Cost is one of the reasons we advise businesses against building native mobile apps. Of course, there are many more reasons we advise against native apps, but I won’t get into them in this article. You can always read this white paper if you’d like to learn more.

Today, I’m focusing on native app cost. Simply put, native apps are significantly more expensive to both develop and maintain than hybrid or mobile web apps.

So, how much do they cost? I did a little digging and found a wide range of cost estimates, some of which may surprise you. I’ve listed four of these cost estimates below:

Forrester Research estimates the cost of a single enterprise iPhone app at $20,000 – $150,000. Of course, that range accounts for many factors, such as app complexity. For instance, a simple informational app will cost much less than a heavy duty app connected to a back-end database.

What about tablet apps? Native tablet apps are even more expensive, as one mobile app development company estimated the cost of a single enterprise iPad app anywhere between $50,000 – $150,000.

It’s important to understand that those prices only apply to development. We haven’t even touched on ongoing maintenance costs, which according to this article, typically come in at 15% – 20% of original development cost, per application.

Now, keep in mind that all of these figures apply to building a single native app. Since each native app only runs on one platform, you must develop multiple native apps to reach additional platforms…which exponentially increases the development price.

Wrap up

High cost is one major reason we advise against building native apps for your business. If your company is considering mobile apps, I recommend investigating the mobile web app or hybrid app options. Not only are they cheaper to build, they’re also easier to maintain. Those are benefits that any business will appreciate.

Of course, if you are considering mobile business apps, we can help. The video below explains how our development platform (m-Power) simplifies mobile development and automatically creates cross-platform smartphone and tablet apps every time you build an application.

If you’d like to build a mobile web app with m-Power today, sign up for a free m-Power Trial. The onscreen tour will guide you through the process of building a web (and mobile web) app without programming. Click here to get started.