Social media is a source of both connection and entertainment for around five billion users globally. By developing your own social media platform, you could create a new way for online audiences to interact with one another and find community.
But how much does social media app development cost? Your final cost will depend on a number of factors: which features your app offers, which platforms it’s available on, who is developing the app, and how much you’re paying them.
This article will take a look at these factors, how you can decrease your costs, and an alternative method of app development.
What a social media app offers users
A social media app is a platform that allows users to share images, videos, and text content with followers or friends. These apps encourage engagement by offering features like comments, direct messages, reactions, and notifications. Users can typically tag and search content to find topics they care about and connect with people who share their interests.
Social media users usually sign up for accounts by providing an email address or other contact information, creating a username, and setting a password. Businesses and organizations can also create social media profiles to reach potential customers, showcase their products and services, and enhance brand recognition and fan loyalty.
What features to include in a social media app
Must-have features
To keep your users engaged, your social media app should have certain features, including
- Image sharing: Even if your app isn’t primarily an image-based platform, supporting image sharing gives users flexibility in the type of content they can post and makes the app visually engaging.
- Likes, comments, and replies: Interaction is at the heart of successful social media platforms. Features that allow users to react to other users’ posts, see reactions to their own posts, and have conversations encourage engagement.
- Profile editing: Social media profiles are an opportunity for users to express themselves, so your platform should let users personalize their profiles, for example, by changing their display names, profile pictures, and bios.
- Push notifications: Notifications remind users to visit your app by sending alerts each time there’s an interaction with their content. (It’s important to strike a balance between keeping users engaged and not overwhelming them with too many notifications, however.)
- Search: Your app should include a way for users to search for other users, organizations and brand accounts, and specific topics they’re interested in.
Advanced features
There are already massive social media platforms with millions of users, so a new social media app needs features that make it stand out. Your app could include
- In-app image and video editing: Rather than requiring users to capture, edit, and import visual content from another app, include content editing features within your platform to streamline the user experience and encourage platform use.
- Location tagging: Allowing posts to include location tags can make it easier for people to connect with other users who live in their community.
- Voice or video calling: Voice and video calling features enable communication between users and can make it easier for people in different countries to connect with each other.
- Image filters: Users apply filters to their images and videos to enhance visual appeal — for example, by adjusting the saturation or brightness of a photo, or by using augmented reality (AR) overlays to significantly alter the surrounding environment in inventive ways.
- Live streaming: Users stream live video that other users watch and comment on in real time.
Additional features
These features can enhance the user experience, but they aren’t strictly necessary:
- Advanced admin controls: While certain features, like blocking other users, are essential for ensuring platform safety, more granular controls — such as letting users limit post visibility and mute other users without unfollowing them — while not strictly necessary, can enhance the user experience.
- Customizable user interface: Your platform should already have an easy-to-use and visually appealing interface, but you can further enhance user experience and accessibility by offering customization options, including a selection of themes, different font sizes, and light and dark modes.
How much social media app development costs on average
Social media apps can vary widely in feature richness and complexity, making it difficult to definitively state the cost of building one. However, based on estimates for developing each feature, you can expect to pay anywhere between $30,000 and $250,000, or even more.
The more complex your app is, the more it will cost to build. Even a relatively simple app is time-consuming to develop, test, and update. What’s more, iOS and Android apps have different programming requirements, so if you’re creating an app from scratch for both platforms, you’ll essentially have to build — and pay for — two apps.
Here are some rough estimates of what building something similar to your favorite social media apps may cost:
- App like Instagram: $30,000 to $500,000
- App like Snapchat: $40,000 to $300,000
- App like WhatsApp: $35,000 to $250,000
- App like TikTok: $35,000 to $300,000
There are a few key factors you need to consider when calculating social media app development costs.
App complexity
The more complex your social media app is, the more time it will take to develop. More complex apps have more features and a user interface with more functionality, which require an increase in development hours. All of this leads to a larger invoice at the end of your project.
For example, an app like Instagram would have more complex features than an app like Snapchat, and would likely be more expensive to build as a result.
Basic social media apps may cost from $30,000 to $50,000, while more complex apps could range from $100,000 to $300,000 or more.
App platform
Your app’s platform will also determine your bottom line. Native apps optimized for Android and iOS, web-based apps, and hybrid platforms each have different costs. Native apps must be compatible with the hardware in users’ phones, and they have to meet separate operating system requirements to work for both iOS and Android, making them the most expensive.
Hybrid apps and web-based apps aren’t as seamless to use as native apps, but they’re typically cheaper to build.
