The build quote is the visible part. Founders sign it, plan their cash around it, and then get blindsided by the next twenty things that arrive in the first six months. None of these are scams; they're just costs nobody mentions during the sales pitch.
Here's the comprehensive list, with realistic AUD numbers.
Day-one costs (often forgotten in quotes)
- Apple Developer Program: $149/year. Required to ship to the App Store.
- Google Play Console: US$25 one-off. Required for Android.
- Domain name: $15–$30/year. Plus the negotiations if your preferred domain is taken.
- SSL certificates: $0–$200/year. Free with most modern hosting; sometimes a paid line item with traditional hosts.
- App Store screenshots and listing graphics: $1,500–$3,500. Often quoted separately or assumed in scope. Always ask.
- App icon: $300–$1,000 if not done by your designer.
- Privacy policy and terms: $500–$2,500 from a real lawyer. Don't use a generator for anything that handles user data.
- Initial copy, brand voice, microcopy: $1,000–$4,000 from a writer.
Monthly running costs (Year One)
- Backend hosting: $30–$300/month. AWS or GCP. Stays low until traffic.
- Database: $20–$200/month. Often included in backend hosting; broken out for managed Postgres.
- Email service: $30–$200/month. Resend, Postmark, or SendGrid for transactional email.
- Push notifications: $0–$300/month. Firebase free up to thresholds, then escalates.
- Crash reporting: $0–$200/month. Sentry free tier covers most early-stage apps.
- Analytics: $0–$1,000/month. Mixpanel/Amplitude scale with events.
- Customer support: $0–$300/month. Intercom, HelpScout, or just shared inbox.
- SSL/CDN/security: $20–$200/month. Cloudflare free tier is often enough.
Add it up: $200–$2,000/month is normal for a launched app. Most founders budget $50.
Year-one surprises
- App Store rejections. First submission. Two to four days to respond. Sometimes weeks. Costs $1k–$3k in developer time per cycle.
- iOS or Android breaking change. Apple and Google both ship breaking changes once or twice a year. Patching costs 1–3 days of work.
- Real users find real bugs. Plan for 10–20 hours of bugfix work in the first month after launch, even with a great QA pass.
- Performance work. What runs fine for 100 users sometimes breaks at 5,000. Performance investigations are usually $2k–$8k of unplanned work.
- Data migration. The CSV your client promised in week 4 arrives in week 11, in a format that doesn't match your schema. Migration script: $1k–$4k.
- Security audit (pre-enterprise). Selling to a big customer? They'll ask. $5k–$30k for a real audit.
Budget the build. Then budget 50% of the build again for the first year of running it. You'll spend most of it.
Year-two costs (usually forgotten)
- Ongoing development: 25–50% of original build per year. Apps don't stop needing work after launch.
- Compliance: SOC 2 prep $20k–$80k when you start selling to enterprise.
- Native module updates. Cross-platform apps depend on packages that update; some break. Allocate 1–2 days per quarter.
- Hosting growth: 2–4x year-one costs. If your app is growing.
- Support volume. Either you handle it yourself (time) or you hire (money). Both are costs.
The mistakes founders make
- Treating the build quote as the project cost. It's about 60–70% of year one.
- Underbudgeting the soft costs. Copy, photography, App Store assets, lawyer fees, usually $5k–$15k all-in, often forgotten.
- Forgetting the "second sprint." Almost every project needs a follow-up sprint within three months of launch. Budget it.
- Buying enterprise tools too early. $200/month on monitoring nobody looks at. Stay on free tiers as long as possible.
How to budget honestly
For a typical $30k production app build, plan year-one spend at $42k–$50k. The maths:
- Build: $30k
- Pre-launch soft costs: $4k–$8k
- Hosting + tools (year 1): $3k–$8k
- Bugs, breaking changes, post-launch work: $5k–$10k
The bottom line
The build quote is honest. It's just not complete. The full first-year picture is 40–60% larger. Plan accordingly and you won't be blindsided.
If you want three Australian developers who'll quote both the build and the realistic year-one running costs, FindDevs gets you those quotes. Free, in 24 hours.