Can you imagine an ambitious start-up that goes without a mobile app and a website? It’s extremely hard, isn’t it? Present-day realities like widespread smartphone use, online shopping boom, and lockdowns made software a must for every business. 

At the same time, the increase in demand for business software solutions led to the flood of poor-quality applications. Such whipped-up apps are usually full of bugs, insecure, include mediocre features, and have other flaws that cause troubles for you and the users. Eventually, these flaws make customers turn their backs on such start-up software. 

To avoid that, you should create your custom start-up application. In this article, we will review the 6 main reasons why you should opt for custom software rather than off-the-shelf ones. Besides, we will give you some tips on how you can get it faster and on a moderate budget.

Tips for custom start-up software development 

Go custom right from the start

Before we dive into the advantages of custom software development we’d like to point out one crucial thing - it’s better to go custom right from the MVP development stage. If you take a ready-made or simple application to show to start acquiring your first clients, you will need to start your app development all over again anyway. Moreover, it can disturb your brand perception.  So, to save your time and effort, we recommend you to choose between custom and pre-made apps before you begin to build your software.

Hire a custom software development company for start-ups

To save more time for business development and ensure the quality of your start-up application, you can delegate your mobile app creation to a start-up software development company.   

While looking for such a company, notice the following traits that signal you whether it suits your particular project requirements:

• A software development company can boast their success stories in creating start-up software;
• It resides or have a representative office in your country;
• Has special offerings and pricing plans for start-ups;
• Includes QA and BA services along with development;
• Uses advanced project management methodologies (Scrum, Agile, etc.)

Be ready for ad-hoc decisions

Start-ups are rather unpredictable. Especially, in the early stages of their development. User feedback, technology changes, multiple issues popping up during the business formation are constantly shaping the project.

To reduce pain from such shifts, approach your project with the inventor spirit and learning mindset. If you need more factual informatization to feel the ground, make detailed estimations wherever you can. For instance, you can find out what time will the software development take and use a free project estimation template to assess the costs faster and know exact custom app development cost.

Also, you can pair your custom software development with certain management practices like Agile or Scrum to keep the process as flexible as possible. In the case of process organization, it’s ok to seize ready-to-use tools like the adapted scrum framework. 

6 advantages of custom apps for start-up projects

High security

Although off-the-shelf apps have a basic level of security, they are still prone to some hacker attacks. Custom software allows you to pick up the protecting measures yourself, be it data encryption, password policies, and other authentification methods like face ID, fingerprints, or Google authenticator for 2 FA.

To deploy any of these security measures, you’ll likely need to hire a start-up software development company or find experienced mobile developers by yourself. Specialists with no or little experience in the field aren’t likely to set them up properly.

Customized features

As a start-up, you must have some ideas that aim to bring fresh air to an industry you are going to enter. In an application, such ideas are represented by unique features. 

Obviously, it’s impossible to find the features that reflect a disruptive idea in a templated application. At the same time, this is what custom software development exists for by definition. However, translating fresh ideas into software features takes a great deal of creativity and mastery in the art of digital engineering.  

Better UX/UI design

As a rule, custom applications have much more authentic and vivid designs that include custom elements like your brand colors, signs, etc. Your start-up app’s aesthetics matter to the point that a client or investor can switch to similar software that have a more presentable UI. It can attract customers just as well as excellent functionality. Besides, when the app reflects your brand spirit and includes identity elements, it raises brand awareness, serving for long-term success. 

Working with a software development company, you can relax because they have  However, if your hire in-hose developers to build your custom start-up application, you’ll need to hire a UI/UX designer too.  In fact, you don’t need to create the custom design from scratch if you use such tools as UI Kitten.

Various integrations

Custom software enables you to integrate it with other services and systems. Those, in its turn, multiply the functionality, scalability, and flexibility of your application. Among the most popular integrations for start-up applications are:

Cloud services

Cloud services improve customer support, provide stable data storage, and facilitate the scalability process for your app. If you integrate your app with a cloud-agnosic system, it will also enhance the feature flexibility of your app. The most popular cloud providers in the world right now are AWS and Microsoft Azure cloud services.

Payment systems

You can embed a banking system into your application. The ability to pay for a product right in the app is vital for business applications as it improves customer experience, especially if you run a customized ecommerce website.

GPS integration

If your start-up has something to do with logistics or you just want to show the customer where your office is in the app, mapping 3d party services will be a must. 

Social networks

Integrating your app with some of the most trendy social networks will make signing up and logging in to your application easier. Customers would rather sign in with their Google or Twitter accounts in one click than go through the whole registration process. Such integrations increase your customer acquisition big time, making their interactions with your start-up comfortable and personalized. 

Flexibility

Start-ups are extremely unpredictable. That’s why start-up software should be adaptable to the changes in business development. 

Custom applications leave you much space for maneuver as you create it and have greater scalability capacity. Of course, the scaling and flexibility of such apps depend on the programming language you build it with. But at least, you can choose it yourself. To get more information on selecting the right tech stack, read this MVP development guide.

Lower costs

It may sound counterintuitive at first because, initially, custom software development requires significant financial resources to deliver. But off-the-shelf apps have their pricing plans that can be changed at any moment by the providers. In addition, you will have to pay more as your start-up scales.

Thus, we have a significant one-time payment for a fully customized application on one scale, and continuous unpredictable charges for the software you have little or no control over on the other. After simple calculations, it becomes clear that, in the long term, custom software development is cheaper. One way or another, you’ll need a fully customized application when your business will grow to a certain degree. As the old saying goes - ‘’penny-wise, pound foolish”. 

Wrap up

Alright, now you are familiar with the benefits of custom applications for start-ups and the tips to make its development process easier. We hope, there’s enough information for you to make a balanced decision and choose the type of software you need for your particular project. 

If you’ve already decided and want to create a custom application, reach out to our start-up experts to get a free or discounted discovery phase. Apart from that, we offer a full cycle of custom start-up software development services including web/mobile app development, UI/UX design, BA, QA, and Azure/AWS cloud consulting & integrations.