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Are you inspired by the enthralling success of Amazon? Are you also planning to venture into app entrepreneurship and thinking about having an app similar to Amazon? In this blog, I’ll cover all that you need to know about building such an app and that includes the most important question i.e. how much does it cost to build an Amazon-like app? The on-demand marketplace turned out to be a big revolution, after e-commerce. As with e-commerce, commercial center apps are also doing quite well so as to make the best products & services available to the shopaholics. Furthermore, there’re several e-commerce and products/services on-demand apps today. Despite the stiff competition, Amazon leads the marketplace with more than 600 million active customers. Thousands of merchants join this amazing online shopping platform almost daily.

What amount you would have to spend on creating an iOS & Android app similar to Amazon? Most aspiring app entrepreneurs keep asking this question over and over. Here I would like to mention that the cost of developing an app varies and depends largely on the features and functionalities you want to include in the application. To understand the cost and other aspects of an app like Amazon, you will need to first understand what these marketplace apps are and how do they differ from e-commerce apps? Before we discuss this further, let’s have a quick overview of the current and future prospects this industry holds.

What Are These Marketplace Apps?

The key difference between a marketplace app and an online store is that the former allows independent sellers to list out products/services. Quite unlike the online e-commerce stores that promote their own products and/or services at a price they want and have full control over their payment and delivery models, marketplace apps are different.

Marketplace apps are also of different types and they differ depending on their size, product type, and promotion method, etc. These apps, such as Amazon, come as a perfect solution to marketers having concerns with e-commerce apps.

Marketplace apps - the scope of growth

If we go by the statistics, the web-based shopping marketplace was over $2 trillion. Considering the rapid development of e-commerce platforms, it is anticipated that the marketplace will exceed $4 trillion mark around 2021. Ecommerce accounts for about 10% of the total retail deals and this number should possibly increase by 15% per year.

The online marketplace is at its apex these days and no matter what comes – natural disasters, epidemics, or even pandemics, online business is here to thrive and bloom further in the years to come, say many online sources. As more and more people are turning to the online stores for shopping and depending on mobile apps (rather than traditional e-commerce websites), there is a huge scope of growth and success for merchants planning to sell their products online through apps like Amazon. Competition is high if we consider e-commerce apps and even though about 50% of buyers prefer online shopping today, most of these have abandoned cart issues. People visit the site, search products, and even add to their wish list or cart but then they don’t buy. Among the biggest causes of cart abandonment, a few include:

• Lengthy process of checkout
• Payment security concerns
• No offer on desired products
• Fewer payment options
• Purpose is casual research and not purchase

Apps like Amazon are a blessing for the shoppers as well as the merchants. While allowing the merchants an opportunity to showcase their products and merchandise on a global online platform, it also helps shoppers to purchase and have their chosen products delivered at their doorsteps. The amazingly easy to use interface, a huge collection of all sorts of items, and easy and secure payment options add to the popularity of Amazon among shoppers and sellers alike.

What Is the Best Estimated Cost for Developing Amazon-like App?

Talking about the cost of building an app like Amazon, it is important to mention that the cost will majorly depend on the features and functionalities you want to include in your version of the Amazon-like app. Some of the key features and functionalities that an Amazon-like app must have include:

• Registration/login
• Search options
• Search filters
• Add to cart
• Wish list button
• Push notifications
• GPS location search
• Returns and orders
• Change the language
• Pay in multiple currencies

Let’s answer the question “how much does it cost to build an app like Amazon?” To be able to calculate the best-estimated cost, you must know that the cost of making a marketplace app can be divided into three parts namely the wireframing, app designing, and development. Let’s quickly go over these:

Wireframe: Wireframe of an app refers to the process where only the rough sketch/template of the app is prepared to help the developers understand what is required and to help the client envision the actual app post-development. The estimated cost of wireframing falls somewhere between $800 and $1000.

Design: The success of a marketplace is fully dependent on how versatile and flexible it is. The design must be powerful and compelling enough to result in a conversion. Depending on the intricacy and complexity of the design element, the cost may reach roughly $8000-$10,000.

Development: Coding is the toughest and most important part of the marketplace app development. From instilling life to the design to ensuring the full-functionality of the mobile app, everything is dependent only on the development. The cost of developing an app like Amazon depends on two factors namely the number of resources who are working on the project and the functionalities that must be added to the app.  Considering all, the cost of building an app like Amazon will fall somewhere around $35,000 to %85,000. However, this is just the estimate and not the exact cost you will have to incur for having such an app.

Are you all set to venture into marketplace app entrepreneurship? Get in touch with the mobile app development experts at appbiz360 and get started!

Disclaimer: The information above is the result of secondary research and primary research conducted by our team of experts and we nowhere claim it to be 100% accurate. For any query, kindly feel free to contact us.