Develop an Educational App in 2020–21: Its Cost, Features, Business Model etc.
By: Sophia Martin
Tags: App Development, Mobile App Development, Technology, Apps, Startup

There is no doubt in this fact that COVID-19 virus attack has revolutionized the entire education system and introduced new learning methods with virtual classes.

On one side, online learning has made it possible to study anywhere, anytime by using the smartphone. And on the other hand, it is raising the demand for mobile educational apps.

“During the first quarter of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic caused a surge of downloads of educational apps and marked the highest download rate in 2020. The global mobile educational app downloads are projected to jump from 273 Million in 2017 to 466 million in 2020.” (Source-Statista)

Apart from these figures, a new survey report is predicting a massive rise in revenue generated by educational mobile. The report published by the Serious Games Association and research firm Metaari, says that this category will triple its annual revenue to just over $800m in 2022 and continue on to $1b by 2024.

In this digital era, smartphones and mobile applications have bought everything in your palm and every piece of information at your fingertips. Considering this fact, many businesses are curious to get started with the educational app, but what makes them afraid of investing in the mobile app?

While it comes to developing a mobile educational app, businesses are hesitating to bear its expensive development cost. But why?

Many mobile app development companies can provide you with an estimated cost of developing a feature-rich educational app at up to $10,000, but be careful! It can easily end you up with the hidden cost and throw your budget out of the window.

But don’t worry, this blog will help you understand what exactly it will cost you to develop an educational app, its features, and more…

How Much Does It Cost To Develop an Educational App in 2020–21?

Any educational mobile app development company can help you build an educational app from $8,000 to $50,000. But, now many of you are wondering, why there is a huge variation in the development cost…

The cost of developing any mobile application consists of various elements. It can greatly vary depending upon the type of education app you need to develop, the amount of development time, cost taken to customize the features, cost to hire app developer and UX/UI design, testing and more.

Let’s discuss each factor in detail to evaluate how exactly it can cost you to build an educational app:

What Type of Educational App Do You Want To Develop?

Where You Want to Launch Your App: Google Play Store or Apple App Store?

What Features You Need to Integrate to Customize The Educational App?

Cost to Hire App Development Team

Let’s move to the detailed discussion…

1. What Type of Educational App Do You Want To Develop?

There are different types of educational apps created to target different age categories and study the interest of the students. The complexity, features and its development cost is totally depending upon the type of education app you choose you to develop for your startup. To help you make a better choice, we take examples of leading education apps that enable you to determine what app clone you need to follow:

Online Learning App Like BYJU’s

It is one of the well-designed and easy to access learning apps for the students, launched with the aim aligned to make the entire learning system easier, fun-filled and interesting. Considering the fact, they provide complete mock tests and sample papers for class 7 to 12, for all the major board exams including IIT-JEE, CAT and NEET. To help students perform better in studies, BYJU’s offer engaging video lessons and additional test papers which allow students to evaluate their performance with the instant test results.

Quiz and Game Show Apps for Classrooms Like Quizizz

If you are looking for the educational app that works for both teachers and students and allows you to conduct an interesting quiz and make the learning process much more enjoyable. In that case, Quizizz is the perfect app development option.

It is a perfect app type that is completely free to access from top to bottom and offers a delightful and meme-fueled game for the kids. This app is packed with various features like robust homework options for quizzes, different quiz modes, offering multiple question formats and more.

Entrance Exam Prep App Like TCY

If you are planning to launch an app particularly for the students preparing for the CAT, GRE, GMAT, SSC, GATE and more then it is worth considering the TCY Exam Prep App. The education app like TCY is specially designed with the study material and sample papers that provide right assistance without any need of paying costly coaching fees. Moreover, it has some of the unique features like exam alerts, challenge zone, sending invites to friends, instant results and more.

Student Performance Tracking App Like EduCloud

EduCloud is an ideal app development option for teachers that enables them to track day to day progress of the student with different patterns and evidence. Right from the student progress graph to assignment summary, EduCloud provides you a complete progress report in an easy to access format.

Conclusion: With the forecast marked to surpass $243 billion by 2022, no matter which type of education application you decide to develop, all apps have a great scope to rise in future. However, the key to success is how you convert your idea into the final product? And this leads to the demand for hiring a reputed app development company that can understand your needs and be able to deliver the perfect product.

2. Where to Launch Your Mobile App: Google Play Store and Apple App Store?

With 2.2 million apps available on Apple App Store and 2.8 million apps available to download on Google Play Store, it is safe to say that these are the most leading operating platforms to launch your app. But now the question is, how will you make a choice on which platform you need to launch?

Here the factors that you need to keep in mind:

Decide whether you are targeting a limited amount of users through a selected platform or wide users through different devices? Iphones have the biggest market in Europe and America, whereas Android is leading the rest of the world.

How early you want to launch your app, as iOS has few limited versions whereas if you’re targeting Android, then you need a bit longer time as there are various versions of devices.

It is a well-accepted fact that iOS handsets are used by rich people whereas middle-class people use an Android handset. So determine whether your app will be paid or free to download.

