As a struggling mobile Internet entrepreneur, the most frequently asked question by lay friends is "How much does it cost to build a website?" or "How much does it cost to build an APP?"

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Three years ago, I naively thought that making an APP would cost at most 5,000 yuan, and a website would cost less than 2,000 yuan. Any price higher than this is just kidding. Later, I did spend 1,000 yuan to buy a template web page and 5,000 yuan to buy a template APP, and did these stupid things. The final result is just like the huge difference between the buyer’s show and the seller’s show on Taobao, and the money is wasted.

In line with the principle of trusting heaven and earth and not believing in evil, we began to form our own technical team, from UI, to backend, front-end, Android, Apple programmers and product managers, forming a most basic APP development team. So far, I have made five apps, three of which have received financing, and the other two are government support projects. After paying wages to the team for nearly a year, I have a very clear idea of ??how much it costs to develop an APP from scratch.

Today, let’s calculate the cost from the perspective of an entrepreneur

First of all, if you are also an entrepreneur and full of passion, then the product must be developed by yourself. Because starting a business is a very exciting thing, and all aspects must be the best. It would be unsafe to hand over product technology development to outsourcing, and we thought so at the time. It’s good that I understand technology and have a relevant professional background. But as far as I know, ordinary entrepreneurs inevitably don’t understand it. Therefore, if you want to make an APP and use this as your starting point, you first need to know the minimum staffing required.

Recruitment

Includes some common tasks in the process of developing a new product, 1 architect and back-end developer + 1 Android developer + 1 iOS developer + 1 product manager + front-end There is 1 developer + 1 designer, and you cannot guarantee that every position you recruit will have qualified people, or unexpected changes may cause development to stagnate, and someone must be able to rescue the situation. It is normal for employees in startup companies to have unstable employment. It is estimated that most entrepreneurs want to launch product development as quickly as possible. Assume that the product launch period you want is 3 to 6 months.

The first step: Recruiting people

Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, first-tier cities and Shenzhen cities are fine. As long as there are sufficient funds, there will be no worries about talents, and resumes will be screened one by one. But in a second- and third-tier city like Changzhou, it took seven months to recruit a WEB front-end employee before someone submitted a resume for an interview. What’s even more frightening is that we are simultaneously paying for various non-professional platforms such as “Lagou”, “Worry-Free 511”, “Zhilian Recruitment” and even “Ganji”, as well as Moments, to search endlessly. It took us 5 months to recruit from the time the first person joined until the team was barely able to start working.

A better experience here is to first put all your efforts into finding a like-minded technical director. A high salary is a must. But if the salary is high, he can help you avoid detours in development and save money.

So the cost of the first step is probably--recruitment platform website membership fee: average 1,000 yuan/family*3=3,000 yuan. Then it is assumed that you have recruited all the jobs in 3 months.

An average of four people will be paid wages in these three months. During the probation period, 80% of the salary is calculated, and five insurances and one housing fund are not required. Such talents in Changzhou generally need to recruit people with at least one year of development experience, otherwise the quality of development will be difficult to guarantee.

The average salary of such talents is about 8K. So you have to pay for these three months (8,000 yuan * 80% trial period * 4 people * 3 months = 76,800).

Step 2: Venue

A team of 8 people can Choose a mid-to-low-end office space. This type of office space in Changzhou costs about 70 yuan/_ and requires about 100 square meters. It is not easy to find.

Entrepreneurship incubator is a very good choice. In the current general context, there are many incubators now and it is easy to find them. The rent of the incubator will be relatively cheap or even free. Before accepting the entrepreneurial team, an agreement will usually be signed, which requires the site as a condition for equity exchange or priority investment rights. As for whether the incubator is cost-effective, it is up to the entrepreneurial team to weigh it themselves. Including water, electricity and property, around 10,000 a month is considered relatively economical.

Step 3: Equipment

The price of an ordinary ergonomic chair is about 150 yuan. If you don’t buy an ergonomic chair, use an ordinary chair instead, and add a table to share the cost. Tables and chairs cost about 200.

