Product Analysis and Design
As you know, before writing a single line of code for your social network, you need to fully understand what you want to build and for whom. You also need to ensure you and your development crew are on the same page. That’s why you need workshops and product analysis that will take around 160 hours. If you skip this step, you might build a stunning social media app, but totally incongruent with the target audience’s needs (which means it might fail).
The next elements you need are wireframes and user flows. You need to define how users will navigate through your app, what elements it should have and what screens are required. That will also help you to list user stories (the goals users might want to fulfil in your social media app) and create tasks for the backlog. That stage will take around 320 hours in total.
Finally, you must design the app by creating a high-fidelity design for your social network app (another 320 hours). It’s what front-end developers require to start their job.
A social media MVP is a smaller project that doesn’t need to be perfect, so it will take less time to go through all those stages in this case, but at the end of the day, this phase is always a must.
Product analysis - Workshops
UX Design - Wireframes and User Flows
User stories and backlog setup
UI Design - high fidelity design in Figma
Full social media app development cost: $40 000
MVP estimation: $16 000
Architecture and Setup
Now, your team must create an app architecture and set up the project.
Nowadays, most of the apps (not only social media ones but all in general) are based on cloud services (which are made for scalability, among others). For this reason, you don’t need your own physical architecture, just a cloud services provider (we work with AWS in most cases).
MVPs are less demanding and, therefore, less time-consuming, but keep in mind that if they aren’t designed to work at a large scale (which is not a must), you might need to redevelop your app immediately if it succeeds and gain a broad audience.
Full social media application development cost: $24 000
MVP estimation: $7 600
User Authentication
Social media users must be able to sign up, log in and recover or change their password – that’s pretty obvious regardless of what social media app you are about to build.
The point is, which additional features are crucial from your clients’ perspective? Ask yourself the following questions:
- Does your app need a 2-factor authentication?
- Do you need a passwordless login?
- Should users be able to log in using other social media accounts? Which ones?
If it’s an MVP, the answer will probably be “no” unless you’re about to develop a specific social media app for which a passwordless login will be a must-have feature.
As you can see, it all depends on your idea and goals.
Sign-Up Process (standard email/phone + password)
Sign-Up with Social Media
Full social media app estimation: $13 400
MVP estimation: $4 800
Account and profile
Every social media app needs to allow user profile creation, store those data, and entitle users to edit them. Users should also be able to delete or deactivate their accounts. Those might not be so pretty in an MVP version, but those are must-have features anyway.
The key is how secure your app should be and how the preferences should be managed. If it comes to an MVP, you might set some account data privacy settings and preferences by default, which decrease app cost (and add them later when the app succeeds and your company starts generating profits).
Account data privacy settings
Account Preference Settings (Feed, Suggestions, Notifications)
Full social media app estimation: $12 200
MVP estimation: $2 800
Posts publication
It’s quite obvious that every social media app user needs to publish posts, add hashtags and be able to mention other users – those are essential features of such an app.
However, there are more features you can implement in a full app to make it more attractive. Consider whether you need advanced features like additional media-driven post types (crucial in the case of media sharing networks), a rich text editor (especially for a mobile application which is a development challenge; we know that because we’ve built some apps with this feature), image editor and post management (privacy settings, deleting, drafts).
Adding every one of them will increase the overall cost. I can advise you to consider carefully whether you need such features right now, or maybe it’s better to postpone the development of those and add them to the roadmap for your social media app’s further improvements.
Publishing simple posts (image + caption)
Advanced posts publishing (videos, multiple images, audio files)
Build in simple images editor
Editing posts after publication
Full social media application development cost: $27 600
MVP estimation: $6 200
News feed
A news feed is another one of the must-have features for a social media app. Everyone should see a list of posts with relevant content (based on recommendations and taking into account their interests and activities), be able to navigate through them, and see their own activity (even at a very basic level).
I would say that all those features are also required in an MVP version of a social media app.
To decrease costs, you can implement a tool like the TeaRex.AI recommendation engine that is flexible and ready to adjust to any type of content (even for a full version of the app). That gives you an opportunity to use the power of AI/ML at a low cost (it’s a free tool for apps with less than 50 000 visits a month).
List navigation (swiping/scrolling/tapping)
Full social media app estimation: $15 000
MVP estimation: $6 600
Post activities and reactions
Likes and comments are basic features of any social media app, but it’s up to you what other possibilities your app should offer to users. For many social app types, it might be crucial for most users to be able to share what other users create or have more range of reactions than just liking a post.
Keep in mind that a variety of activities increases user engagement, but it requires funds to be developed. For this reason, it’s worth starting small with an MVP and implementing more features when the project is already on the market and you have some user feedback (that also indicates the direction you should be heading towards).
For security purposes, you should also consider providing people with a blocking feature and the possibility of reporting abuse.
Reply to comment (1 level depth)
Blocking or reporting posts
Full social media app estimation: $14 800
MVP estimation: 4 800
Connecting and acquaint
Social media apps are about getting acquainted, there’s no doubt. For this reason, this is a must-have feature in social networking app development.
For a basic social media app, it might be enough to satisfy users if they can follow each other, but if you want to increase customer engagement, you might think about the ‘add to friends’ feature, invitations and privacy settings.
Following users (1 way relation)
Adding users to friends (2 way reation)
Accepting invitations or follows (private account)
Private account visibility
Full social media app: $10 400
MVP: $2 000
Searching
In my opinion, there are two must-have features for searching – users and hashtags. The cost of developing them will be the same in the full project and MVP.
