Hire someone to build an app: who, and what to ask

Hire someone to build an app

Hire the person who will sign a written scope, put the code and accounts in your name, and show you working software every week. At Continuum a first version starts at $15,000 on a fixed price, so you know the total before the first day of work.

Start with one page, not a builder

Before you talk to anyone, write what the app must do on day one. Who uses it, what they do in it, and what it replaces in your business today. Half a page is enough. Every bid you collect is then a bid on the same thing.

Skip this and you will get five prices for five different apps. That is how a quote of one number turns into an invoice of another.

Freelancer, agency or one senior developer

A freelancer is the cheapest hour and carries one person's risk. If they get sick or take another job, your project stops. An agency gives you a team and charges for the project manager who coordinates it. One senior developer sits between, and for a business app with a clear scope it is often the right size.

We go through the trade in detail in agency vs freelancer vs one senior developer, and the money side is in app development cost.

What goes in the contract

• The code repository sits on an account you own, and the builder is invited in.
• Hosting, the domain and the database are billed to your card.
• For a phone app, the Apple and Google developer accounts are yours.
• The scope says what is in and what is not, and a change to it is priced before it is built.
• Payment follows working pieces. Never the full sum up front.

A vendor who wants to host everything on their own accounts “for simplicity” is asking you to rent your own app. Getting it back later is a negotiation you start from behind.

How to tell a good builder in the first call

Ask them to name a similar app they shipped and let you talk to the person who paid for it. Ask who answers the phone a year after launch. Ask what they will not build for you, because a builder who says yes to everything has not read your scope.

Then watch the first week. You should be clicking on something real, on a real web address, by the end of it. A slide deck at that point is a warning.

What it costs with us

None of our prices are hourly. A new build starts at from $15,000 and takes six to twelve weeks. If you already have an app that was built fast and now breaks, fixing it runs $4,000 to $15,000. If you want someone independent to read what you were handed before you pay the last invoice, a written read is $299, and we do it for code we did not write.

Start with the sprint page if you want a fixed-price plan first, or Ship Fix if something is already built.

A real example of a scoped build

A civic nonprofit wanted a voter guide where voters and candidates answered the same issues survey. We scoped it at a fixed five figure budget, then shipped the web app, the iOS app through Apple review, an admin console and a daily data pipeline from state election records. The written scope is what made it finishable. The full story is on the voter guide proof page.

If the bids confuse you

Get two bids against your one page. If you cannot tell which is sound, a fractional CTO can read them with you for an hour or two, before any money moves.

Tell me what you want built

Thirty minutes, and you leave with a rough range and a plan, whether or not you hire me.