Matt Turley, Continuum. Updated October 9, 2026.
Outsourcing app development works when you hand over the building and keep the code, the accounts and the scope in your own name. At Continuum a first version starts at $15,000 on a fixed price agreed before work begins.
You can outsource the typing. You cannot outsource the decisions about what the app is for, who may see what, and what happens when it fails. Those stay with you, because nobody else knows your business well enough to make them.
Most outsourced projects that go wrong did not fail on code quality. They failed because the owner handed over a vague idea and a card number, then found out three months in that the result did not match the business.
Before any work starts, set these up yourself and give the builder access, not the other way round:
If a vendor says they will host everything on their accounts “for simplicity”, you are renting your own app. Getting it back later means a negotiation, and you will be negotiating from a weaker spot than you are today.
Clutch builds its guide from reviews by verified clients. It reports that most firms charge $25 to $49 an hour worldwide and $50 to $99 an hour in the US, and that the average reviewed project comes to about $132,000 over around 13 months (Clutch, updated September 2026). Upwork shows a median of $30 an hour for web developers, with most between $15 and $50 (Upwork, captured December 2025).
| Who you hire | What they charge | A full project | Who owns the code |
|---|---|---|---|
| An agency | $25 to $99 an hour | About $132,000 over roughly 13 months | You do, if the contract says so |
| A freelancer | $15 to $50 an hour | Varies with the one person | You do, if the contract says so |
| One senior developer | Between the two | Scoped per project | You do |
| A fixed-scope partner like Continuum | Not hourly | from $15,000, six to twelve weeks | You keep all of it |
The low rates are real. So is the gap between a rate and a total. A cheaper hour that needs twice the hours is not a saving. Ask for a fixed price against a written scope, and compare bids on that page only. The wider picture is in app development cost.
An agency brings a team and charges for the coordination. A freelancer is cheaper and carries all the risk of one person getting sick or going quiet. One senior developer sits between the two. We lay out the trade in agency vs freelancer vs one senior developer.
If you are still deciding who to approach, the questions to ask on a first call are in hire someone to build an app.
Distance matters less than people think. Time zones are workable. A builder who answers within a day and shows you working software every week is worth more than one in your city who disappears for a month.
A civic nonprofit came to us wanting 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 scope document is what kept it finishable. The full story is on the voter guide proof page.
None of our prices are hourly. A new build starts at from $15,000 and takes six to twelve weeks. Making an app that was built fast and now breaks stable runs $4,000 to $15,000. After launch, monitoring and patching is $500/mo (see application maintenance for what that covers), and a retainer that covers a few features a month is $4,500/mo. If you want the build to start with a fixed-price plan, the sprint page explains how that works, and Ship Fix covers apps that already exist.
Write one page that says what the app must do on day one. Open the accounts above in your own name. Get two bids against that page and ask each bidder who owns the code and who answers the phone in a year. If the bids confuse you, a fractional CTO can read them with you.
Thirty minutes, and you leave with a rough range and a plan, whether or not you hire me.