Sharp Mobile Apps That Move Your Business Forward

The cost of building a mobile app varies significantly depending on complexity, features, platform, and the level of design and backend infrastructure required. At Webhouse, most mobile app projects fall within the $10,000–$50,000 AUD range, which includes discovery, UX/UI design, cross-platform development, testing, and deployment to both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. That's the full package — strategy, design, engineering, QA, and launch support wrapped into one engagement with one team.

To put that in perspective, hiring a single in-house mobile developer in Sydney costs $130,000–$160,000+ per year in salary alone. You'd still need a designer, a backend engineer, QA, and someone managing the project, which quickly pushes a lean internal team into the $350,000–$500,000+ range before they've shipped a feature.

A straightforward app — such as a booking tool, customer portal, location-based utility, or simple internal tool — typically sits at the lower end. More complex apps with real-time syncing, payment processing, multi-role systems, third-party integrations, admin dashboards, push notifications, offline-first capability, and advanced analytics push higher. A full SaaS product with a mobile companion app and backend API infrastructure sits higher again.

We don't do vague estimates or rough ballparks. After an initial conversation — usually 30 to 60 minutes — we put together a detailed, scoped proposal that breaks down exactly what's included, what the timeline looks like, and what it costs. If budget is a constraint, we strongly recommend phased delivery: launch the core version first, get real feedback, and then invest in the next phase based on what you've learned.

This is one of the most important decisions you'll make early in the process, and getting it wrong can cost you tens of thousands of dollars in unnecessary development. The right answer depends on your goals, budget, timeline, and users.

Native apps are built separately for each platform — Swift or SwiftUI for iOS, Kotlin for Android. They deliver the best performance and deepest access to device-specific features like ARKit, HealthKit, advanced camera controls, Bluetooth peripherals, and complex background processing. The trade-off is that you're building and maintaining two completely separate applications, which roughly doubles your cost and testing effort.

Cross-platform apps, and specifically React Native, use a single codebase that compiles to native iOS and Android applications. React Native renders actual native UI components, gives you 90–95% code sharing, near-native performance, and access to most device features at roughly 60–70% of the cost of two native apps.

Progressive web apps are ideal when you want the broadest possible reach without requiring users to download from a store, or when the app is primarily content consumption and simple interactions. At Webhouse, we recommend React Native for the majority of mobile projects because it consistently hits the best balance of speed, cost, quality, and long-term maintainability.

Most mobile apps we build ship within 6–12 weeks from kickoff to live on the App Store and Google Play. That includes discovery, design, development, testing, and store submission — the full lifecycle, not just coding.

A focused, feature-lean app — a booking tool, a map-based utility, a customer portal, or a simple internal tool — can go live in as little as 3–4 weeks. We built the We Hungry food truck map app in 3 weeks from first conversation to live in the store, including design, development, and deployment.

More complex apps with authentication systems, payment processing, real-time data features, admin panels, multi-role user management, and third-party integrations typically take 8–16 weeks. Enterprise-grade apps with strict compliance requirements, complex data models, or legacy system integrations may extend beyond that, but we'll scope the timeline clearly and honestly before starting.

Our speed isn't about cutting corners. It comes from three things: we're AI-native, senior engineers stay close to every project, and we work in short, visible sprints so you see working builds early and often. If you have a hard launch date, we can scope to hit it, even if that means launching with a focused feature set and adding more later.

No — we handle the entire submission and approval process for both the Apple App Store and Google Play Store as part of every mobile project. This is baked into the delivery, not bolted on later.

The process includes preparing store assets, configuring the app binary for review compliance, submitting to Apple and Google, monitoring the review process, responding to reviewer feedback, and managing the release until your app is live.

Apple's App Review team is notoriously strict and can be unpredictable. Apps get rejected for metadata issues, missing privacy disclosures, or UI elements that don't conform to Human Interface Guidelines. We build with those requirements in mind from day one, which dramatically reduces rejection risk and the submit-reject-fix-resubmit cycle.

Yes — and by default, you're getting both platforms from a single build, not paying for two separate apps. We build cross-platform using React Native, which means your app runs natively on both iOS and Android from one shared codebase.

React Native doesn't work like the old web-view-in-a-shell approach. It compiles to actual native UI components, so the app looks and feels native on each platform while still sharing most of the business logic and UI code.

In practical terms, that gives us access to the camera, GPS, push notifications, biometric authentication, secure local storage, file system access, contacts, calendar, Bluetooth, and more. We test across a wide range of devices and OS versions before launch so the experience stays solid regardless of what your users are carrying.

The short answer is: essentially anything. We've built apps with real-time location tracking and interactive maps, payment processing and subscription billing, push notifications and in-app messaging, user authentication including social login and biometrics, camera integration, offline-first architecture, third-party API integrations, admin dashboards, analytics, and QR/barcode scanning.

Beyond standard features, we also integrate AI and machine learning capabilities directly into mobile apps — intelligent search, computer vision, recommendation engines, predictive analytics, and natural language processing for chatbots or in-app assistants.

The critical point is that we don't build features for the sake of it. A focused app with five well-executed features will always outperform a bloated app with fifty half-baked ones, so during discovery we ruthlessly prioritise what absolutely has to ship on day one and what can wait for version two.

Security isn't a feature we bolt on at the end. It's a foundational principle that shapes how we architect, design, develop, and deploy every mobile app from the very first conversation.

We define how data will be stored, transmitted, accessed, and protected before we write code. On the technical side, that means encryption in transit and at rest, secure authentication, role-based access controls, secure APIs, input validation, and native keychain/keystore storage for sensitive data.

We also run automated security scans and manual reviews on the most critical components. If the app touches sensitive data, we flag privacy and compliance requirements early and build around them properly.

Launching your app is the starting line, not the finish line. Every mobile project includes a post-launch support window to handle the bugs and edge cases that only surface once real users and real devices hit the app.

Beyond that, we offer ongoing retainers for updates, new features, performance work, OS compatibility updates, security patches, store submission management, and backend scaling.

Mobile apps need regular maintenance because Apple and Google change platform requirements, deprecate APIs, and introduce new store rules. We handle that so your app keeps working and keeps getting used.