When it comes to the initial app build and publishing process on our MobiLoud and News, you have the choice to either configure and customize the app on your own or take our Full Service Package.
Our App Submission fee, on all plans, is $500 (required). This covers the cost of compiling, extensively testing the apps, submitting them to Google and Apple, and publishing them on the App Store and Google Play.
The Submission Fee does not cover our team configuring and customizing the apps, or providing all the necessary design work for the app itself and the app stores. That’s where our optional Full Service Package comes in at an additional $1,350.
When you consider the time and money you’ll save creating all of the design assets, developer time or fees for customization, you’ll probably find it’s well worth the cost.
You should go the “self serve” route if you’re technical (e.g. you built your WordPress site, know HTML/CSS) or have a team of developers and designers that can take a few hours to a week to customize your app.
Full Service is for you if you want to save time and energy, focus on your core product (your website or web app), and get the apps handled as fast and smoothly as possible, by relying on our expert team for everything you need
Roughly 80% of new customers go for the full service package because of the convenience, the time saving and the guarantee they’ll get the app they want, in the time they want, without distracting their team with a new project.
Whether you take the full service package or not, you still get our fast and knowledgeable technical support, and everything included in our initial App Submission fees: we will compile and test your apps, generate versions you can test yourself, and get your app submitted on both App Store and Google Play.
So why go full service? Let’s take a look at some of the reasons to go the full service route.
Everything Handled For You
While MobiLoud is a ‘no code’ platform, it does require some technical aptitude or experience to really customize your app.
With Full Service, our team handles the entire app building process, after a kick-off consultation with Vitor, our senior Product Manager, where you’ll go over your specific needs and requirements.
Here’s what the Full Service package includes:
- Your app completely configured on our platform
- Small design customizations and plugin integrations
- Professional icons, splash screens for your app, at all resolutions required
- Professional screenshots: we’ll take screenshots of your apps and turn them into a beautiful showcase of all the functionality your app provides
- We work directly with Apple and Google until your app is approved – if after several attempts your app still won’t be approved, we’ll refund all fees paid. NOTE: we will support you to get your app approved whether you’re on full service or not, but if we take care of configuring and customizing the app we can respond and implement changes to your app for you, speeding up the approval process.
There’s nothing for you to do except provide the overall direction and requirements. You can get back to focusing on your core web product and growing your business without getting side tracked or distracted.
We Configure The Apps For You
All our products include an admin area that allow you to control the look and feel of the application e.g. add menu items. While you can figure out how to configure and customize the app on your own, we can be very effective at putting together a new app in a short time frame and can save you a lot of time as a consequence by doing it for you.
What’s included?
- Configuring the app’s navigation
- Customizing the app with your branding
- Configuring a welcome screen for your app or privacy policy acceptance screen
- Styling the app with your colors and fonts (where applicable)
- Small customizations that require code (see below)
- Setting up content categories for push notifications
- Setting up ads integrations in a News app
- Setting up subscriptions and login requirements in a News or eCommerce app
- Setting up login authentication in a MobiLoud app, using one of the different methods supported
- Customizing the login and registration screens in a MobiLoud app
- Integrating functionality from third party plugins
- Adding and styling a related posts list in a news app
Small Customizations are Included
What does this mean exactly? We should differentiate between our different platforms:
- For a MobiLoud app, where your website or web app provides most of the user interface for the app (and our platform adds native navigation), we’ll add custom code to hide elements of your site that shouldn’t be part of the app (e.g. a pricing or checkout page for a subscription site). We also make small modifications to the design that make the site or web app fit better with the app’s native navigation (e.g. removing header/footer elements and other parts of the interface that the native app already provides or that perhaps are not typical of an app).
- For a News or eCommerce app, the app has a unique design, separate from your site’s theme. You will probably want the app to look similar to your mobile site, include your branding, colors, fonts and elements from your site’s design, as well as functionality coming from your theme, third party plugins or custom code. This level of customization is possible using our code editor (for deeper customization, a plugin extension with custom code would be required). We include in the full service package customizations to style article or product lists and single article or product pages similarly to your site (design, colors, fonts) and integrate third party plugins (where possible in a short timeframe) that we can implement with our code editor.
Note that this does not include custom development work for complex plugin integrations or custom designs we can’t implement without building a custom extension or adding a lot of extra code. To learn exactly what would be included and what not, get in touch for a demo and tell us about your site.
We Prepare all Necessary Design Assets
In order to get your apps successfully published on the App Store and Google Play – you need to prepare a set of design assets at various required resolutions. These are:
- App Icons for iOS and Android
- Splash screens for iOS and Android
- Screenshots to turn into eye-catching showcases for the App Store and Google Play
With self-serve, you’ll prepare all of these yourself. This would cost hundreds of dollars through a good designer or take quite some time even if you go the DIY route. With Full Service though, our own designers create them for you, at all the resolutions required, so you don’t need to worry about this at all.
Hands-On Support for Lifetime
We take a hands on approach to support for all customers, but with full service you’ll have something more – you’ll be able to make configuration changes on your own, but we also expect to provide support whenever you want to make a change to the app’s configuration and we’ll implement it directly for you (since we did the initial configuration, we don’t expect you to take care of configuration changes).
So while you pay for it in advance, as the bulk of the work is done upfront, you’ll enjoy the benefits of the full service package through your app’s lifetime by having a team taking care of everything you might need changed or fixed with your app.
Peace of Mind
With full service you are guaranteed a smooth app build process and launch. For many of our busy clients, this is the main benefit.
You know that a team of app experts are working to create you a great presence on the app stores, there’s no anxiety or stress around the process, and your time and energy are freed up to focus on your business.
The Choice is Yours
A brief summary of the benefits of Full Service:
- We configure the apps for you, there’s no work for you to do for the app build except filling in a form
- We prepare everything necessary for your app’s submission to the App Stores including all design assets
- We include design tweaks and customizations
- You get premium, hands-on support through the lifetime of your app
Full Service is for you if you want to truly minimize the time, energy, and effort that you and your team personally invest into bringing the apps live.
It’s up to you to decide which tier fits your priorities, budget and strategy best. Whichever you go with we are fully committed to helping you to build great apps with MobiLoud. If you want to learn more – get in touch with one of our team!