A more advanced social media app can offer to search by the content of the post and data types.
Searching by post content
Integrated search for multiple data types
Full social media app: $16 000
MVP: $4 000
Content storing and files sharing
If it comes to a basic functionality of a social media app, we can omit editing files and sharing them with different permissions. The main features are uploading files, storing and removing them.
In the case of media-sharing networks, you might need some more advanced data formats that exceed video and photo content.
Files sharing with different permissions
Full social media app: $19 800
MVP: $6 800
Chat – Messaging and Calling
Social media apps are, above all, places where users chat. For this reason, the messaging feature is a must. If you’re about to develop an MVP, it might be enough to offer text messaging in a simple form with image sharing and conversation status checks.
If you want to add some more advanced features, you might consider a real-time user activity indicator that shows whether the message was read or the person is already writing, editing and deleting messages and reactions to them.
If you’re about to develop an app like WhatsApp or Messenger, that might not be enough for you as you might need an audio message or audio and video calling.
Sending and receiving messages
User activity indicator (seen, typing etc.)
Sending status check and information
Full social media application development cost: $25 600
MVP: $5 000
Notifications
Notifications are another of must-have features of social media apps, as they boost user engagement and invite people to turn back to the app.
You must decide what types of notifications you need (email, push, in-app messages) and for what kinds of events. It’s one of the advanced features, but you also might want to allow them to manage their notifications preferences.
Push notifications for chat
Push notifications for other events in the app
Custom notifications content and actions
Full social media platform: $20 200
MVP: $2 800
Events
Depending on your goals, you might not need the events feature at all, or that might be a core feature of your app. In the second case, even an MVP should allow to creation and deletion of events and invite people to participate in them (and conduct discussions).
For the more advanced features, I would include editing events, visibility and privacy settings. It’s nice to have but not necessary when building the first version of your social media app. The same refers to the moderation of the event – you probably don’t need it in a very basic app.
Events participants management
Participants activities (event forum, chat)
Full social media platform: $18 600
MVP: $7 400
Groups
Groups usually gather like-minded people in terms of interests, passion or problems. Although groups are a part of many complex social media apps like Facebook, discussion forums use this functionality, too.
Social apps with a group feature should allow people to manage them, and in many cases, there’s no difference between a full product and MVP. It’s very important to provide users with the possibility to discuss via group chats or post comments.
If you want to decrease costs, I suggest you postpone the development of roles, permissions and moderation features.
Members roles and permissions
Full social media app: $22 600
MVP: $10 000
Streaming Live
Live streaming is more and more popular and has become a part of many social media platforms. Trending social media apps like Facebook or TikTok offer the opportunity to broadcast live, which seems to be the format that will be expanded and promoted by many platforms (given these apps’ success stories).
Your social media users might need not only the possibility to attend but also manage the privacy and visibility of their live stream and chat.
Stream privacy and visibility
Full social media app: $18 000
MVP: $12 000
Ratings and Gamification
People love to play games, and you might want to implement a gamification feature in your app. I can even imagine a social media app where it’s a core feature, actually.
When gamification is concerned, you might need rating and scoring features, leaderboards and assigning points logic. It might be tricky, but experienced app developers will certainly handle the challenge (check out Beat the Street app as an example).
Getting and giving points
Full social media app: $12 400
MVP: $8 800
Personalisation and Customisation
Personalisation and customisation might be especially important for you if your app is planned as a ‘social media as a service’ solution for other companies. They should be able to modify how the app looks and adjust it to their needs. The app should also be easily deployed as a separate app.
To offer the app as a service, you will also need an admin panel to manage and verify users – your clients. For other social media apps (that are not delivered in a SaaS model for other companies), you probably won’t need these features.
Logo and colors customisation
Enabling/disabling app features
Deployment as separate application
Full social media app: $33 600
MVP: $20 800
Analytics
Analytics should be implemented in every social media app and allow users (individual people or companies) to analyse how their content performs, what activities are taken upon it and discover trends.
Analytics for content creators
Full social media platform: $25 000
MVP: $11 000
Monetisation models
I’m sure you want to generate revenue on your app, so you should also consider how to do that. There are several options possible:
- Paid content promotion
- Paid features
- Subscription model
- Earning model for content creators
Earning model for content creators
Full social media app: $34 000
MVP: $13 000
Administration Panel
You should also manage your social media app – users, content and system settings. That should also be calculated in the final estimation.
System settings administration
Full social media app: $13 000
MVP: $8 000
Other social media app development costs
In the end, we cannot forget about the additional elements of the software development process like code quality and version control, quality assurance, maintenance and project management.
Those are elements that depend on the overall estimation. You should increase the estimation by a specific per cent value to assess the cost. It’s because the bigger and more complicated the social media app, the more time it takes to address all those elements of the development process.
Those costs might be reduced in a social network MVP app. Many of those tasks you can take over (like quality assurance testing). Keep in mind, however, that those activities must always be taken. The fact that they are not included in the final estimation doesn’t mean you won’t pay for them. Quite the opposite – if the software developer of your choice won’t address them properly, you will be responsible to do that. Otherwise, you might offer your users a buggy social media app that will discourage them from using it and affects your company’s image.
Multiple languages (left to right)
Multiple languages (left to right & right to left)
Version control, code quality
Architecture and data maintenance
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