MobiLoud Helped All Sober Save $3 Million AND Build a Better Product

When Michael Pierce came on board as All Sober’s CTO, they had spent close to three million dollars on a website and mobile apps that were disjointed and difficult to scale or improve.

They wanted to migrate to something that was cheaper, simpler and easier to manage in-house. By teaming up with MobiLoud, not only did they save a ton of cost and overhead, but they actually got a better end product.

Read on to learn how we helped All Sober streamline their tech stack and build a brighter future for it.

Why Mobile Apps Were Essential for All Sober’s Community Approach

Mobile was a core component of what All Sober wanted to be moving forward.

Their website features a wealth of informational, experiential content to help people suffering from or recovering from addiction. But one of the critical parts of their strategy was an online community, where people could create their own sober networks and support groups.

“We wanted a Facebook-like experience. A private social community where you're engaging with like-minded people, and you have counselors, you have mentors, you have people who need help, people who have been 20 years sober, all helping one another.”

For these kinds of social communities, being accessible and easy to use on mobile is non-negotiable.

Of course, this was not a new idea, and they had a mobile app already. But there were serious problems that stopped them from growing their community.

From a Bloated, Three Million Dollar Platform to WordPress & MobiLoud

Before Michael came on board, All Sober’s tech stack was bloated, to say the least.

Their website was built on Microsoft DNN, which was expensive and complicated to maintain, and when they decided to launch mobile apps, they contracted offshore iOS and Android developers to build and maintain the apps.

Their previous CTO was let go, and eventually Michael came in, and worked on streamlining their tech.

During the process, he estimated that they had spent around three million dollars building and maintaining their legacy platform.

Worst of all, the website and apps did not even work together. They weren’t synchronized, and articles posted on the website had to be posted separately on the apps.

As part of their new approach, they migrated the website to WordPress. They began rebuilding their community on PeepSo, then pivoted to BuddyBoss.

On the mobile side, they needed a new way to do their apps. Their apps had to be easier to manage, had to sync with their website, and had to be compatible with WordPress and BuddyBoss.

MobiLoud ticked all the boxes.

What Moving to MobiLoud Did For All Sober

“I wanted native apps that could run in the respective app stores, that would work with WordPress and the social platform. MobiLoud did that with no effort on our part in terms of building the apps. What we spent years building previously, we replicated with your team in weeks.”

MobiLoud added value and reduced expense for All Sober in a number of impactful ways.

Lower Costs

Previously, they were paying mobile developers hourly rates to maintain their iOS and Android apps. This cost adds up quickly, especially when development work was required any time they wanted to make a change.

MobiLoud was massively cheaper, even more so when you consider that their apps and website were now synchronized, reducing the overall development hours needed to update and maintain the apps.

“The ease of onboarding, the ease of implementation, and the fact that we got these native apps live and running for an extremely reasonable cost, was tremendous.”

Fewer Parts to Manage

One of their big headaches was managing the developers working on their apps.

The level of management required was another significant cost, not to mention the opportunity cost for Michael as a CTO.

MobiLoud simplified that, taking care of all the granular aspects of product management, so Michael and the in-house team could focus on higher leverage tasks.

“With MobiLoud we're not engaging separate contractors to build two different products. We have one vendor, providing two products and I don't have to be in the weeds of managing those development resources.”

“I don't have to worry about the details of how those developers are managed. That's being done for me. And as a CTO, although I'm technical, I appreciate taking that off my plate so I can stay focused on helping the business build its branding and its sales models.”

Greater Flexibility

Having custom-built apps built on a complicated system made it incredibly cumbersome to make changes or try new things.

Any changes had to go through developers, which again had to be managed, and effort duplicated for three different platforms.

A cheaper, streamlined system with WordPress and MobiLoud meant they could iterate and add new features much faster, with much less expense.

More Opportunities to Grow

Cutting the expense and overhead required to maintain their apps was already a win. But the greater flexibility we provided also gave All Sober the chance to add new revenue-generating features, such as display advertising, sponsorships and donations.

They’re also exploring push notifications as part of their engagement strategy moving forward.

“Push notifications through the app to me are better than SMS or email. Allowing people the flexibility to decide what notifications they want, and then being able to deliver those through pushes, is actually a big component of the programs that we're looking at implementing for our sponsors.”

Leverage MobiLoud to Deliver the Perfect Mobile App Experience

“We have a platform now that is light years ahead of what it was, and we spent a fraction of the amount. From a CTO perspective, I only have two companies managing our entire technical stack whereas previously there were up to 15 people at one time working on the platform. So we went from 15 down to two.”

MobiLoud helped All Sober streamline operations, while putting out a better product, leveling up their mobile experience in more ways than one.

We became their entire mobile app development team, for less than the cost to keep one full-time developer on staff.

“If you need to take off the responsibility of managing developers and having separate teams for Android and Apple, and you need a product that's native on both platforms, and you want to reduce the amount of time you're invested in making those products live and supported, you need a vendor like MobiLoud that you can trust to deliver a product on both environments.”

If you want to have mobile apps that are fully synchronized with your website, which require little to no work to maintain, and provide a five-star user experience, get in touch with us.

Ready? Book a free demo now and find out how MobiLoud can help you grow your business.