Have you ever thought about the creation of an app for live streams, like YouTube or Twitch?
Let this article be a sign to move on from ideas to actions!
Based on Vimeo research, the live-streaming market is expected to hit a value of $250 billion by 2027. It looks like the video streaming industry will be prosperous at least for the next several years, so it’s a good time to start your development process. In this article, we’ll share our recommendations on how you can do this and calculations of video streaming app costs.
To start with…
The live streaming software is a specific platform that enables you to stream, record, and share videos. Such platforms are extremely popular among bloggers and influencers as well as businesses. For example, live streaming is often used for educational purposes, entertainment, e-commerce, and many other industries.
Video streaming app development process
The most classic video streaming app development workflow looks like this:
Step 1. Assemble your team
You have two options here: to build an in-house team or hire an outsourcing partner. Both models are good, everything depends on your goals, requirements, and budgets. If you are planning long-term maintenance of your app and want to have 100% dedication to your project, it’s better to assemble your in-house team. However, you should keep in mind that besides the salary for your project team, such a model has so-called “hidden costs” – you need to pay for office and equipment, pay for the recruiting process and manage it, etc.
At the same time, if you are looking for cost flexibility, we recommend trying app development outsourcing as you can hire any tech expert from any part of the world! You have a huge pool of companies to choose from, so you can pick the one with the best price-quality ratio. Don’t forget to investigate companies from Eastern Europe! For example, tech companies from Ukraine are known for their high level of tech expertise and soft skills, good English proficiency, and responsibility. By the way, they offer a convenient ratio of $40-$50 per hour (in comparison, in the USA the average ratio is $100-$150).
Step 2. Pick a content delivery network (CDN)
It’s very important to lay a strong foundation for further scaling at the very beginning of the development process. That’s why you should use a CDN – it is a service for transmitting data (images, videos, web pages, etc.) to an unlimited number of users around the world at the maximum download speed, regardless of the location of both the content source and its consumer. That’s how you can make the streaming process in your app smooth and uninterrupted.
Step 3. Storage is important
You should pick a reliable storage for your app that will be capable of keeping a lot of content and enabling your users to watch the video records any time they want it without distortions. Of course, cloud storage is the best option.
Step 4. Plan everything carefully
A strong strategy built on thorough analysis and investigation is a key to success. It will also help you evaluate all the needed resources in the right way and make your development process time- and cost-effective.
Step 5. Prototyping
Before diving into app design and coding, create prototypes – they are very similar to the real app and show its general flow but don’t include code.
Step 5. Create an MVP
A Minimum Viable Product is the most basic version of your app that contains key features only. However, it will help you find the first users and get the first profit and simultaneously continue the full-fledged app or software development.
Step 6. Create a full-scale app
Now when you have tested your early app versions and made improvements, you can launch an app with full functionality and achieve success!
How much will it cost to develop a video streaming app?
App development costs depend on many factors: app design, features, technologies, and so on. However, we, video streaming app development company Perfsol, can provide you with calculations based on our average rate and timelines:
- Research and UI/UX design – 280 hours
- Development stage – 650 hours
- Testing and Launch – 240 hours
- Total = (280+650+240) *$40 = $46 800
If you want to get precise estimations or want to receive a piece of expert advice on video streaming app development, feel free to contact our team.