How much does it cost to build a social services app?

Standard price for a social services app: $37,500

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What is a social services app?

A social services application is a web or mobile app that provides people with access to essential government services. Social service apps usually include interfaces for citizens to register for an account, verify their information (e.g., address and age), create a budget, submit requests for assistance, track the progress of pending requests, and review their history of submitted requests.

Social service apps often share functionalities with other consumer finance apps, such as banking apps, portfolio management apps, and cryptocurrency trading apps. Venmo and PayPal are the two widely popular examples of social service apps.

Here are some recent social services app examples built with Xperts:

  • An app that will help people in Norway to get legal advice/council about unemployment/work. The app will be built on multiple APIs (Zendesk, Upodi, Reepay, Loyaltii, Yulsn, etc.) that will handle ticketing, referrals, marketing, and analytics.

What is the typical cost to build a social services app?

A social services app usually costs $37,500 to build. However, the total cost can be as low as $25,000 or as high as $50,000. A social services app with a low number of features (also known as a "minimum viable product", or MVP) will be more affordable than an app that includes all intended functionality.

For example, here are some recent social services app price quotes from Xperts:

  • $12,500

How long does it take to build a social services app?

A social services app usually takes 167 hours to build. However, a social services app can be built in as few as 133 hours, or in as many as 200 hours. The exact timeline mostly depends on how complicated your app is. As a general rule, it will take longer if you require highly custom designs, niche features, or non-standard release platforms.

For example, the most recent social services apps built with Xperts received the following hourly estimates:

  • 200

How to successfully grow your social services application

A social services app can grow as quickly as possible by providing high-quality services to users. This is a competitive market, since there are both for-profit and non-profit apps that provide similar services, and users choose their service provider based on the quality of service that they receive. To increase the value of their product, social services apps should focus on making their existing features more efficient while also focusing on solving customer problems that are not currently being addressed by other companies.

Risks and challenges of building a social services application

A social service app faces risks related to user privacy, the handling of sensitive personal information, and the potential for harassment or discrimination. It is advisable to conduct a security review of your app before releasing it into the wild. Your app should have strong privacy controls for individual users as well as for administrators and third-party integrators. You should also have mechanisms in place to verify and/or delete user data when users request it.

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