How Much Does Hiring Remote Developers Will Cost?

Remote hiring for software projects has become the norm simply where the talent gap is bigger, or the cost factor forces companies to hire remote developers. Moreover, hiring remote developers has become easier than ever before. Remote developers are easily accessible across job boards, social media platforms, developer-only platforms, and B2B review sites. The entire app development market offers a favorable atmosphere for remote hiring to get more popular. 

Still, many businesses doubt the cost of remote hiring and outsourcing app development projects. Though remote hiring cannot always benefit from reducing cost, with a keen strategy to find the relevant expertise at a lower cost, you can always make a better deal. How much does remote hiring really cost? To understand this, you need to consider several variable factors that have a bearing on the development budget. We are going to explain these factors here in this blog. 

Is remote hiring only about cost reduction? 

Though reducing the cost of development is a compelling factor for many companies to hire remote developers, the cost advantage is not the only thing that makes remote hiring popular. There are several other advantages of remote hiring. Let’s take a sweeping glance over these advantages. 

• Access to a global talent pool: With a remote hiring model, your search for exceptional developer talents is no longer constrained by your geographic location. You have the wide world open to finding the best talents for your project. 
• Enhanced Productivity: Since developers can work at their own convenience, they make better output in terms of quality as well as productivity. 
• Overhead cost eliminated: Thanks to remote hiring on an hourly rate basis, app projects do not need to bear the long-term overhead cost for the remote employees, making a significant cost advantage. 
• Access to world-class infrastructure: Because of remote hiring, businesses with no IT development background can access the world-class IT infrastructure of the development companies instead of establishing their own. 
• Easy scalability: As your business grows to require your app to scale up capacity, instead of going through the painful and time-consuming in-house hiring process, you find hiring remote expert teams more suitable. 

Understanding the real cost of hiring remote developers 

The advantages of remote hiring are indomitable enough to ignore. But to ensure the advantages work in your favor, you need to address the challenges the remote hiring model poses for your business. The cost advantages can only be discerned when you make the management style and workflow adapt to the remote hiring model. Suppose you can master the art and science of accommodating remote developer inputs in your regular workflows without making productivity suffer. In that case, you can better manage remote development team and time, resulting in a positive impact on the cost. 

To understand the cost of remote hiring, it is better to understand the global perspective of variable costs as per regions and countries. For example, in countries of North America and Western Europe, the median salary for all developers is significantly higher than in the rest of the world. Among the rest of the world, East European nations and some rich South Eastern countries such as Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and a few others can be considered for the second tier in terms of development cost. The countries with robust software development markets with the most favorable development cost include India, China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and a few others. 

Now as you have a brief idea about the cost of development in different parts of the world, you should also know about the most demanded and highly paid skills. Front-end developers get the lowest price while backend developers get a bit higher. Despite their popularity and demand, full-stack developers covering both sides of the development skills do not get much higher than their front-end and backend compatriots. 

Now last but not least, we must consider what the developers really think about remote hiring. Well, still, only a miserly population of developers look for opportunities because of the flexibility of remote work. The compensation plays the biggest role in considering jobs, followed by the technologies they need to work for. 

Key factors impacting the cost of remote app projects 

The cost of developing an app primarily depends upon the app size, features, complexities, required technology stack, engagement model, etc.; let’s explain these factors one by one here below. 

App Size 

The size of an app can really influence the cost of a remote app project. Based on the size, apps can be categorized as small, medium-sized, and large apps. The impact the cost of development differently. Let’s explain these three different sizes of apps and their impact on a remote project. 

• Small Apps: Small apps such as a calendar, a stopwatch, a book, or small utility apps generally require basic skills, and one or two developers are enough to complete developing the app from start to finish. These apps involving basic features and UI elements can be developed faster, creating further cost advantages. 
• Medium Apps: Generally, these are multi-page apps with a custom user interface, transactions, and several modern features. The IoT apps connected with gadgets generally fall in this category. As they are relatively more complex and feature-rich than smaller single-utility apps, they need more development time and a full team of developer resources. 
• Large Apps: Large apps are generally enterprise-grade apps with a robust pool of features and functionalities. Because of their complexity and scalable operation, they also need powerful backend development and robust database support. Naturally, these app projects require highly experienced and skilled developers. These apps are known for the highest development cost. 

