Custom app development, despite being the gold standard, isn’t for everyone. It costs way too much and usually, only the million dollar corporates can successfully pull it off. Small to mid size companies need an app to uplift their business by creating a dependable customer experience channel, but within a budget. Choosing a white label app development partner allows such businesses to create high quality mobile apps that can be branded and customized to their liking and be ready to market in a tight timeframe, all in a tight budget. When you need to focus on building your business, helping your customers and growing your bottomline, setting aside a large chunk of resources for app development can be a challenge. It involves hiring specialized experts for app development, training them on your business process and worrying about managing the app project in addition to a hundred other things that need your attention urgently.
A white label agency takes this burden off your hands. They are equipped with the elemental backend code that forms the base of your app, and give you the flexibility to easily modify the frontend code allowing you to customize the look, feel and function of your app to serve your branding and business goals. The result is an app that looks completely authentic to your business and can be marketed as such, without ever naming the white label partner. It is by all means, your app, made to serve your business goals, albeit with a little expert help and no need to code from scratch. That’s what makes white label app development the go-to option for some of the most progressive startups and SMBs of our time, who ensure the best customer experiences and reap the dozen other benefits of having a mobile app, without having to hire an expensive in-house team.
White Label vs Outsourcing
The other option companies consider when developing apps on a budget, is outsourcing to an app development company. The app development company then studies your business, your customers, your app development motives and goals etc. to try and get an insider’s perspective of your business. Then begins the process of developing a custom app for you, including everything from writing the code to designing custom UX and UI. While this sounds great in theory, it falters in practice.
Outsourcing Doesn’t Help Your Budget
Custom app development is expensive. So if you outsource to a professional app development company that is truly worth its salt, it is bound to be equally expensive if not more.
Say you were to begin building your own custom app in-house. You’d have at least some overlap in resources and expertise. Someone on your payroll who already knows the business perfectly, and is skilled in development can lead the project and hiring a developer could suffice. Outsourcing to an app development company on the other hand, is like hiring an entire team of designers, developers, marketers, testers and project managers. Atop that, you need to set aside time to acquaint this team with your business and its workings, which is added billable hours. The result is leading up a massive expense, or choosing a cheaper but sub-par development company.
Some of the other concerns of outsourcing app development include data privacy concerns, communication hassles with teams located in different locations and probably different time zones, tax regulations and legal constraints among others.
White Label App Development Gives You That Flexibility
Sure, a white label app is no custom app, but it does achieve fantastic business results if done well, and at a fraction of the cost. It is also market-ready in record time, helping you gain an edge on the competition.
With white label app development, you basically have a ready to use backend code at your disposal. Creating this from scratch takes a really long time and requires expert developers who are expensive. Using customizable readymade code saves that time and money, and leaves you free to modify the frontend code anyway you like, completely customizing how the app looks and feels. You can choose to make it as unique to your brand as you like, thus ending up with a fully functional app that’s ready to market on a cost-effective budget and shoestring timeline.
Pros and Cons of White Label App Development
Like everything, white label app development has its set of advantages and challenges. Let’s take a look at some, to gain a clearer understanding of what works for you.
Pros :
1. Free Up Resources to Focus on Core Business Elements
Building and growing a business is an all consuming labor. Prospecting clients, developing products, managing projects, providing great customer service, all of these engagements take up every waking minute of an entrepreneur’s life. Having to worry about app development atop that can be a lot of work and takes your attention away from your core business. While responsibilities like writing code for your app can be handled by hired help, your unique insights and creativity are crucial to keeping your business running. Using a white label partner for app development takes the burden off your hands and lets you focus on your business instead.
2. Focus On an Omnichannel Approach
While it has been established that a mobile app is imperative to the growth of local businesses, you cannot ignore the other channels where you need to build an equally strong presence. You need a great website for those who like to browse, you probably need a chatbot, and a prompt and responsive customer support team is absolutely indispensable. Investing a ton of money into a custom app may leave you with little to spend on these other channels. Choosing a white label partner helps you complete app development at a lower cost, you have resources to spend on developing all the other channels and providing your customers a truly omnichannel experience.
3. Offer Wider Range, Full-Service Solutions
Using white label services helps you offer your customer more inclusive full service solutions. For instance, if you are a SaaS company providing bespoke chatbot solutions to ecommerce businesses, you can use a white label service to help you develop not just text based bots but also voice recognition systems to offer a complete automated customer support suite for your client, where you don’t really have to build the voice recognition engine yourself, as your white label partner does it for you.
4. Scalability
White label app development allows you to scale up your app offering as your business grows. You can begin with a simple core service app like placing orders and processing truncations and overtime, build it up to a level where customers can use the app to customize products, interact with their friends on your app, share user generated content or anything else. Hiring a custom developer every time you want to add a new feature isn’t economically or technically viable. Using a white label partner on the other hand makes the job simple, offering unlimited scalability.
Cons :
1. Data Sharing
The first concern that comes to mind is data sharing. Since white label services operate on the cloud, they do require you to share your data on the cloud. If you choose a good white label partner though, you can ensure that they follow proper data privacy guidelines.
2. Little Control over Back-end Code
While a good white label agency will help you fully customize your frontend code, you still have very little control over the quality of the backend code which is crucial to the smooth functioning of your app. usually, the agency will inform you about the quality of their backend code, and you’ll just have to take their word for it. Once again, the quality and experience of the agency you choose will make the primary difference here.
3. Possibility of Déjà Vu
Since white label apps come from a basic backend code that is designed to be used by multiple clients, there is the possibility that your app may look like many other apps already made with that codebase. If you don’t customize the frontend really well, you could end up with a generic-looking app and in worst cases; even face rejection from the app store.
Concluding Notes
While the cons are hardly dismissible, the pros of white label app development do serve certain kinds of businesses very well. The cons can easily be mitigated by performing a thorough research into the quality of your white label development company and choosing a good one that has experienced coders and sufficient happy customers to vouch.
To sum it up, white label app development serves to clear up a number of roadblocks that small to medium companies face when looking for an economical app development solution that doesn’t compromise on quality and customizability. White label development is more financially viable than custom app development, in-house app development and even outsourced app development. At the same time, it offers you complete flexibility over your app’s design, branding and customer interface. It really doesn’t get any better than this. Explore our website to find out more about how our white label app development services help build the perfect app for your business.
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