If you have landed here, I assume you must be struggling to choose the best mobile app development company, as choosing the one among the tons is a seemingly tricky affair.
Realizing the increased use of smartphones, businesses seek to gain their consumers’ attention through mobile apps. As per Statista, in the first quarter of 2021, there were 3.48 million apps available in Google Play Store and 2.22 million apps in App Store. The mobile industry is flourishing but not all businesses and entrepreneurs are able to reap the benefits.
Choosing the right app development partner is one of the essential steps in transforming an app idea into reality. Identifying an excellent mobile app development company is not a cakewalk, and it remains a puzzle to many. Business owners and entrepreneurs need to consider many factors while choosing a company that can deliver the expectations set in terms of user experience and revenue generation. You need to find a company that will understand your vision, provide the required technical expertise, and deliver an app that meets your needs.
Tips on how to choose a mobile app development company
Use this guide to evaluate potential IT companies and ensure you select the right company for your project. The criteria will help you find the company that can successfully build a robust mobile app.
- Understand your business requirements
- Check their portfolio and expertise
- Customer reviews and feedback
- Understand the pricing
- Understand their design and development process
- Interview developers
- Project delivery timelines
- Communication
- Post-development maintenance and support
- Client Oriented
- Transparency and security
Let’s understand each parameter in detail.
1. Understand your business requirements
Before you reach out to any app development services company, you need to have an exact idea about your application requirements. You need to know what problem you are trying to solve and who is your target market. Document your answers to these questions like – What is the purpose of your app? Who is the target market? Who are your competitors? If possible, what will be the right platform and tech stack for your app? What are the must-have features and good to have features for your app? When would you like to launch the app?
The questions outlined above should help you move forward and ensure delivering the right requirements to the app development company. It is vital that you research and carefully plan when taking your app idea to the next level.
2. Check the company’s portfolio and expertise
These are the most important things to consider when hiring an app development company. Explore the work delivered by the company in the past. Go through the case studies and see whether the company has the expertise, experience, and skill set aligned with your requirements. Have a look at the apps developed by the company and verify their functionality and usability.
When you think about outsourcing mobile app development, it is essential to look for the partner’s expertise and understanding of platforms. Look for the competencies and tech skills they have on their plate to offer. You need to ensure that the company you will partner with can build all the features and functionalities and suggest the right frameworks for development. Explore if they have experience building iOS and Android apps and support cross-platform app development if you plan to launch your mobile app on multiple operating systems or platforms.
3. Customer reviews and feedback
One of the most reliable ways to identify a star development company for custom mobile app development is by going through its past and present clientele. To get all the information about the company, you can contact the clients for the same.
Look for the reviews, ratings, and feedback provided by the previous clients. This will give you a better picture of the company’s expertise and partner relationship. Several trustworthy websites list the top app development companies based on market research, customer reviews, and analysis. Online directories such as Clutch, GoodFirms, and AppFutura enable businesses to find and choose from leading companies based on the ranking and reviews and make the right decision about hiring the company.
4. Understand the pricing structure
We understand cost is the most critical factor to take into consideration while hiring an app development company, but this shouldn’t affect your decision-making. We understand your project may have a limited budget; make sure you give the company an idea of your budget. Don’t fall for low cost, it comes with certain drawbacks.
The cost for app development greatly depends on the app features, functionality, platform, developer’s chargers, tech stack, architecture, and the time it takes to build an app. Simple apps cost less, while complex apps cost more depending on the functionality. Ask the potential partners to provide you with a clear and detailed breakdown of the development in advance so it would be transparent for you and try to adjust the cost initially if possible.
App development companies may not be able to give you a 100 percent accurate quote during the consideration stage, mainly because the work requirements might change in the development phase. However, ensure you’re getting a solid estimate based on the requirements you can provide and a good understanding of how the company communicates the pricing changes.
5. Understand their design and development process
Now it’s time to pay attention to the technical details. It is crucial to look at how each app development agency you talk to will approach development. You’ll need a good understanding of their processes and how their design and development team will work together to build your app. Try to understand how they create the workflow for developing an application. An app development life cycle typically has 6 phases, from defining the business strategy to adding the app in iOS and Play store. You must know what process the company follows at each step of software application development.
Also, check if the company follows the coding standards and frameworks. This lets developers quickly and easily work together on the project, using reusable libraries, components, and tools necessary for code maintenance. If not, this could be a potential warning that the company is disorganized. Also, if you ever leave the company and bring the work to another agency, it may be hard for them to jump in abruptly.
Design is the first thing a user interacts with. Be sure your app is designed according to the most current user experience principles. Your app design should offer a seamless user experience and appealing design. Look for mobile app development companies having some great UI/UX app designers capable of delivering enticing designs to clients. Ask the company for an app design mockup at the time of the proposal. This will help you assess their UI/UX expertise and help you determine how well they understand your idea or project.
