How Much Does It Cost to Develop an IoT Application: A Case Study-Based Roadmap

The cost of IoT app development has always been quite tricky to estimate due to the complexity of Internet of Things implementations. It can involve many different stages within a typical software development cycle like researching connection protocols, or establishing Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or WiFi connectivity. Each of these “extra” stages adds up to the overall project costs and may be not very clear when you’re just beginning the IoT integration.

However, at the highest level, we can break down the IoT development cost structure for IoT integrations into the following categories:

• Production costs. They consist of the finances required to create an IoT module. Both hardware and factory costs are included in this category.
• Development costs. These are the most interesting ones for us. They include aspects that are vital for solution delivery, such as fees for creating custom software or researching data protocols like BLE integrations.
• Operating costs. These costs are the ones that appear when the IoT solution starts to function. For example, finances spent on software licenses and establishing cloud hosting are standing as “operating”.

As our team specializes in IoT mobile app development, in this article we’ll focus on the IoT app development cost in particular.

Moreover, the adoption of React Native allows reusing some parts of the mobile code for web platforms, too, making it an efficient choice for developing smart home automation apps. Thus, if you don’t plan on focusing solely on one platform, we’d recommend you consider this framework as the way to cut IoT application development costs without the decrease in quality.

Software Features

As the quality and quantity of your software’s features considerably impact the IoT software development cost, we recommend building a clear vision of what is needed and what is desired. In other words, think of starting with an MVP — Minimum Viable Product.

Start off your development with an MVP

The most common mistake, that usually leads to increased cost to develop, comes from the desire to deliver the product at its best as soon as possible. However, such desires often become an issue that makes development longer and even more complicated. We recommend starting off with the concept of creating an MVP that can be easily modified and tested, before proceeding to the final product creation.

Throughout the project’s life cycle, especially in home automation, there’s a place for various adjustments that are much cheaper and faster to implement in MVP than to remake a full-fledged software. Not to mention extra costs spent on handling issues and challenges that may appear through the development. Exactly the MVP stage allows you not to start over the development, thus, letting you avoid unnecessary expenditures and gather more feedback.

Provide Early Quality Assurance

The most effective strategy for significantly reducing IoT software development costs is to implement QA (Quality Assurance) early in the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage, especially during the testing of IoT prototypes. The later you provide Quality Assurance for your product, the bigger risks are to encounter bugs and unexpected challenges at the further development stages.

On the contrary, early QA allows to foresee and prevent a great number of such issues that could drastically slow progress and hit with excessive financial expenditures.

Initial cross-platform development

As we’ve already mentioned in previous sections, it’s crucial to understand what platforms you are targeting first. Basically, the more platforms you need to cover, the higher IoT application development costs you should expect. However, in case you’ve already determined beforehand that you’re going for more than one of them — there’s a way to reduce the costs.

As it comes from the table above, approximate IoT mobile app development time (core functionality, to be more specific) varies from 400 to 650 hours. Given an average charge rate of $40-60 per hour, we managed to estimate the highest possible costs for every development stage. Keep in mind that our estimates are based on the experience we had working among the Central and Eastern European companies. However, the rates for delivering the product of the same quality will probably be higher if your development partner is from Western European and North American regions.

Generally, it depends on the number of desired features and the complexity of a project. However, regardless of the complexity, we at Stormotion love being partners in crime for developing IoT based mobile apps, as it’s always a unique and unforgettable experience.

There is another thing we may recommend from our expertise. To save your time and budget, always send your device to the team you hire for an IoT application development. We at Stromotion worked on creating a companion app for an IoT system when the developer didn’t manage to deliver an IoT module to our office. As a result, our team had to spend more than 50 extra hours on the development, establishing the best connectivity level without the device being physically present. Thus, extra time wasted on the development also turned into excessive expenditures according to our charge rates from that period.

On the other hand, our latest project Norsk Guardian is an example of IoT application development, when we had the device in our office before the project started. Norsk Lithium develops batteries for outdoor activities such as open water fishing, ice fishing, and camping. They also are of a great use as accumulators and portable chargers for your accessoires. 7 people from Stormotion Team were involved and managed to deliver a full-fledged IoT app in about 30 weeks of work.