Native app development can range from $50,000 to $100,000 per platform. Hybrid apps can cost between $40,000 to $80,000, and web-based apps can cost around $30,000 to $60,000.
User interface/user experience (UI/UX) design
App design is very important for appealing to new users and retaining them. It might be worth it to you to pay extra for an app that’s easy to navigate and visually engaging.
Apps like TikTok rely on an effective user interface to keep people engaged. However, this requires heavy investment in design, which is why these apps’ top-end costs are likely higher than those of more straightforward apps like WhatsApp.
Depending on the complexity of your design and platform, UI/UX design can cost anywhere from $5,500 to $6,000.
Features
While having advanced features is important, each feature you add to your app will contribute to your final cost. How expensive developing a feature is depends on the complexity of the specific feature — costs can range from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars.
Push notifications can only cost around $650, while video calls can cost more than $5,500 due to development time. Communication features typically cost more, as they can take longer to develop. This is why apps rich in communication features, like WhatsApp, can take 1,000-plus hours and around $200,000 to finish.
Development team rate
While complexity, platform, design, and features will add different costs, when you’re working with an outside developer, your final cost will ultimately be determined by the rate of the developer you’re working with and how long they take to complete the project.
Developers with different levels of experience and areas of expertise will charge different rates. Larger firms of developers will also charge different rates than freelance developers working independently.
Developers in different parts of the world will also have different costs. If you find a more affordable developer in another country, keep in mind that you could run into issues like communication difficulties and time zone complications.
According to Clutch, the average hourly rate of app development companies on their platform is $25 to 49 per hour, but the rate can also be much higher.
Developing a highly usable, feature-rich social media app is expensive. There are ways to reduce costs, however.
How to reduce social media app development costs
There are a number of ways to reduce social media app development costs. Consider a few options:
- Shop around to see which developers have the best offers. Developers may have different hourly rates and give you different time and cost estimates for your project based on their experience, team size, and location.
- Launch your app on just one platform, either iOS or Android, and introduce it on the other platform at a later time. While this will limit the number of initial users, delaying the release of your app can help stretch your budget, and it could even build anticipation if your app is well-received on the first platform.
- Focus on building and publishing a minimum viable product (MVP) — an app that’s usable but doesn’t yet include all desired features. Your MVP can bring in revenue and feedback from early users, which you can use to further develop the app and add more features.
While these and other methods can cut social media app development costs, building an app from scratch is an inherently expensive undertaking.
Fortunately, no-code tools like Jotform Apps can help you create an app without the need for hiring a developer, potentially saving you time and money.
How to build an app for free
Jotform Apps lets users build an app by simply dragging and dropping prebuilt app components in a simple builder tool — and you don’t need to know any code to do it. Even if you’ve never built an app before, Jotform Apps makes it easy.
You can get started by customizing one of 700-plus templates, including social media marketing and social media management templates. Use the App Builder to modify the design, add new app elements, integrate widgets into the app, and more. You can also use Jotform Apps to design a new app completely from scratch. Just drag and drop the elements you want in the App Builder and customize the design as desired.
You can use your app to house forms. Submissions received through your app can be reviewed in a database format with Jotform Tables and turned into customizable reports with Jotform’s Report Builder. Jotform also offers more than 240 software integrations.
Jotform Apps provides a number of powerful features to help you create a useful final product, including
- Powerful prebuilt app elements
- 70-plus app widgets
- Compatibility with all devices
- Flexible app design
- 30-plus payment gateways
- The ability to house multiple forms
- Data management with Jotform Tables
- Permissions management
- Sharing and publishing options
- A customizable splash screen and app icon
Jotform Apps offers a number of helpful guides and resources to assist you in your app-building journey.
Get started using Jotform Apps for free.
FAQs
How much does it cost to build an app like TikTok?
Building complex social media apps like TikTok can cost anywhere from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The exact cost of building an app like TikTok depends on the complexity of the app, the country where the app is being developed, the app developer’s hourly rate, which platforms your app is compatible with, and other factors.
How long does it take to build a social media app?
The length of time it takes a developer to build a social media app depends on the apps’ features and complexity, but you can expect it to take from three months to a year.
How do you build a social media app?
If you have coding knowledge, you can try to build a social media app yourself. Otherwise, you’ll need to hire a developer to help you build an app. You could also use no-code app builders, like Jotform Apps, to build an app in a more cost-effective way, with features like drag-and-drop interfaces, customizable templates, and premade app building blocks.
Photo by Michael Burrows
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