For most ecommerce brands, custom app development is dramatically more expensive and slower than it needs to be. You're looking at $150K-$500K+ upfront, 6-12 months of development, and $150K-$300K per year just to keep your app running.
MobiLoud delivers a native iOS and Android app built on your existing website, live in the App Store in a litle over a month, for a predictable monthly cost starting at $1,499/month. Every integration, every feature, every page on your site carries over to your app automatically.
No rebuild, no separate codebase, no permanent engineering team. Just a mobile app that works, and delivers real revenue at high margins with minimal operating costs.
Here's how the two approaches compare:
| Custom Development | MobiLoud | |
|---|---|---|
| Upfront Cost | $150K - $500K+ | ~$6.5K |
| Monthly Cost | $12K - $33K (maintenance) | from $1,499/mo |
| Time to Launch | 6 - 12+ months | 6-8 weeks |
| Integration Work | Rebuild each one | All inherited from website |
| Website Sync | Manual, needs engineering | Automatic, real-time |
| Ongoing Maintenance | Your team or agency | Fully managed by MobiLoud |
| Push Notifications | Build it yourself | Unlimited, built-in |
| App Store Submission | You handle it | MobiLoud handles it |
| Platform Support | Whatever you build for | Any website/platform |
| 3-Year TCO | $550K - $1.1M+ | ~$50K |
Custom development makes sense if your app needs to do things your website fundamentally can't (AR try-on, offline inventory management, complex hardware integrations).
For the vast majority of ecommerce brands, the goal is to give your best customers a native app to shop your store, drive repeat purchases through push notifications, and capture the higher engagement rates that app users deliver.
That doesn't require building from scratch. Not when every website today is fully optimized for mobile, and you've already spent years perfecting the ideal user experience on your site.
The Custom App Development Process
Custom mobile apps are a major development project. If you think creating an app for your site means just writing a few lines of code - think again.
Here's what the process looks like for a typical ecommerce brand:
Discovery and scoping (4-8 weeks)
Mapping requirements, reviewing your tech stack, aligning stakeholders. Agencies charge $15,000-$30,000+ for this phase alone.
Design (4-6 weeks)
UX wireframes, UI design, reviews, revisions. Every screen built from scratch, approved, and prototyped.
Development (3-9 months)
The bulk of the cost. Your agency or dev team builds the app across iOS and Android. Cross-platform frameworks like React Native or Flutter mean one codebase for both platforms. Fully native (Swift + Kotlin) means two parallel builds.
Integration work (ongoing throughout)
This is the part most brands underestimate. Every integration on your website (reviews, search, loyalty, subscriptions, live chat, personalization) needs a corresponding mobile implementation. At $30,000-$50,000 per integration (build plus first-year maintenance), a brand running 20-30 integrations can spend more on integration work than on the core app itself.
QA and testing (4-8 weeks)
Testing across devices, screen sizes, OS versions, payment flows. Bugs get found, fixes take time, the launch date slides.
App Store submission (1-3 weeks)
Apple's review process can be unpredictable for ecommerce apps. Rejections happen. Resubmissions add weeks.
Maintenance (forever)
This is the part agency quotes don't emphasize. Every iOS and Android OS update needs testing. Every website change needs a corresponding mobile update. Every integration API change needs engineering attention. This runs $150,000-$300,000+ per year for a mid-to-enterprise ecommerce app.
Total realistic timeline: 6-12+ months from kickoff to App Store.
Where the Money Goes
Upfront Development
| Component | Typical Cost |
|---|---|
| Discovery and scoping | $15,000 - $30,000 |
| UI/UX design | $20,000 - $50,000 |
| Core app dev (iOS + Android) | $80,000 - $250,000 |
| Integration rebuilding (20) | $100,000 - $500,000+ |
| QA and testing | $15,000 - $40,000 |
| Total upfront | $230,000 - $870,000+ |
Sources: GoodFirms, Appscrip, Merge.dev
Ongoing Annual Costs
| Component | Typical Cost/Year |
|---|---|
| Maintenance and bug fixes | $40,000 - $100,000 |
| OS updates and compatibility | $20,000 - $50,000 |
| Feature parity with website | $50,000 - $150,000 |
| Integration maintenance | $40,000 - $100,000 |
| Total annual | $150,000 - $400,000 |
Three-Year Total Cost of Ownership
- Year 1: $250K-$500K+ (development + launch)
- Year 2: $150K-$300K (maintenance + feature development)
- Year 3: $150K-$300K (maintenance + feature development)
- Three-year total: $550K-$1.1M+
And that assumes the project goes according to plan. 65-70% of digital transformation projects don't hit their original objectives, according to McKinsey and BCG.