These one-time payments can be done with 6,000 yuan, even if you have to pay for your head.

Including the computers of designers and programmers, the configuration is 4,000 units, with a total of seven computers including one IOS computer. To develop a mobile APP, you need to provide prototypes, which can be second-hand. Four Android systems cost 2,000 yuan each. Four Apple systems cost 3,500 yuan each.

Okay, let’s calculate 6,000 yuan + 4,000 yuan * 7 + 2,000 yuan * 4 + 3,500 * 4 = 56,000 yuan

Step 4: Get the tools together and officially start

Before APP development, you know what kind of APP software you want to make, but generally you don’t know what exactly you want to do, what your needs are, and what your product positioning is. At this time, the product manager needs to take action, communicate with the boss, clarify needs, and find product positioning.

This stage will take about two weeks. After careful analysis, the product positioning and first-phase demand will be clearly thought out. During this period, architects can begin to conceive of the technical architecture of the product, but construction has not yet officially started. After the product positioning and early needs are determined, it is necessary to conceive the product name, demand research, competitive product research and analysis, register domain names, purchase servers and peripheral basic capabilities (such as CDN storage, SMS service, message push, etc.), trademarks (unregistered trademarks) , many teams have suffered this loss), rushing to register domain names and design logos. This stage will take at least a week if the plan is not changed midway and the product requirements and positioning are not changed. At this time, the prototype of the product and the rudiment of the technical architecture are also presented, and it is basically ready for real work.

This step assumes that the domain name does not need to be purchased at a high price, and the total cost is 15,000 yuan per year.

Among them 2000 for SMS and 1000 for server per month. Domain names and other trademark registrations cost 2,000 each, and the one-time investment for trademarks, software, and LOGO is about 10,000.

Step 5: Product version planning and architecture design

After everything seems to be ready , the product begins to sort out the requirements and plan the version according to the priority of the requirements. According to the product's development direction, the architect begins to enter the development environment, production environment deployment, and basic code research and development stages.

It is necessary to mention that the two common ways to implement functions in APPs are native and webview. The advantages and disadvantages of these two methods are beyond the scope of this article. Generally, in order to ensure the experience, The native method is mainly used, and the webview method is supplemented. When developing in a native way, versioning is particularly important.

First, after the APP is developed, it needs to be put on the APPstore (assuming we only list iOS and Android). The iOS APPStore has a lengthy application review cycle, and you must put the next few small and medium-sized versions in advance. The functions have been planned well so that you will not get confused at this link;

Secondly, when your APP is installed on the user’s mobile phone, you definitely want him to run the latest version most of the time. If your version is updated too frequently, users will find it annoying.

It seemed that the process went very smoothly. After the product manager clarified the product ideas, he began to prepare the plan for product V1.0.

Common tasks for developing new products from scratch:

(1) Product official website. The product official website is the face of the product, company, and team, allowing users to access the product as quickly as possible after entering. Quickly understand your positioning and product features, that is, what kind of people are solving what kind of problems and what kind of things are being done.

(2) User Agreement. Yes, if users want to register and use your product, you have to draft your user agreement and continuously communicate with lawyers or legal affairs for adjustments.

(3) Seed users. You have to think about where your first batch of seed users come from, how to organize them, and how to manage them. They are the first group of people to test your product and are crucial to verifying your product positioning, discovering product problems, and improving product experience. .

(4) Basic data reporting plan. You need to know what data you need to collect to optimize and adjust your product design and think about the direction of your product once the product is released without knowing anything about user behavior.

(5) UI design and interaction standard formulation. There is no guarantee that the product's UI and interaction will have an amazing effect on users as soon as it goes online, but it must be ensured that there is no problem with the consistency of the UI/interaction.

(6) Backend management system. Whether it is viewing data or content management, the backend management system is an effective assistant for your work and cannot be missed.

(7)APP. This is a top priority for your product and should be monitored closely.

If everything goes well, then in 3-6 months, the first version of your APP should have its first prototype.

Internal testing and polishing stage

In this stage, you need to maintain a close relationship with the design, R&D, and seed users?