6. Interview developers
Developing a great mobile app takes technical expertise, skills, and an understanding of the business behind mobile app development. This is only possible with a team of talented developers behind us. In addition to case studies, you also have to look at the team you may end up working with. It is a good practice to interview the app developers who will be working on your app. Get to know the team, their skills, background, and overall experience. Furthermore, you can share your preferences for specific tech developers with the company.
7. Project delivery timelines
The time your product is launched should fit the target market needs otherwise, your app idea may fail. The on-time delivery of the app facilitates a planned marketing strategy for the project.
App development companies work on multiple projects at the same time. Before the project starts, ask the company the number of projects they’re working on currently and the number of developers in their organization. Ask them about the estimated project timeline. It is also important to confirm the dedicated resources available to work on your project. This way, you ensure that the company can efficiently respond to any iterations or unforeseen challenges during the project’s execution.
You can also consider going for an MVP (minimum viable product) for the app, which also reduces the development cost and time.
8. Communication
Communication is the key to establishing a successful business relationship. Real-time communication is a basic requirement for smooth and efficient collaboration throughout the development process. A professional and customer-focused company will update you at every stage of the development process. The project manager should provide you with access to all the communication and project collaboration tools.
Ask the company about the type of tools they use to track the project’s progress. Do they follow an agile methodology that ensures faster development and transparent communication? What project management tools do they use? What communication tools do they use to communicate in real-time? How often do they communicate with the client daily or weekly basis? These are just a few questions you might want to discuss with potential vendors.
Your Involvement – Make sure you keep communicating with the development company throughout the development process and provide them with all the necessary inputs they may need from your side. There will be numerous iterations during the project; therefore, your involvement is crucial for app development.
9. Post-development maintenance and support
Building apps and then maintaining them is a long-term activity, and the company should be able to cater to support your product in the future. One can’t rely on individual developers for this. Before signing up with any development company, you should know if the company will provide post-development maintenance and support in the future.
First, enquire whether the vendor helps your app get listed in Play Store and App Store. Once your app is launched in the marketplace, you will have to release updates, fix bugs, and add new features or functionality from time to time. Hence, it is crucial to understand the company’s policy around app maintenance and support. Post-development services depend entirely upon the development contract signed between you and the company. Either you can go for a package that includes post-development maintenance or opt for hourly or monthly maintenance support.
10. Client Focused
What’s more important than anything else is knowing the company you are partnering with is interested in your business and not just app development. Your partner company should be able to stick to you through the product’s lifecycle and not just abandon it after launching it.
Your relationship with your app development partner is likely to last for many years, and building trust between the two partners is essential. Thus, look for a partner who will support you with meaningful collaboration focused on maximum flexibility in meeting your goals and addressing your challenges.
11. Transparency and Security
Before partnering with any company, make sure you sign an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement). A non-disclosure agreement is beneficial and ensures the complete safety and security of your app and app idea. You want to keep your app idea and concept confidential before it finally reaches the app stores. The development company should be ready to sign a non-disclosure agreement before starting with the partnership.
Also, the ownership of the mobile app and its coding belongs to you. Make sure you ask the company for signing a copyright agreement that states that the client is the owner of the source code, design, and other contents.
Finally, ask the right questions!
At last, we will leave you with a set of questions that may help you hire the best mobile app development company. These are some fundamental questions that will help you evaluate the company on an initial level. We recommend you set up certain criteria based questions on your unique project needs and then take it up with the company that meets most of those criteria.
- Can you build apps for different operating systems?
- What pricing models do you offer?
- How long will it take to build an app as per my requirements?
- How many in-house developers do you have, and how skilled are they?
- What communications channels or tools do you use? How often will you keep me updated on the progress?
- What development process do you follow?
- Do you follow coding standards and use frameworks?
- What’s your approach to user experience and design principles in app development?
- Will I get a dedicated team and a project manager?
- What approach do you follow when it comes to quality assurance?
- Will you help us submit the app to the play store and app store?
- How will you ensure security for my app?
- Will you maintain my app post-launch?
The right app development team will help you set off the right foot on your app’s success journey.
If you’re ready to build an app for your business, let us know, and we can start putting together a strategy for a successful launch. At Scalex, we encourage meaningful partnership focused on maximum flexibility in addressing your challenges and achieving your goals. We can develop apps for multiple platforms and provide ongoing support to test, launch, and market the app. We have a full-fledged team of experienced developers capable enough to deliver quality solutions within the timeline. Reach out to us, and we will serve you the best.
Nikita Bajaj
A Digital Marketer at Scalex, Nikita is devoted to her motto - to write simply and clearly about complicated things. Backed up with 6+ years of experience in marketing, she creates informative but exciting articles on technologies.