Pro Tip: In case, if you are planning to launch an app on both platforms but afraid of its expensive development cost, then it will be a great option to develop a cross-platform application using Flutter. The prime reason behind recommending Flutter is, it’s an open-source platform based on Google’s in-house programming language and offering an advanced set of widgets and plugins.

With modern SDK kit, developers can increase their efficiency and enable them to create a user-friendly app in less time frame. All you need to look for is to hire an app developer.

3. What Features You Need to Integrate to Customize The Educational App?

If there is one thing that eats up the largest part of your app development cost, that is the features and functionalities of your app. In addition, the choice of features will decide how your app will be accepted by the user. Instead of stuffing too many features or trying to create a replica, it is worth it to keep it simple, useful and unique.

Let’s get started with the list of features that you need to integrate into an educational app:

Signup/ Registration: It is an ideal way to get started with the app with the registration process. Allow users to sign up the app with an email and password or phone number and password. Also, you can allow them to integrate social network accounts and enable them to sign in via the same account. To make your app highly useful, it is important to add “password forgot” option. To make the development process more manageable and more superficial, you can use Amazon SES and Amazon SNS.

It is an ideal way to get started with the app with the registration process. Allow users to sign up the app with an email and password or phone number and password. Also, you can allow them to integrate social network accounts and enable them to sign in via the same account. To make your app highly useful, it is important to add “password forgot” option. Create A Profile: Create an app with two interfaces- one for the teachers and another for the students. Once they create a profile, offer the content according to the age, subject and more.

Create an app with two interfaces- one for the teachers and another for the students. Once they create a profile, offer the content according to the age, subject and more. Course Choices: To make it easier for teachers and students to browse their choice of course material, you can categorise the material under well-defined course program and description. Also, you can add a Buy button in to sell the course material.

To make it easier for teachers and students to browse their choice of course material, you can categorise the material under well-defined course program and description. Search Options: This feature will make your app more functional and add the flexibility to find their choice of course material according to the age, subject and student’s need. To create a perfect search system, you can hire an app developer and prefer to use Elasticsearch.

This feature will make your app more functional and add the flexibility to find their choice of course material according to the age, subject and student’s need. To create a perfect search system, you can hire an app developer and prefer to use Elasticsearch. Menu: It is an important feature as it allows students to check out the list of upcoming lessons, tasks, tests and more. This feature will make learners more organized and make the learning process easier.

It is an important feature as it allows students to check out the list of upcoming lessons, tasks, tests and more. This feature will make learners more organized and make the learning process easier. Push Notification: Notifications will keep students updated with test alerts or notify them when new content is added.

Notifications will keep students updated with test alerts or notify them when new content is added. Test: This feature will help learners to evaluate their knowledge and performance with the test scores, whereas teachers can access this feature to create a test.

This feature will help learners to evaluate their knowledge and performance with the test scores, whereas teachers can access this feature to create a test. Student Management: Teachers always prefer to access an educational app that helps them manage students effectively. For this, you need to list the learners and details about them. Also, tutors need to check tests and put marks to manage student profiles easily.

There are many more features that you can consider integrated into the educational app, but the cost to develop these features can be somewhere $9,000+, depending upon the complexity of the app.

Pro Tip: With approx, 5 million applications on respective app stores, projected to make $935.2 billion revenue by 2023, achieving success by launching an ordinary educational app is not a real worth. So, here you need to take a step ahead and consider implementing both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality features to deliver an unmatched learning experience to the students and teachers.

For this either you can look for an Android app development solution or hire a software firm backed by AR/VR developers that understand the urgent need of the market and are able to meet your needs.

4. Cost to Hire Mobile App Development Team

The cost of app development does not end with the list of features, there are some other essential things that contribute to the app development cost. If you are thinking that developing an educational app is all about customising an app with the above listed features, then you are wrong at this place. There are a lot of things to consider while estimating the cost of the app. Will your learning app need to support video/audio playback? Will it require audio integration like other educational apps?

So when it comes to hiring the app development team, you have two primary choices. Either build an in-house development team or consider outsourcing the software development company. On one side, communicating with the in-house development team, on the other side, outsourcing mobile app development company can assure you advance technologies and methodologies for the app development.

Moreover, the practical obstacles of finding the talented developers make it hard to develop the right in-house team.

Therefore, it is always a worthy decision to hire a mobile app development company that offers you a complete project team including:

Project Manager

UX/UI Designer

iOS Developer

Android Developer

Backend/Frontend Developer

QA specialist

The final cost of hiring the team varies according to their skills, location, experience and technical knowledge. In India, it can be starting from $12 to $30 per hour in India and $100 to $150 in the USA.

Conclusion

Education is the standalone industry that always remains in demand, but Covid-19 pandemic wave has triggered the demand for educational apps and providing an opportunity to various startups and SMEs and allowing them to make money.

Hopefully, with this blog you have understood all the basic points that help in creating a useful educational app and how much it cost you in the end. But keep in mind that these are the estimations, as the final development cost will be depending upon your business requirement, features and complexity of the app.

So to know the exact cost to build an educational app, we recommend you to hire a Software development company. They will analyse your needs and accordingly suggest you the best technologies, methodologies and final cost of development.