Develop a Video Streaming App: How Much Does It Cost You?

How Much Does It Cost To Create A Video Streaming App?

Are video streaming apps like Netflix, YouTube, or Hulu the future of television? Well, gone are those days when televisions were the only major source of entertainment.

With 150 million global subscribers of Netflix and generating $7.16 billion revenue, Netflix has taken the center stage in the market and has successfully overtaken traditional television.

In fact, live streaming apps went viral and seem to be a great source of entertainment during such a stressful time of the pandemic. Also, every industry giant in the world has launched its own live streaming solution such as Amazon’s prime, YouTube Live, Instagram Live, and more and is witnessing skyrocketing growth.

If you are also thinking of launching an on-demand video streaming app to become a part of this thriving industry, then you are on right track.

But before that, many of you are wondering why you should invest in this app idea where the industry is already dominated by the tech giants? To get the answer to this question, you need to dig deeper into the market statistics of video streaming apps and understand the mentioned parameters below affecting the app development cost and time.

Key highlights of the blog:

• Why Investing In Video Streaming Mobile App Development?
• Top Things That Worth Attention While Developing an On-Demand Video Streaming App
  - Adhering to Broadcasting Rules and Adding Disclaimer
  - Content and User’s Personal Data Security
  - User Internet Connection For Excellent User Experience
  - Cloud Hosting on Server
• Top Features of Developing On-Demand Video-Streaming App
  - Front-End Features To Consider
  - Back-End Features For Seamless Functionality
• How To Make Money From Your Video Streaming App?
  - Business App Monetization Canvas
• How Much Does it Cost to Build A Video Streaming Apps Like Netflix?
  - Understanding Parameters Influencing the Cost to Develop a Video Streaming App
• Conclusion

Let’s get started by discussing each point in detail…

Why Invest In Video Streaming Mobile App Development?

With the emerging technologies and innovations in app development, video streaming apps are grabbing the attention of millions of viewers and opening up whole new opportunities for businesses by launching their own video streaming app. The number of subscribers is taking a steep jump each year, undoubtedly video streaming apps prove to be one of the most powerful and effective platforms for products and service promotions, live announcements, online classes, broadcasting and more.

In fact, while many businesses have struggled with their stay-at-home restrictions, streaming sites among the businesses have seen an uptick in sales. If you are still wondering how it helps you to maximize your returns, then you need to have a look at these statistics…

• Apps like Disney+ launch in November 2019, have amassed around 116 million subscribers worldwide, Hulu has 38.8 million subscribers whereas Netflix is leading the industry by adding 16 million subscribers in the first three months of 2020 alone.
• As per the survey reports it is projected that Video Streaming apps are expected to generate revenue of US$70,845 million in 2021.
• The average revenue per user in the video streaming app is projected to reach US$65.68 in 2021.
• The number of users of video streaming apps is expected to amount to 1,423 million by 2025.
• According to Statista, the user penetration will be 14.3% in 2021 and is expected to hit 18.2% by 2025.

With all these stats and facts, it is clear that investing and planning to create an app like Netflix has become a considerable decision. If you have finally made up your mind, then there are few important considerations that you need to keep in mind if you really want to conquer the world.

Top Things That Worth Attention While Developing an On-Demand Video Streaming App

After the stats, emerging businesses are in full enthusiasm and curious to get the answer to the questions like:

• How to create a live streaming app like Netflix?
• How much does it cost to create a live streaming app like Periscope?
• How long does it take to Build A Video Streaming Apps Like Netflix? more…

Before we get an answer to these questions, firstly you need to have a basic idea of what to expect from the app. Businesses often hire a video streaming app development company to help them with their expertise and experience in the field, but still here are the few major yet important considerations that you can’t afford to miss in video streaming app development. Let’s get started…

• Adhering Broadcasting Rules and Adding Disclaimer

Video streaming apps are usually categorized with different choices of video content that are not appropriate for all age groups, therefore they notify the viewers before broadcasting the content.

To avoid any issues, make sure your app developers are adhering to proper rules and regulations for broadcasting the content by marking age type as 14, 18+, U/A, U, A and depending upon these signs or age groups they add the disclaimer.

Apart, you can ask the user’s age while signing the app and recommend the age-appropriate content or use the kids lock or kids account option to filter the content.

