Internet of Things implementation has always been quite tricky when it comes to costs. It can involve many different stages within a typical software development cycle like researching connection protocols, or establishing 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 a cost structure for IoT integrations in 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.
• 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.

Various IoT solutions require a custom approach and it’s almost impossible to present a precise estimate that may be referred to as a generalized one. The custom approach supposes creating a unique software solution, the uniqueness of which will significantly impact the total cost.

❓ What Influences IoT Development Cost?

IoT app development cost is never fixed as they change under specific circumstances. Let’s take a closer look at aspects that usually influence the costs of delivering an IoT solution.

Targeted platforms

IoT cost will vary depending on the desired platforms for the project. Whatever your business goals are, you pick the most suitable platform among desktop, web, and mobile to build an IoT solution.

We at Stormotion create Internet of Things software with the amazing React Native framework. It gives us an opportunity to deliver products for several platforms (iOS, Android) at the same time lowering Time-to-Market and expenses. This level of efficiency we are able to reach as React Native allows us to reuse different pieces of code for those other platforms.

We recommend starting off with launching your product on one platform, which is preferred by your customers. Later on, you may launch the solution on the other platform, if it becomes necessary.

In turn, React Native makes the development process for both mobile platforms less complicated. Thus, you don’t have to seek assistance from different teams to integrate a new OS, when it all can be done by one 😉

Moreover, React Native allows reusing some parts of the mobile code for web platforms, too! Thus, if you don’t plan on focusing solely on one platform, we’d recommend you consider this framework as the way to cut costs without the decrease in quality.

Software Features

As the quality and quantity of your software’s features considerably impacts the cost to develop an IoT app, 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 creating an MVP that can be easily modified and tested, before proceeding to the final product creation.

Throughout the project’s life cycle 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 greatest combo for making the cost to develop IoT based apps significantly lower is providing QA in the early stages of your MVP. 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 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.

In fact, considering initial cross-platform development allows you not only to reduce the development costs, but also significantly lower the costs to maintain and modify software for your project. We recommend you to find a team that specializes in software development with the use of certain Tech Stack. For example, if your goal is to create a companion app for both iOS and Android, React Native developers are the best partners for you. As it allows to create a common codebase for both platforms, making the development and maintenance much easier.

🔑 Our Expertise in Determining Development Costs for IoT

When planning out your IoT application development cost, it’s important to make sure that your budget is enough. But while the exact numbers can’t be predicted since each case is unique, there are a couple of core features that you and your development team should consider during your calculations.

As a mobile app development company, we can share our vision of core parts of an IoT app development cycle and how much time is required for their implementation:

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.

The biggest time-saver for this project was obviously the fact that we had those boat batteries present in our office. This allowed us to spend less time on connectivity and testing stages, along with making it less damaging for Norsk Lithium’s budget for this project. Eventually, the Norsk app is now on the showcase of Stormotion’s successful IoT projects, having provided both quality design and usability for Norsk’s customers.

💡 Takeaways

To sum up, development costs for IoT projects are hard to make precise in general. The more ideas and features you want in your product, the higher expenditures you should expect.

Many factors from targeted platforms to interface design impact the final costs, so it depends on your priorities. If you aim to create full-fledged software with every single feature that you could think of along with an outstanding design, get ready to spend a lot. On the other hand, if your priorities are the development speed and minimalistic design with the core functionality, the development will cost significantly lower.