Today, Uber has disrupted an on-demand economy on a large-scale with their powerful business model. Uber’s business model has given a rise to a large number of on-demand platforms being adapted for different verticals. In less time, an on-demand application such as uber like app has grown exceptionally. So What is an on-demand app? How much it cost to build such app like Uber? Let’s have insight on each point one by one.
What is an on-demand app?
the on-demand app allows you to order anything, exactly what you required. From food delivery to a ride to a person to help you build bookshelves, or to package delivery, today’s technology has got you wrapped it’s all there.
The on-demand hypergrowth is upon us. In the next 5 to 20 years most of the people will be able to get anything within a 5 to 60 minutes window. — Gary Vaynerchuk.
What on-demand uber like app consist?
The on-demand app consists of multiple sorts of Apps, Web Admin Panel, Analytic, and Modules. Before proceeding, the first thing you need to know about developing an Uber like app is that you actually have to develop two slightly different apps, which would be connected to your admin portal: one for the customer and one for the drivers.
Customer App (Passenger app)
Core functions
- Registration
- Search
- Booking
- Cancel Booking
- Payment
- Push Notification
- View History
- Reviews and Ratings
Additional features
- offers and discounts
- vehicle selection
- Interactive map
- split payment
- Invite and Earn
- Inbuilt Messaging
- Voice recognition
Driver’s app
In addition to features in Customers app, the following are the features can be included in driver’s app.
- Driver Profile
- Booking Alert
- Current Status
- Navigation
- Previous Orders
- Reports
Admin Panel (Dashboard)
A Web-based responsive application that allows admin to view, analyze, manage user, and data which can be useful for the analytics and report generation. It facilitates interactions with customers, manages ride routes, payments, and all other data.
let’s briefly review big and general chunks of work that go into an app like Uber. Those components are:
- User Interface Design
- Web development
- Backend development
- Native app development (Android/iOS)
- Quality assurance and Testing
How much does it cost to build uber like app?
We come across this question almost always when we think about app development for building uber like app. The answer always is — It depends!
Well!! It depends upon various key factors especially core functions. There are certain features that no on-demand solution particularly taxi app can function without. Such as Real-time location of Customer and Driver, must be available to each other, Booking, Payment, and Push Notification that is must have featured in such on-demand apps.
Real-time Geo-location and Routing:
In general, GPS technology is used to determine the current location. Besides, users can find the car with maps integration and positioning. To know the distance and run the routes, you need the routing server.
When you pin the point on the map where you want the car to pick you up it’s Google Maps. It’s Google Maps that track the real-time car movement. Again it’s Google Maps, which enables the driver to follow GPS directions. Routes and directions in Uber app are powered by Google Maps, it is the easiest solution.
Location services in Uber iOS app are provided by CoreLocation framework to ensure region monitoring and MapKit framework for routes and directions selection. Developers apply classes and protocols of CoreLocation framework to set up the delivery of location provided by user’s device. Besides, in iOS Bluetooth beacon lets define a region around.
The cost of building
Developers usually need from 140 hours to integrate location and routing feature.
- geolocation 32
- hours create a ride 35 hours
- track the ride 74 hours
Taking an average price of $50 per hour for app development services in our region, we can estimate the cost $7,000.
Payment Gateway Integration
One of the Uber’s main early selling points were in-app payments, which reduced the need to look for small bills, wait for change or get overcharged by the taxi driver.
Additionally, users can get a pre-ride fare estimate and decide whether they want to take a ride or not. Dynamic pricing also applies depending on the traffic situation and car availabilities (e.g. discounts or add-on fare during peak hours). Uber takes the following four factors into account for a price quote: base fare, cost per mile/km, cost per minute, safe rides fare.
To offer in-app payments you’ll need to choose the optimal payment gateway integration. Generally, Here are some recommended payment gateways to choose from:
- Braintree — now part of PayPal. Unlike other gateways, it allows splitting the fair and offers simple PayPal integration. Venmo touch feature allows building a one-click checkout.
- Stripe — was designed primarily for developers and has a lot of powerful APIs to use and customize.
- PayPal’s mobile SDK allows processing both credit cards and payments through a PayPal account.
- Apple Pay and Google Wallet can be considered, as additional payment options if those are popular with your target audience.
The cost of building
Integrating payment gateway in an app is the most tedious process. That’s why it takes more time and, therefore, money.
- payment gateway integration 60+ hours
- add/scan a card 40 hours
- get price 14 hours
- Total 114+ hours will cost you $5,700 at a $50/hour rate.
Registration/Login Page and User Profile
You certainly want your solution to be simple and easy to use, therefore, you need to offer a one-time user registration through social media or email of your customers choice. The Uber app suggests its customer’s authorization via Facebook account or email and immediately asks for a phone number. As for the profiles, they may contain the needed minimum (photo, name and car license plate number, if we talk of the driver-side app), or they may be sufficiently complete.
The cost of building
To implement registration and profiles, developers may need up to 125 hours.
- Registration / Authorization via email 19 hours
- Sign up via social media 8 hours each
- Registration / Authorization via the phone number 32 hours
- Sign in / out 8 hours
- Profile editing 48 hours
- Review / Rating 10 hours
Considering all these basic functionalities, the application cost would hit $6,200 at a rate of $50 per hour.
Messaging and Notification
The driver and the passenger may need to exchange some information e.g. instructions on the pickup point, estimated time of arrival, short updates if there’s a delay and so on. Uber has a simple inbuilt text messaging system for that — a “lighter” version of a standard chat app like Whats App. Developing such a solution, however, will require quite a lot of time, so you may want to leave it out for the initial product option.
Additionally, your app should send out standard push notifications informing users on their ride details and drivers on the possible new orders. We highly suggest using Firebase framework. This technology is cross-platform, offers robust functionality and enables faster development.
The cost of building
Push notification integration requires around 40 hours of development time. The cost of SMS alert integration may vary from 30 to 60 hours, depending on telecommunication provider APIs integration complexity.
- Push notifications 40 hours
- SMS integration 30+ hours
Thus, to allow your app communicate with the user, you need at least $3,500 at $50/hour rate.
Wrapping up
As always giving an exact price without knowing all the specifications is quite challenging. The final uber like app price is usually defined by:
- Platforms you wish to support (iOS, Android, Web).
- A number of user-stories to solve a.k.a. what exactly should your app do and how?
- Whether you want a full-featured product or just an MVP to validate your idea first.
A simple taxi booking uber like app can cost you around $25,000-$40,000, while a more sophisticated Uber-like solution can go as high as $100,000-$150,000. The NextWeb estimated that Uber development costs as much as $1 million to $1.5 million.
Share your requirement specification with Zignuts and our team would be glad to provide you a detailed proposal with respect to time and cost.
