E-scooter sharing app development is a great idea for a startup with moderate expenses. You don’t have to spend a lot on complex software solutions or hire lots of people to keep your business steady. This idea pretty much works for itself and the biggest investment you need to make lies in the development costs.
Despite this, e-scooter sharing app development is an eco-friendly idea in a quickly growing industry. So, if you’re looking for something with great scaling possibilities, an e-scooter sharing app is an ideal option.
In this article we will figure out how much does it cost and what you can do, to make this investment more cost-effective.
The cost of an e-scooter sharing app development
According to forecasts, e-scooter sharing app development will bring you more and more profits over the years. The industry is relatively young, but it rapidly evolves, and in 2025 the market value will reach $13,864,0.
RexSoft’s team has worked on a project like this before. We’ve created an IoT e-scooter sharing app C24. For its development, we’ve had a team of back- and front-end developers, designers, and project managers. Overall, our team spent about a thousand hours working on the app development. Let’s break it out to see how much time did every expert spend on their part of the work.
- App development took us about 360h
- Back-end development/App API took around 280h
- Device API — 160h
- Super Admin CMS — 140h
- And last but not least, the design stage was in progress for about 80h
This is an average estimate of time for a project of this size. C24 is a cross-platform app for which our team has also created an admin panel and a one-page website. With us, an e-scooter sharing app development like this one will cost you around $40,000.
However, if you’re looking forward to receiving the same paycheck from a nearshore team, you have to be realistic. Depending on your location, nearshore teams may be much more expensive to hire than offshore developers. For example, the same e-scooter sharing app development done by US specialists will cost you around $76,800.
All this is due to differences in experts’ hourly rates. Ukrainian developers have one of the lowest hourly rates in Europe which are approximately $40/hour.
Developers from the USA or Western Europe like Germany charge about $75 per hour and more, depending on their skill level and the company they represent.
This is one of the ways you can make e-scooter sharing app development a little more cost-efficient. However, there are more tips and ideas we can share with you, so keep reading!
How to make e-scooter sharing app development less expensive
We’ve already told you about the first and probably the most achievable tip of all: start working with the outsource or outstaff offshore companies. They charge less for the same amount of work and the same level of quality. But here is what you can do if you need to cut costs a little more:
1. Start with an MVP
You can start your e-scooter sharting app development from minimum viable product (MVP) creation. This is a totally viable version of the e-scooter sharing app but with the minimum features only to keep it usable. Its development will take less time and money, and a quality MVP can be launched on the market.
This way, you’ll see the customers’ response to your e-scooter sharing app and will be able to gather more funds for further development. It will also help you understand what people want from your application, what features to add, and what to fix in the next updates.
2. Work with the outstaff teams
You can power up your tech team by hiring individual experts from other companies or hire a whole team from an IT partner you trust. If you’re working with the outstaff teams, you can control how many experts are on board, how many working hours they get, and can cut those hours if you need. This makes the development extremely cost-efficient since you can hire part-time specialists or even ask them to work hourly on your e-scooter sharing app development.
3. Try the fixed price payment model
If you already thought your budget for an e-scooter sharing app development through, you might want to stick to the fixed price payment model. This model allows you to pay the development team only what you’re counting for and no extra, meanwhile they can explain to you what you can get on your budget.
This helps you to do everything according to the plan and you won’t have to worry about spending even one extra cent above your budget. So, budgeting is one more critical step you need to take while planning on e-scooter sharing app development.
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We’ve shared all we know about cost-effective e-scooter sharing app development. The most important thing is to remember that a great share of your investment will return to you since the industry grows every year. We advise you to carefully pick an IT partner for your e-scooter sharing app development and start working with those, who get your point.
