Social media has gained immense popularity in the last decade and majority of the youngsters and even teenagers and elders prefer to have social media profiles in order to remain connected with their loved ones living in different areas of the world. Facebook and Instagram are undoubtedly the most used social media platforms right now for connecting with the global audience.
For coming down to the answer of how much does it cost to build an app like Instagram Clone, you first need to understand the working model of this video and photo sharing social networking app which is now owned by Facebook. One of the most outstanding features of Instagram is that it not only enables its users to share their photos and videos but also allows the customers to promote their business and do marketing in different ways and hence reach more customers in any specific region or city or state or country. In a major update after its launch, Instagram allowed its users to add multiple photos in the year 2015 and also added messaging feature thus working more on customer satisfaction.
Now, let’s put some light on various factors which decide how much does it cost to build an app like Instagram. Expenses increase with increase in number of features and integrations, and that’s what we will enlist for an app like Instagram in the following article.
- Account Authorization
Account Authorization is the very first and crucial step for any social media app such as Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat or Twitter, etc. An easy option for the users for account authorization is to allow them to sign in using their existing email accounts, but they can also create their account using their contact number or new email where a confirmation code is sent to authorize and start a new social media app account.
- Creating and Editing Profile
Once the account gets created, the users are then prompted to create their profile by adding their credentials such as name, bio, date of birth, profile picture, etc. and edit the profile any time when the users want. Professional integration and maintenance of such features in a social media app adds to the cost of how much does it cost to build an app like Instagram.
- Follow and Message Feature
Once the users complete their profile, they can then follow other users whom they know and can follow celebrities and public figures whom they like. Along with following others, the users can also personally message the other users for personal one-on-one interaction. Such a feature is imperative to integrate in such a social media app as the users expect to talk to each other with the help of real-time texts.
- Sharing Photos and Videos
In this next stage, you have to work on the most important feature of this app, that enables the users to share of photos and videos. To make it easy for the users, this feature allows them to upload the photos or videos from within the app and they can also click the new ones or upload the existing ones from the phone gallery. However, the backend for this feature is different for Android and iOS. This feature takes the most time to develop and integrate and is hence the most crucial factor to decide how much does it cost to build an app like Instagram.
- Edit Photos
This is a cool feature which must be integrated in the app. When the users proceed to upload their photographs, they can add filters and crop and edit photos from within the app only, thus saving the time of downloading a different app to edit photos.
Overall Estimate of Cost:
There are a lot more features which must be added to such a social media app such as geolocation, search option, connecting other social media, etc. Without specific information about which features you want to add and which ones to leave in the initial phase while developing an MVP, it is rather difficult to give a precise estimate of app development cost of such an app like Instagram. However, to quote a rough estimate, app development cost to build an app like Instagram can vary from $45,000 to $65,000.
An expert team of designers and developers is extremely important to develop such a social media app like Instagram. Omninos Solutions is one such mobile app development company which is widely known for its best-in-class services. Contact us at info@omninos.com and we would be glad to assist.