• Content and User’s Personal Data Security

While launching a video streaming app like Netflix, make sure you have adopted a high level of security and video encryptions for the sake of your content and user’s personal data security.

To provide an extreme level of security, make sure app developers are conducting app quality testing to detect any issues or bugs breaches in the security system. Also, for certain domains, they can lock the content and minimize the risk of content leakage.

Further, offering licensing and compliance with regulations can be a good idea for high-end encryption.

• User Internet Connection For Excellent User Experience

For the uninterrupted user experience and preventing such inconvenience, it is important to put your focus on the internet connection as it impacts the quality, the speed loading and more.

If it is taking a long time for content loading, then it will impact the user experience. To avoid facing these issues, make sure you offer various quality options like 360p to 4k range of watching a video.

• Cloud Hosting on Server

Cloud hosting is one of the most integral parts of your video streaming app development process as it allows you to place content on a platform from where everyone can easily access it. To better manage this functionality of your app, it is worth hiring mobile app developers that helps you scale up the app with your business. All you need is to pay some extra bucks for the extra storage and it provides better sustainability. Even if the server crashes, your services will keep working.

No matter whether you are replicating the app clone with Netflix, YouTube, Disney+, Hulu or more, without incorporating these important points, there is less chance of achieving success.

Another major element of the video app development that actually impacts the app’s success is the choice of features and functionalities you are opting for your project.

Top Features of Developing On-Demand Video-Streaming App

When it comes to video streaming mobile app development, every business owner dreams of incorporating the best choice of features to meet your business needs and engage your customers. So keeping that in mind, we have rounded up the best choice of features here that help you earn better results.

To make it simple to understand and adopt, we have divided features into two segments — frontend (User Panel) and backend (Admin Panel).

Features for User Panel

• Social Login & Signup: Majorly app registration can be processed via three options either using email, phone number or user name, but to make it quick, simple and easy for the users you can consider incorporating social media integration.
• Browse and Search Content: From thousands of video content available on the app, finding your favourite one becomes easier while using a browsing box or search filters. Allow users to find their choice of content based on language, age category, video content type category.
• Select Language and Genre: Users love watching videos in their local language, so make sure you have videos for different languages or provide the option of using their choice of language to watch for a specific video. You can think of hiring app developer to customize this feature or help you upload the content with multi-language options.
• Add video to a playlist: With this feature, users can quickly add their favourite content or clips to the playlist that they want to watch later or again. This feature will offer a great level of convenience and uplift the user experience.
• Play video preview: Make sure you are adding a preview of the video so that users can quickly understand whether this content fits their choice or not. Instead of draining 2 to 3 hrs in watching boring content, users would love to have video promos.
• Download video to listen offline: For uninterrupted user experience, many users would prefer downloading the content that they can enjoy watching at the offline mode, so make sure your content is available to download. Also, here you can mention the range of quality of the content so that it won’t acquire the major space in the mobile.
• Create public and private playlists: Allow users to segregate the content into two playlists that they want to watch privately either on the phone or public videos which may be watched with family.
• Share the Video on Different Social Networks: Depending on the type of video, you can have an option to share content on different social media platforms to enhance your business reach.
• Search video by name, artist, and album: Have an option in this video streaming app to search the clips or content based on artist, album, or producer name to ensure an excellent user experience.
• Payment Integration: Since the app is being used by various people using different methods of payment, it makes sense to have a feature of multi-payment integration.
• Manage devices in your subscription: The choice of accessing the app on multiple devices can be on a paid basis, but make sure you have this option in your app and allow users to watch videos on mobile, TV, laptop or tablet.
• Use in-app voice assistance: With the voice recognition feature, it becomes far easier for users to search any content on your app. Also, it makes it easier to access for all age groups who can’t go much deeper in the navigation of the app.

