Estimated Cost to Build Best Online Community Platform App Development

In the words of Margaret J. Wheatley, “There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”

The word community means a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.

Now, when it comes to online communities, the essence is the same, but the place is different.

Online communities are not created by representation, but they are built by choice.

The cost to build an online community platform ranges between $10,000 to $50,000.

This the cost estimation for the MVP or the most viable product. The cost increases if you keep in adding more features.

Online communities are brand-specific. Out of the two, open-ended and closed online communities, we will talk about the latter

A person loyal to Nike will engage and interact with the Nike Community and not the Adidas community.

While working on community app development, we can get confused with the term social media app.

Because of several facets, a community application is similar to a social media platform.

But, the difference lies in the motive.

Yes, to build online community engagement platforms, you need a motive, an inspiration, or a vision to move forward.

Everything that we do to build a community management software is driven by this vision.

Along with the vision, you also need to identify your target audience by asking these questions.

1. Who is your ideal user? (Create a customer persona)
2. What is the work profile of your customer?
3. What are the goals of your customer?

To make out the cost of building online community engagement platforms, we need to work on a few things first.

Moving ahead, we will first try to understand the steps involved in building a community application.

First, we will look at the factors that affect the cost of building an online community platform.

This will be followed by the process to build the online community platform and then you will find a table with a detailed itinerary of the steps and costs involved.

But first, let’s understand why a brand needs an online community when we have Facebook or Reddit to deliver such experiences.

Why Brands Make Dedicated Online Community Platforms?

In a world where we have Facebook to create a community within a community, brands prefer developing exclusive online communities.

In the 1980s the motorcycle brand, Harley Davidson was about to shut down as they were not getting the required response and sales.

But today, the same Harley Davidson is one of the top 100 most powerful global brands.

How did that happen?

A Harvard Business Review study shared that Harley Davidson focussed on building a brand community.

They communicated and interacted with a passionate group of people who lived a life that was a personification of the brand.

Due to this, they could create an ethos of loyalty for the brand and the rest is history.

We can create communities within Facebook, but they will not be exclusive communities and there is always a risk of third-parties getting access to everything that happens on Facebook.

So, a brand-oriented community app development will ensure;

• Loyalty building
• Constant connection among the community
• Give and receive advice from the professionals
• Learn new things about the brand
• Promote new content, items, offers, products, and so on.

Even your customers want to be a part of a community and not choose Facebook, because they want to interact and engage with like-minded individuals.

Plus, organizations which deal in products that have a connection to the human health or psyche need an online community just for their customers.

This becomes important to solve social media paradox and help people not feel lonely. Because another report suggests that 50% of the people in the US feel lonely or left out.

So, healthcare or not, any brand looking to grow in number and sales needs to understand everything about building an online community platform.

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Factors that Affect the Cost of Community App Development

Four things are important to understand;

• The complexity of the Application
• Application design
• Tech stack
• Development team

The complexity of the Application

One of the best ways to understand the cost to build online community engagement platforms is to first list out the product/market fitness.

This is driven by two things;

• Design (more on this later)
• Features

The features required for community app development have two forms, basic and advanced.

Basic features help build the MVP version of the application. Building an MVP first saves cost, time, and a chance to tweak the application as per the user’s preferences.

Some common features include;

• Sign up and Sign in
• Creating, editing, and managing profile
• Newsfeed
• In-app messaging (chat and audio)
• Push Notifications
• Add, search, and remove friends
• Creating groups within the application
• File upload and download
• In-app browser

Among the advanced functions and features, we can include;

• Video chat
• Interest matching among the users
• Online meetings and virtual events
• Geolocation

So, the cost of adding the basic features depends on the hours taken to build these features.

Before we move on to noting down the number of hours put into creating these features, here is an interesting project that we delivered in the past.

MobMaxime has successfully created an award winning community application for the teachers and parents.

Bloomz is the brainchild of our client, but our developers and designers were able to resonate with the client’s requirements to build a solution that helps the teachers and parents communicate with and among each other.

Bloomz is built after carefully analyzing the work efficiency and deliverability of 10 different applications.

We were able to amalgamate the best features of these applications and improve them with our expertise to create a better and technologically-advanced portal.

With Bloomz the users can connect, coordinate, communicate and consolidate.

Back the understanding how features integration can help decide the application’s cost and deliverability time.

Here is a table to express the same.

Feature	Hours of Work Required
Sign up and Sign in	15 hours
Creating, editing, and managing profile	45 hours
Newsfeed	120 hours
In-app messaging (chat and audio)	35 hours
Push Notifications	13 hours
Add, search, and remove friends	18+ hours
In-app browser	12 hours
Creating groups within the application	40 hours
File upload and download	45 hours
Video chat	110 hours
Geolocation	25 hours
Online meetings and virtual events	160 hours
Interest matching among the users	120 hours

As you can see that, if you increase the features integration and their complexity, the hours of work required to build them (either from scratch or by acquiring them from a shared code base and then tweaking) helps decide the cost.

For instance, using advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence to generate user-specific recommendations for friends, products, or services based on user preferences and history.