Complexity and richness of app features

The features and functionalities are the ultimate building blocks of most app projects, and naturally, the more features you need for an app, the higher the development cost will be for the project. More than the number of features, features’ richness and complexity also considerably impact the required skilled resources and corresponding development cost. 

Increased and complex features require using several third-party APIs and plugins and creating a very strong and powerful backend. Taco pled and data-driven apps also involve powerful data security measures and tools apart from cutting-edge biometric authentication. The UI and UX design and development also require exceptional skills in such projects to accommodate the complex features within an easy-to-use interface and effortless user experience. 

These feature-rich apps can further complicate things and push the development cost when you need custom features and complex database operations. The custom user interface, integration of third-party payment solutions, and using unique APIs require exceptional skills and command over the technologies. This is why the complexity and richness of features always increase the cost of hiring remote developers and remote app projects. 

Some of the key feature related factors influencing the cost of hiring include the choice of deployment model such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Backend as a Service (BaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), etc., features required for admin panel, required third-party integrations in-app purchase functionality, integrating device features such as GPS, camera, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.

Key development skills 

Based on the size of the app project and feature complexity, the app project needs to decide on the technology Stack and required skills. Obviously, some development skills invite more demand, and hence the developers with these skills charge higher. When hiring remote teams, some countries offer a better concentration of Javascript developers, while there are countries with more developers with .Net and Xamarin expertise. So, depending on the required skills and hiring location, the cost may vary. 

Another crucial factor alongside development skills is the industry experience and actual project exposure. This is where some destinations with robust IT outsourcing markets have a clear edge over others. For example, with thousands of globally recognized development companies, India can provide an enormous choice of multiple development skills with varying costs. 

If you are building cross-platform apps, choosing emerging frameworks such as Flutter puts you at an advantage in terms of cost. This is because of the “write once and run everywhere” approach of reusing code, modular widget-based development, and backend support. React Native is also cost-effective for code reusability and easy availability of skilled developers.  

Hiring & Engagement Model

Another crucial aspect that can severely impact the cost of hiring skilled developers for your app project is the hiring and engagement model. Based upon the engagement model and other factors, the cost of hiring a remote team and the overall development cost may vary. 

Let’s have a quick look at the key engagement models embraced by the vast majority of software and mobile app projects all over the globe. 

• Project-based: This is the right engagement model for all software and mobile app projects where all the requirements are decided in a crystal clear manner once and for all. Generally, such projects require hiring developers for limited hours while you need to bear a fixed cost for hiring the developers. Based upon the project size, features, and complexities, the app developers will recommend the hours needed for development, and upon discretion, you agree to pay the price. The pricing largely depends upon the number of developers and the development hours required to complete the project within the deadline. 
• Time-based: This is generally the ideal model for app projects with medium to a high level of complexity needing a large team of developers. Such a model allows you to stay in constant touch with the development team, and the project timeline generally expands across several months or even more than a year. This model requires paying a fixed price to the developers every month until the project is delivered. Naturally, this model involves the higher cost of hiring remote developers for any app project. 
• Dedicated: This is perfect for app projects with a load of features and a high level of complexity without having much concern for the development time to finish the project. This model requires bearing a fixed development cost irrespective of the time required. This model ensures optimum efficiency and the best output by fixing the cost of development beforehand and ensuring proper compensation for the developers. 

Though choosing the right engagement model depends upon the nature of the app project, required features, and complexity level of the app project, it is also the budget consideration that plays a crucial role in choosing one model over the other. In the time-based engagement model, it is often observed that the remote developers unnecessarily spend extra hours completing the project just to ensure better compensation. This is where the dedicated engagement model comes as effective by fixing the pricing while not enforcing any constraints on the development time. Most ambitious app projects prefer a dedicated engagement model when hiring remote developers. 

Concluding Remarks 

Finally, let’s clarify that to ensure optimum control of the cost of remote hiring, it is important to do a lot of homework and prepare a well-articulated project requirement document explaining all the requirements meticulously, leaving no grey areas. When you can clearly explain the project objectives and requirements and provide a clear roadmap for the developers to follow, you can manage the remote team more efficiently, resulting in distinct cost savings. 

Last but not the least piece of advice will be focussing on the quality instead of the cost of development. When hiring remote developers, first find the skilled developer talents that suit your project requirements and then choose the most cost-efficient resources for your app project.