If the cost-of-living crisis has taught businesses anything, it’s that value for money is everything. Price rises sharply illuminate the need for quality, reliability, and efficiency in all business interactions and supplier relationships. Alongside this is the natural inclination to look for the best deal, and during an app development project, this often involves looking at where money can be saved on contractor fees. It’s right to examine your third-party costs during any project. However, it’s also important to consider the potential risks of using a cut-price developer. In this article, we’ll look at four potential problematic issues when choosing a cut-price developer for your app.
When you select a developer that offers their services for a lower-than-market average price, there’s a high likelihood that your project timeline will be adversely affected, and in some cases, the app development may stall indefinitely or never be completed. This usually comes down to a lack of time availability, insufficient skilled resources, or implementing cost-cutting measures whilst trying to remain competitive. Unfortunately, no one gains from this situation, least of all you, and certainly not the developer. It’s always better for them to be honest about their costs and transparent about what they can achieve on a low budget.
Poor quality is another serious app development problem when dealing with cut-price developers. Ultimately, if the quote is low, money has to be saved somewhere, and this often equates to sacrificing experience and expertise, leading to the development of an app filled with bugs, crashes, and a subpar user experience. And when issues occur, it’s unlikely that the developer will have the resources or inclination to rectify their errors and may even charge you extra. Consequently, enticing savings could tarnish your company’s reputation, negatively impacting customer satisfaction and leading to long-term losses in revenue.
The architecture of a poorly developed app can hinder future customisation and scalability, effectively shortening the life and usability of your app and leading to a lower lifetime ROI. For instance, as your brand expands and evolves into new markets, you may find yourself needing to add new features or make significant stylistic changes to your app, or you may need to respond to OS updates and technology changes.
A poorly structured app will make these adjustments more difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, and unfortunately, working with a cut-price developer only increases the chance of encountering these issues, ultimately hampering your app’s ability to grow in step with your business.
While saving money upfront may be appealing for cash-strapped project managers, the long-term app development issues from working with a low-price developer often far outweigh these savings. The long-term financial implications of development delays, fixes for poor quality work, damaged customer loyalty, reputational damage, and redevelopment costs can all lead to substantial financial setbacks, often over and above the lifetime expense of working with a higher quality developer from day one.
At Glance, we aim to offer a high-quality bespoke app development solution that aligns with your business's and customers' needs. Please get in touch today to see how we can help you and for a transparent discussion of the costs and benefits of our app development services.
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