How to Find an App Developer in 2023: All You Need to Know

Smith Johnes
6 min readSep 12, 2022

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The mobile app development companies are thriving their businesses with the evolution of app development technologies and frameworks. More and more customers are realizing the utility of mobile apps in their daily lives.

Companies today are witnessing the yearly growth of apps; with this, the app developers always try to build engaging and impeccable apps based on emerging technologies.

Moreover, they have shifted their interest towards developing more apps to serve customers and promote their businesses.

Finding the best fit and perfect app developer to build your app in 2023 is quite challenging. To bring an app to the market, you must have a collection of different skillsets relative to the project scope.

This article will help you ride down the lane to find the best mobile application developers and hiring options you can choose from.

Where to Find an App Developer?

You might be in a dilemma about finding a freelance developer or partnering with an app development company. Both the options work differently in different situations and entirely depend on your project requirements.

Let’s consider each of the hiring options with its respective pros and cons.

1. Hiring a freelance app developer

Working with freelance mobile app developers is less costly than working with an in-house team, as you don’t have to pay for office infrastructure.

If you want to build an app from scratch, you cannot rely solely on a single freelancer for full-cycle mobile app development. For this, you need to hire freelance developers, UI/UX designers, and QA engineers.

Hiring a team of freelancers for a large project can be a risky and costly affair. Moreover, it may be challenging to find app developers for startups. You can hire a team of freelance developers where one handles the bugs, the other is involved in the development, and the rest in design. Hence, you’ll manage the development process and improve communication between developers.

Here are a few pros and cons of hiring a freelancer:

Pros:

  • Cost-effective solution
  • Extended talent pool
  • Best fit for small one-time tasks

Cons:

  • Communication loopholes
  • No control
  • Might be a chance that freelancers leave the project in between

2. In-house Team or Remote Employees

Hiring an in-house team is the best choice to consider if you need remote developers. It is considered worthy if you have multiple projects to work on and need complete command of the entire development process.

In-house teams in organizations have complete control and enhance communication between employees. There are no language barriers or time zone differences when working with the same team under the same roof and circumstances.

Hiring an in-house team can be costly, especially in the US or Eastern Europe.

For example, hiring US-based UI/UX designers will charge you around $85,300/year. And QA engineers will charge around $56,000/year. Moreover, this approach also requires additional expenditures like office rent, software licenses, hardware, and taxes.

Here are a few pros and cons of hiring in-house teams:

Pros:

  • Complete control over the development process
  • No communication issues

Cons:

  • Costlier
  • Additional expenses
  • Difficult hiring process

3. Software outsourcing companies

Companies can even consider outsourcing app development or hiring app developers from an outsourcing company. In both scenarios, your time to market will reduce, the project cost will minimize, and the product quality will increase.

This hiring option will save you from investing additional expenses. Also, outsourcing companies have a pool of experienced developers required to build an app and are responsible for team management and product delivery.

Moreover, you can hire overseas mobile app developers if you have a tight budget. You might face communication issues and time differences while working. But companies have specialists professionals with excellent knowledge and can schedule meetings according to client convenience.

What should you know about finding an app developer?

Looking for an app developer is quite a daunting process. It’s evident that there are an endless number of developers available out in the market, but do they all fit your project requirements or understand your business needs?

The answer will be not in favor of you. For an app development company, it’s crucial to hire a smart and innovative app developer who not just creates a clone of the already existing app but also adds some unique features and functionality to the app.

Whether you hire a freelancer, an in-house team, or an outsourcing firm, finding the right and best-fit candidate or team is crucial. Let’s check out what you should know before finding app developers.

1. Perform in-depth market research

Before you hire an app developer, it’s vital to understand the basics of hiring good app developers. You need to identify your business requirements and the target audience.

Specify your business requirements or what you want your app to do.

It’s baseless to develop an app without knowing who you are targeting. You can’t build the same app for all groups of people. Every set of audiences has different demands, problems, and interests. You only need to understand that your developed app will target that group.

Defining a target persona helps you analyze the purpose of your mobile app and the problem it’s solving.

2. Identify the problem and validate the solution

Having a great idea is just not enough; you must also test the idea in the market. Don’t make any assumptions. You should ask your potential customers what challenges are they facing and see if your app can solve those problems. When delivering a solution to your users, make sure you conduct competitor research to build an app unique to what your competitors are offering.

3. Check out the expertise and experience of the developers

You surely don’t want an app developer who doesn’t know even the core of mobile app development. So, to avoid that, make sure you select the right candidate with exceptional tech expertise and years of experience in app development. The candidate should have hands-on experience working with the latest technologies and frameworks.

Moreover, he must have a rich portfolio of working with multiple clientele.

4. Consider MVP first

MVP development is an important step that you must consider before launching your final app. MVP tests your app idea in the market with minimal features. It helps you upgrade your app simultaneously based on customers’ responses. It will save your time and cost while developing a full-fledged app. It’s better to prepare a list of must-have features that should be developed first. MVP development helps developers figure out what tech stack to use and understand the customer’s expectations.

5. Set KPIs to track the performance

KPIs are the performance metrics essential for business as they show you if your planned strategy is working or not. They measure growth and identify the areas in your product that need improvement. KPIs help you make the right decision based on the facts and data, irrespective of your assumptions or personal choices. Make sure you set the KPIs such as CAC(customer acquisition cost), RCR(revenue churn rate), and CCR(customer churn rate) to track the progress of your app.

Estimating the cost of hiring an app developer

Hiring a skilled and expert app development team is harder than building an app. It’s a big challenge faced by many technology specialists and business entrepreneurs when choosing the right and best-fit app developers from the pool available globally. The cost of app development in multiple regions varies.

According to a report, companies have to pay $89,000/year to hire a US-based mobile app developer. The countries like Australia and Germany cost you $76,000 and $66,000, respectively.

In countries like India, hiring an app development professional is quite affordable — only $4,000 a year.

Mobile app developers’ rates will vary from country to country, ranging from $100–250 per hour in the USA, Canada, and western Europe to $20–40 per hour in India.

Ending Note

According to a report, the global mobile app revenue was valued at $582 billion in 2020 and is expected to reach $935 billion by the end of 2023.

With the rising app revenue, app developers’ demand keeps increasing yearly.

Finding app developers is a challenging yet fruitful task. But as long as you thoroughly scan your candidate and widen your market research, you get the right and best-fit candidate. I hope you have gained all the essential information your business requires to look for the best app developer in 2023. This information will help you make informed decisions during app development.

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