The Biggest Hidden Cost: Your App Falls Behind Your Website
Your website changes constantly. New products, updated pricing, seasonal promotions, redesigned landing pages, new integrations, A/B tests. Your ecommerce team ships changes weekly, sometimes daily.
With a custom app, every one of those changes needs to be replicated in the mobile codebase. Either your agency does it (at their hourly rate), or your internal team does it (if you have one).
In practice, most brands' custom apps start falling behind their websites within months of launch. Promotions live on the site don't show in the app. New features take weeks to port over. The app becomes a second-class version of the brand experience.
This isn't a failure of execution. It's a structural problem with maintaining two separate codebases for the same store.
How MobiLoud Eliminates All of This
MobiLoud takes your existing website and delivers it as a native iOS and Android app. No rebuild, no separate codebase.
This comes with the following advantages:
Everything carries over
Product pages, checkout flow, account management, search, loyalty programs, subscriptions. If it works on your website, it works in the app.
Whatever you rely on to drive revenue; Algolia, Klaviyo, ReCharge, Yotpo, Gorgias. No re-integrating, no gaps.
Your website changes sync instantly
Update your site, and it's live in the app. Your marketing team doesn't learn a new tool or manage a parallel workflow.
All the native features you need
Push notifications (unlimited, with automated abandoned cart and behavioral triggers), deep linking, native navigation, full App Store presence on iOS and Android.
Fully managed
MobiLoud handles the build, App Store submission, ongoing maintenance, and OS updates. No mobile codebase for your team to worry about.
Live in weeks
No 6-month build. No months of QA. From kickoff to App Store in a matter of weeks, not months.
When Custom Development Actually Makes Sense
Custom dev is the right call in a few specific situations:
- Your app needs to do things your website can't. AR try-on, barcode scanning, offline inventory management, hardware integration. If the app experience is fundamentally different from the web, you may need custom work.
- You're a very large retailer with a dedicated mobile team. Amazon, Walmart, Target-scale. You have the resources and user base to sustain a fully independent codebase.
- Mobile is your primary product, not a channel. Think Uber or DoorDash. The app is the business, not just a channel (and people rarely interact through your website).
For most ecommerce brands, the goal is simpler: a native app for your best customers, push notifications to drive repeat purchases, and the conversion lift that app users consistently deliver. That doesn't require building from scratch.
What MobiLoud Customers Get From Their Apps
We’ve helped over 2,000 businesses launch native apps from their website over the last 10+ years, including global ecommerce brands like Bestseller, John Varavatos and Tadashi Shoji.
Here are some highlights from our latest Ecommerce Mobile App Benchmark Report:
- Conversion rates 3-10x higher than mobile web. One brand saw 9.1% in-app conversion versus 1.1% on mobile web.
- Average order values 10-50% higher among app users.
- App users deliver 2.8-5x higher lifetime value than web-only shoppers.
Nick Barbarise, Director of IT at John Varvatos, considered custom development for their Salesforce Commerce Cloud store, before settling on MobiLoud: "A custom app build would have been prohibitively expensive. MobiLoud was the only realistic option." The brand has since generated close to $1M in app sales.
Next Steps
Here’s how to get your brand in the App Stores, and on your customers’ home screens, without a six figure investment and a year-long dev project.
- Book a strategy call. We'll walk through your goals, your tech stack, and whether MobiLoud is the right fit. No commitment, just an honest look at your options.
- Get a custom app preview. Our team builds a working preview of your native app so you can see how your store looks and performs as an app.
- Launch . We handle the build, App Store submission, and ongoing maintenance. Your app goes live on iOS and Android while your team stays focused on the business.
MobiLoud has built 2,000+ apps for ecommerce brands like Bestseller, John Varvatos, and BuyBuyBaby. We give you predictable monthly pricing, no revenue share, and an expert team to handle everything for your app, from build to maintenance to ongoing growth support.
Book a free strategy call to see how to turn your ecommerce website into a high-converting mobile app.