Does every new recruit cycle hamper the flow of information in your workplace? If your answer is “yes”, you aren’t alone. Creating a proper flow of information and communication is essential and complicated, especially in emerging startups where roles and responsibilities overlap. There are dozens of Chat apps and many more on their way but still, many entrepreneurs put their hands down. The good news is in 2019, 2.52 billion people worldwide use a messaging app once per month. Additionally, these numbers continue to grow. Also, here is the twist, while many entrepreneurs consider building an app like slack, very few actually develop or update it.
Companies try to avoid apps like Skype and Whatsapp since they are common and sometimes easy to hack. They need highly secure and relatively smaller chat rooms where they can safely transfer confidential documents and data.
The benefit of an app like Slack:
- Information management: On apps like Slack everyone has access to all the data in the workplace. Past and present. For example: If you joined a new workplace today, searching for documents, shared files about anything would be easily accessible even if pre-date of your joining. This way every new employee can access information shared and stored by old employees including from the one who has left. Internal search for people, files and channels. Sharing the content of various type
- Transparency: Public channels allow every individual in the workplace to drop in or get up to speed with the work that is happening across the organization, aligning everything.
- Private groups and direct messaging
- Separate workspace available by a specific URL
If you are looking to develop a slack app of a new kind or even remotely looking into it in the instant messaging app industry, then it’s only fair to first answer the most critical question — how much to create a Slack app?
Features
To answer the question — how much does it cost to build a Slack app? It’s essential to first determine the kind of features that are required in it. First, we’ll be talking about the basic features that are critical to any messaging app, and then we’ll move on to talk about some advanced tech and rarefied features that can turn out to be your USP.
Essential features that determine the cost to build a Slack app -
- Registration or sign up via email, phone number, Google account, and social media.
- Authentication via phone call or SMS
- Creation of a personal profile with username and logo/profile photo
- Profile photo visibility settings
- Contact book
- In-app search bar for contacts, groups, media files, and particular messages
- Online/offline/typing status and visibility settings
- Message exchange with reading receipt
- Group messaging with delivered and read receipts
- Voice and video calls and group calls
- Customized in-app emoji
- Media file transfer (pictures, videos, documents, contact cards, external links, etc.)
- Location sharing
- Push notifications and popup notifications
- Mute chat option
- Customizable user themes and wallpapers
- In-app camera access
- Independent slack channels for different departments
- Third-party integrations like Google Drive and Office 365
- Creating separating threads for seamless communication
- Extensive user management
- Chat and teams history search bar
- Workflow Builder that automates routine actions and communication
- Enterprise key management
- Event management tools like run sheets, Gantt charts, and event-specific calendars
These days, most of these features can be developed with the help of pre-built APIs, but the real-time investment would be taken in the testing phase.
Why Creating an App like Slack Makes Sense?
2020 has changed everything from consumer buying behaviour to messaging trends, quick, personalized and real-time communication is what people are looking for. This turns into the question “How to create a messaging app?” into a big business opportunity.
Let’s face the fact: the top messaging apps already provide fast message exchange, file sharing, voice and video calls, security, group chats and calls, and editing features. And many of these features are free.
To kick things off, you need to do competitor research. Involve the unsatisfied customer reviews in your research. This is a source for ideas and weak spots that can cost your potential competitors new and existing users. What will this research give you? First of all, you will figure out what to include in the messenger’s toolbox. Secondly, find the best thing about your chat app may be a fancy feature, design, enhanced usability, productivity, business-friendly, and the like. And thirdly, you can collect the list of common mistakes and possible solutions.
Where Can an App like Slack Improve?
Let’s look at some of the advanced features that are not yet very common in the messaging app industry and you can use them to pitch to your potential users as a unique selling point. You should take note that these features can dominantly alter the cost of making a Slack app.
- Message management — Secret chats, self-destructing messages, vanishing messages and archive chat
- Calendar management — Schedule messages in the calendar for birthdays, anniversaries, and other occasions
- Extending emoticons — In-app customized stickers and GIFs and other media for entertainment
- Employee engagement — single and multi-player in-app games
- Broadcast messaging
- Tier Management — Organizational charts that help employees navigate through the hierarchy in huge conglomerates
- Transactions — In-app money transfer through UPI integration or accessibility to a payment gateway
- Sticky notes in the common lobby
Where Can You Access Slack?
The messaging portal is available to the users in the following formats -
- Slack application for mobile
- Slack app for windows
- Slack app for mac
- Slack online portal
The slack desktop app is known for its convenience while launching and multiple keyboard shortcuts which make the experience very smooth and easy for the end-user.
When you create a slack app, you can choose to launch web, desktop, and mobile versions separately or develop a cross-platform version that can run efficiently across multiple devices like mobiles, tablets, and desktops.
How does an app like Slack make money?
Before we talk about the average cost to make a Slack app, let’s talk about how to monetize it. The business model of Slack and other similar messaging apps can be broken down as follows -
- In-app advertising — you can leverage your wide customer base and engagement levels and pitch space on the app to third parties who will bid to place their ads on your app.
- Pay per download — generate revenue through every download from the play store and app store. The value of your app increases as the number of downloads increase.
- Subscription or in-app purchases — apart from the basic features which are available for free, offer some premium and exclusive services on a monthly or yearly subscription basis. This is often termed the “Freemium” model.
Final Word
We have talked about all the features and functionality that are required to make the slack app.
Now we are finally well equipped to answer the lingering question — how much does it cost to develop a Slack app. There are multiple stages in the development of any app and many times it is required right from the budding and development of the concept to actual app development, the testing and quality assurance phase, and finally post-launch support and updates.
The breakdown of the average cost to develop a Slack app is given as follows -
- Designing tasks and experience development — this phase takes slightly more than 140 hours of development and amounts to nearly $21,000.
- The backend development and development of slack app integrations usually takes close to 360 hours of coding, which amounts to $54,000 on average.
- The cumulated frontend tasks in a messaging app take slightly more than 245 hours of development, and the average cost for that turns out to be $36,500.
- Finally, the site marketing and final touch-ups in a slack app would require nearly $10,000, for about 60 hours of a developer’s time.
According to this breakdown, the final cost of creating a Slack app would turn out to be $121,500 in a country like India. It is always recommended to hire a dedicated team instead of individual experts if you are outsourcing app development. Get a quick idea cost calculator.
Creating applications is significantly more convoluted than it looks on a superficial level and expenses rapidly add up. That is the reason to put resources into arranging interaction before you focus on building an application. We have faith in this lot that we commit an entire day to in-person gatherings and long stretches of exploration following that gathering. It’s the main piece of the form cycle.
From that point, you can decrease costs by narrowing the highlights you need to the absolute minimum. To figure out which highlights are the most important, you should zero in on getting an item in the possession of clients as quickly as time permits and depend on their input to improve over the long run. That way, you’re not burning through $100,000 adding API combinations or different highlights that clients needn’t bother with.
Since you are prepared to begin with one like Slack, it is critical to see some more things which we have referenced before all else while featuring the aptitude of our engineers and creators.
To make your application remain at the centre of top informing applications in the town, how about we COMMUNICATE today!
Valere is an award-winning software development agency that has built over 300 top-rated applications for startups and Fortune 500 companies in all verticals like healthcare, finance, sports, fitness, education, and more. Their apps have been featured by the New York Times, and have been consistently recognized as Apple App Store’s top featured apps, TechRadar, and Google Play Store’s top featured apps! Schedule a call with us today to learn how we can help your team create the perfect software or application that can Accelerate Your Business Goals!
