@thomasmeagher Hey Tom! Great point. This is something we're working on.
How would you imagine it working to be most helpful for you? Like you could insert your hourly rate and that switches up the cost to build each feature?
Thanks again for the input.
@mikaelcho Hourly rate factoring into cost per feature is an interesting idea.
It would be useful to have a total estimated hours at the end along with the cost. Obviously would have to be a range, but it helps put the cost into context. The question after how much does this cost is usually how long will it take.
@mikaelcho@thomasmeagher
Is the target for this a potential customer looking to get a developer/designer? Or for freelancers to put together estimates?
Seems a tad weird to me that you would need both an estimate of $ and time, just time makes a lot more sense since all developers and designers are going to charge different rates.
@thomasmeagher personally, I'd stay away from this. A few reasons:
1. If you're developer estimating a large-ish ($5k+) job, I would never quote in hours (days are better). No reputable, working app gets built in hours.
2. During an initial quoting/estimation process, we developers are always overconfident. The hours are inevitably going to be off.
3. Some developers are quicker than others. Want to write a login page? Great, I can do that in Ruby and the devise gem in a few hours. A Lisp developer might do this in 2 days. (please don't turn this into a discussion about why you would never use Lisp to do this...etc)
The only value of cost calculators is for framing, not for planning. Right now, everyone's frame of reference for the cost of an app is that "Mark Zuckerberg built FB in a weekend in his dormroom". This notion is extremely dangerous because it doesn't value developer's time and compensation.
@mbesto Completely agree. The real-world development process is highly variable and this model does not capture everything.
Thought hours would be an interesting addition because it can be converted to days, applied to an hourly rate, etc.
As much as I love the idea, this seems like a very dangerous and very strange tool. It fails to take into account developer talent, the market, agency vs. contractor, geography, maintenance, and so many other factors that it feels essentially useless.
Yes, you can get a social-login app that allows a user to create an account and rate things for $45k from *someone* (I'd guess the company that built the site). But is it a codebase that's maintainable? Will what the client considers "barebones" design be the same as the person/agency who implements it? Will it to be a timescale that suits both the developer and the client? Or are all of these assumed?
I have a fair amount of experience explaining and justifying app development costs and developer rates, so I'm quite happy to have these conversations with people, but they're very important discussions. This tool turns every discussion (like "here are the upsides and downsides of using agencies versus contractors") into "Yes, but this website said this is how much it should cost."
Funny I was playing with this the other night. For what we consider our basic app (geolocation directories) they estimated $30K, we tend to do them for $4-5K, and going up from there depending on custom work. Then again we build a framework that lets us do them in hours not days.
Now considering a major price increase.
@fotofactorydk Thanks Martin. Yup, we were going for ballpark estimates. Hopefully, it creates awareness for project values so folks know if something they want to build is in the 30k range vs. 10k range. Thanks again.
@fotofactorydk@mikaelcho btw my biz partner used crew quite often and so thank you for building it. I also appreciate that your quotes are realistic and frame client's expectations properly. So thanks for making the numbers realistic and of high value. It means there is an immediate amount of respect from both the client and the supplier before negotiations and scoping even begin.
@fotofactorydk@mikaelcho@mbesto I agree, Crew was amazing at helping me find some developers to build me an MVP. And they were a pleasure to work with as well.
@mikaelcho Thank you for the reply. Getting a value is also great to really decide if it a sustainable business. I also totally love the site design :)
This is pretty awesome but the section on how to plan on making money from the app should have an extra option: subscription or pay as you go or something since things like Uber dont have upfront costs, no in-app purchases and it's not completely free.
@dereckbreuning Noted! Nice point Dereck. Ya, we looped apps like Uber in the 'in-app purchases' category. We can definitely make this more clear. Thanks for giving it a whirl.
@mikaelcho no problemo! It gives me a better insight in what it might cost. Maybe costs in Europe are a bit different but getting a general idea is always good. Thanks!
@thomasmeagher It will never be useful because everyone has a different way of doing things. Charges are never the same... It quoted around$40k for an app I paid $5k for..
@danielkempe It's an interesting concept, even though charges are highly variable - models can't capture everything. I'm not trying to assess the utility of it.
Neat. I like the clean design, too. It'd be nice to have the ability to choose between native and hybrid apps as this would have a great difference on costs.
This is more of an advertisement than an actual product hunt. I went through the pricing several times and my company can do scenario for about half the costs.
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