Please introduce your company and give a brief about your role within the company?
I’m the founder and CEO of Cleveroad, a full-stack web, and mobile development company. For the past 5 years, we have successfully dealt with startups, B2B businesses and enterprise projects. Mobile apps created by our developers are based on iOS, Android and Windows Phone platforms. The services we offer are marketing research, planning, wireframing, UI/UX design, MVP creation, testing, release and post-release support. At the time when I got an idea of starting a tech company, the interest to technologies in Ukraine was at a fast-growing stage. We saw appearing new IT outsourcing companies almost monthly -- small with poor management and unfortunately poor results. I thought that could unite the best minds around me, who were working as freelancers and jointly concentrate on the quality of products that we delivered. Steadily, we developed from a start-up into a fully-fledged development company.
What is your company’s business model–in-house team or third party vendors/ outsourcing?
Cleveroad adheres to the in-house business model. Our team consists of experienced developers, QA engineer, project managers, and business analysts, so we do not outsource any of our projects or tasks related to the project.
How is your business model beneficial from a value addition perspective to the clients compared to other companies' models?
We try to add value to any project we undertake. To deliver high-quality products, you have to be agile. So we build products iteratively, conducting daily and weekly meetings. During development, we focus on project management and ensure the level of flexibility our customer requires. Also, we provide transparent pricing models and secure approach to product delivery.
We're following DevOps practices that allow us to automate build, test and deploy processes. This usually results in development cost reduction as we detect the issues during the early stages, deploy faster, and eliminate many tasks connected with the release process.
What industries do you generally cater to?
We provide custom web solutions for different areas of business including e-commerce, healthcare, real estate, etc. Websites can be developed from scratch or be CMS-based, depending on our customers’ requirements.
Mention the objectives or the parameters critical in determining the time frame of developing a mobile app
It usually depends on the number of screens in an app and complexity of required functionality. That’s normally it. When it comes to estimating of budget and an approximate timeline for the project, we carefully study any given case. The estimation process is divided into two parts: rough and detailed estimate and is absolutely free.
How much effort in terms of time goes into developing the front end and back end of a mobile application?
Creating front end and back end of any product depends on various factors. The main requirements for front end delivery are user-friendliness; which we achieve combining UI and UX smartly, and the client’s satisfaction. We understand that our clients have their vision on the product and try to meet it. As for back-end creation, it depends on the required functionality.
What are the key parameters to be considered before selecting the right platform for a mobile application?
Before taking a final decision and recommending our customers to develop for iOS or Android, unless our customer has a firm requirement to create for the particular platform, we weigh all the factors. We consider the geographical factor, industry, competition, user audience, price discrepancy (iOS development is usually 10-20% cheaper) and so on.
Which platform do you suggest your clients, to begin with when they approach you with an idea (Android or iOS) and why?
Again, it depends on certain factors. I would suggest starting with iOS app development considering the price and audience. Choosing Android app development, one should take into account the device and OS fragmentation, which adds up to the development costs. However, Android is more friendly for using third-party software and user audience is far bigger than iOS’s one. If you plan to monetize your app, iOS is a better option as its holders are more purchase-friendly.
These are very general facts to consider. Every single project is unique, that’s why we conduct deep research to help customers make the right choice. Anyway, to cover more potential users it’s worth considering creating apps for both platforms, taking into account that development for the second platform is always 10% faster.
Which platform (Native or Hybrid) is best to use to build an app? What are your recommendations?
We would definitely recommend a native platform. We don’t think it’s a good idea to compromise on user experience, expandability, and quality. If the customer wants to deliver the app to market in less than 6 months, then developing the hybrid app is the best alternative. We recommend native apps development for those apps that can’t compromise security and performance, need to have an offline mode and use OS specific functions (think camera, GPS, address book), in addition, then they have nothing to do but to develop a native app.
What are the key factors that you consider before deciding the cost of a mobile application
Generally, the only factors to influence the cost of mobile app development are size and complexity of the project. The larger the project is, the more resources are to be allocated. As for the other significant factors, time frames matter -- if our customer wants the project to be delivered faster, it requires more resources. Developing apps for both, iOS and Android, platforms double the cost. Next, what kind of services will be provided (design, DevOps, support devices, etc) also influence the cost. All these factors are carefully analyzed and appropriately estimated so that our customers could receive the fair price for the service.
What kind of payment structure do you follow to bill your clients?
We tend to follow Fixed price model. The reason why we choose fixed price model is to ensure that our customers get their product within budget. They understand exactly how much and what they are paying for. Moreover, since the development team gets paid for the actual result rather than for hours spent in the office, they do their best to implement a quality product within the time period allowed.
Do you take in projects which meet your basic budget requirement?
We don’t have the minimum budget requirement.
What is the price range (min and max) of the projects that you catered to in 2016?
The projects were of different size and, therefore, of different price — from a few thousand dollars to more than 150 thousand.
Which business model do you suggest to your clients enabling them to generate revenue from mobile applications? Why?
It depends on the type of app. At Cleveroad, we have specialists who can help set up a working monetization and app promotion strategy that will generate revenue. Speaking in general, we don’t recommend our customers charge for downloads. Depending on the app, in-app purchase or in-app advertising can bring more beneficial results.