Such features add to the functionality, but they also amplify the complexity of the development, hence, the cost.

So, based on the total number of hours, we can calculate the cost of community app development.

But first, let’s take into account other aspects which help understand what affects the cost of creating such a platform.

Application Design

The design of the online community engagement platforms needs to be accessible, user-oriented and matching with the brand and its aspects.

This means that your design should reflect the core values and beliefs of your brand and what it wants to project.

So, your branding and the goals you set must be visible in your design.

There are two things that you need to understand here;

• UX or User Experience
• UI or User Interface

When you create a social network app, you aim to ensure that the users experience a smooth operation and do not have to dabble with the app features.

User experience is all about creating a seamless and flawless design.

Building community platforms become successful when you understand the meaning of customer-first.

Since every business is customer-oriented, the designs of digital solutions should reflect the same.

So, while creating the UX and UI wireframes for your application, first understand how the product will behave with the end-user.

Here too, if there are more features, the designing will take more time and with it, the cost will also increase.

Simple design aspects are easy to implement and they can be completed quickly.

But, if you want to add aspects which are the ultimate representation of user entertainment and functionality, the cost will be higher.

Designing Aspect	Number of Hours Required
Preparing the design (idea generation, drawing the sketches, and wire-frames)	60 hours
Creating Mock-ups and Prototypes (Low to High Fidelity)	70 hours
App Design Testing	50 hours
Design to Development	Up to 200 hours

This was the design part.

In this, you might also want to look at the copy-writing.

Since you are building an application for the community, you need the right sort of representation for your application when it comes to words.

UX copywriting can make a lot of difference in getting better ranks for your application.

But, this does not matter to that extent, because you are not advertising your application to everybody.

For instance, an alumni management software won’t focus on getting the first rank on Google SERP, because it already has a set customer base who wants to use that software.

Similarly, a community management software also has a dedicated customer base.

Yes, you can use other methods to acquire more customers for your brand, but these aspects take a back seat when you are building an online community platform.

The last two aspects that make a difference in the estimated cost of community app development are Tech Stack and Team.

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Tech Stack and Team required for online community engagement platforms

The tech stack that you use for community app development is also instrumental in two ways.

1. To identify the cost of development – cross-development applications and native development.
2. To identify the time required to build the application.

Function or Aspect of Development	Technology Required
Front end Development	iOS – Swift, Objective C Android – Kotlin, Flutter Cross-Platform: React Native, Xamarin
Back end Development	Asp.Net Python Php
Design	Figma
Project Requirements	G-Suite
DevOps	Jira
Database	MySQL PostgreSQL MongoDB

Next, we need an efficient team of developers and designers for community app development.

It is no surprise that you need a dream team to build a community management platform.

First, we will see the composition of the team and then understand the kind of team that you can work with.

• Project Manager
• UX/UI Designer
• Back end Developer
• Front end Developer
• Quality Assurance

Now that you have the team composition.

Let’s understand how this team composition can affect the cost of building an online community platform.

There are three kinds of teams that you can hire for the task;

• Freelancers
• Hire in-house designers and developers
• Outsource to an agency

Type of Team	Cost and Features (Pros and Cons)
Freelancers	The ideal cost of hiring freelancer developers across the globe is $25 per hour. Yes, they are cost-efficient, but managing freelancers and getting work delivery from them is painstaking. Moreover, freelancers work remotely and they live in different time zones. This further creates gaps in communication.
In-House Team	Hiring an in-house team might be the best option among all the others, but an in-house team in the US can cost you an arm and a leg. The average cost is $150 per hour. However, this kind of team will work under your management, so this removes the need to remind constantly and there is no communication or time gap.
Outsource to an Agency	Outsourcing the work to an agency is one of the best options available. There are several reasons that authenticate this statement; You will get access to a full-fledged team of developers and designers. The cost of hiring an outsourced agency is between $35 to $50. One project manager will communicate with the client removing the need to put forth constant reminders.

Total number of work hours

Assuming that the total work hours required to build online community engagement platforms is 1000 hours.

Here is the cost tally for the same;

Freelancers: $25*1000 = $25,000

In-house team: $150*1000 = $150,000

Nearshore Canada Development Center: $35*1000 = $35,000

Hence, you will get a high-quality product similar to US-based developers at lower costs.

To Sum It Up

Creating online community engagement platforms for a brand, an organization, or even a non-profit organization involves going through this process.

In any case, you cannot compromise on user experience and engagement levels.

However, commercial brands need to look at the aspects of UX and UI as the holy grail for making the project a success.

MobMaxime, throughout years of development and designing, has become the top community platform app development company.

Our agile development methods and processes are built with brand-specificity while using tech-agnostic measures and tools to deliver the project.

Contact us to know more about how we can help you create cost-efficient and high-quality online community engagement platforms.

Let’s check it our past similar projects are.

Top Community App	Details Link
Bloomz – #1 Classroom Communication App	View Detail Case-Study
Fish Angler – World’s Most Robust Fishing Platform	View Detail Case-Study
PBN – Best Community Engagement Platform	View Detail Case-Study
Inovium	View Detail Case-Study

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