Features for the Admin Panel

• Manage Subscribers and Users: If you are considering developing an app like Netflix, then you may witness millions of subscribers soon, but manage your app and scale it up as the user base increases.
• Upload videos on the platform: Make sure you have a feature at the backend to upload content or add content flawlessly without interrupting any other functionality of the app.
• Edit videos, artists, or albums: Allow admin to manage content according to albums of various artists and categories.
• Manage advertisements and promotions: With this feature, the admin can control all the advertisements and promotions on the app. If the abandonment rate is increasing due to an excessive amount of advertisements, then the admin can restrict ads or limit such ads.
• Run loyalty programs: Consider adding the feature of loyalty programs that help you keep your viewers engaged with the app by offering loyalty points on every purchase.
• Manage subscriptions and memberships: Allow admin to manage the multiple subscriptions and membership plans of various users.
• Add and delete videos, artists, or albums: Add an option to add, delete video content from the backend that is not in trend or has the lowest views or downloads. Since it is an important feature, you can think of hiring an app developer that helps you customize it in a way that is far easier and straightforward to access.
• App Analytics: To analyze how your app is performing, you can add the dashboard that provides app metrics and enables you to track how frequently users are accessing your app, of which age group or from which location, active users, usage of monetizing models and more.

These are the few features that you can consider while planning to create an on-demand video streaming app like YouTube or Netflix. But, before hiring a mobile app developers, many of you are confused about how it will help you make money for your business? What is the business monetization Canvas for the video streaming app…

How To Make Profit From Video Streaming Apps Like Netflix?

When it comes to investing a huge amount of budget and effort in app development, how do I make money with my business app development idea?

This is one of the most prominent questions of all business incubators. There are several ways to monetize your offline business but when migrating your business to the digital platform, business monetization strategy works a bit differently.

Here are the 3 main ways to make a profit out of your streaming services.

• Subscriptions and Membership Plans

This model is one of the most popular yet common ways of monetizing streaming platforms. While it is free to download and offers a trial for 15 days so the potential users can get the opportunity to check whether they like the platform and are willing to pay for it or not.

Subscription plans can vary from basic, standard to VIP options and accordingly they provide different access to the users.

• Advertising and Promotions

This is quite simple and one of the major revenue generation strategies used by industry leaders. You can charge other companies to place their advertisements on your platform. It’s also possible to add product advertisements in the video content if it is related to the topic.

• Fee For Listing Video Content

You can charge a fee for listing a large amount of content for each album in a month or week. This is a great way to earn extra money from your video streaming app like Netflix.

No matter which app monetization strategy you use for the streaming platform, your most often question will remain the same that how much does it cost to create a video streaming app like Netflix? But before that, if you are planning to create a mobile app like Netflix, make sure you hire a mobile app development company that helps to employ business analysts, project managers, app developers, quality analysts, UI/UX designers and more on the project to ensure on-time delivery of the project. Also, look for a capable app development team that has expertise and experience working with the latest technologies, tools and app development strategies.

How much does it Cost to Develop a Video Streaming App?

Estimating the cost of an on-demand video streaming app like Netflix is never being a simple task. Since the video streaming app is wrapped with plenty of features and functionalities developed with advanced choice of technologies and work flawlessly on multiple platforms, therefore the app development cost with the fixed numbers is a complex task.

The precise cost of app development actually depends on several factors such as the size of the app, the number of features and functionalities integrated, scalability of the design, complexity level of UI/UX design, and more.

Above all, the overall cost of the app development is greatly influenced by the app development you choose to hire and their hourly cost which is depending upon the location of the app developers.

If we consider concluding all such factors and parameters and estimating the app development cost, then it will be USD 20,000 for the basic version which may take around 4 to 6 months for app development. Whereas a moderate to advanced level of streaming app fully loaded with modern features and driven by high-quality standards will take 9+ months for development and cost between USD 25,000 to 35,000.

These are rough estimations, so it is recommended to look forward to collaborating with the app development team to discuss your business idea and requirements and accordingly, they will help you get the actual app development cost.

Conclusion: Is Developing a Video Streaming App Like Netflix a Worthy Decision?

From the last couple of years, things have greatly revolutionized and made people move from text-based content to audio and then quickly to video-based content. With the live streaming features in video streaming apps, even bloggers have migrated to video logs to retain their followers and attract new ones. So if you are also planning to expand your business with the on-demand video streaming app then hire mobile app developers that helps you launch a platform embracing all the latest technologies and latest features and functionalities.

We have tried to give you comprehensive information on what it takes to build an app like Netflix, but still, if you have any doubt or queries regarding app development, then you can Contact Us or drop a query below!

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