a reliable chatting app development company that lists down your specific requirements and then charges a reasonable price for the services. Go through all the pointers in the above guide to help you get an apt price of the application and not get befooled by the hefty words and technical jargon by the company.
