6 Crucial Factors That Affect The Development Cost Of A Django Application

Django is considered as one of the most popular back-end frameworks that is extensively used for building robust web applications with Python language. This framework is well-known for promoting fast development that is ideal for high-velocity web development projects.

It can also be used to build complex websites with vast databases and this is the reason why most of the enterprises choose a competent Django development company who can help them in developing reliable websites and web apps for their business.

The process of building a Django application is a bit tricky and tedious. Also, to estimate the total cost of creating an app with Django is a daunting task. In order to help you with this, let’s explore the top six factors that have an impact on the total development cost of a Django application.

1. Total Time Required For The Development

Developing a web application is a time-consuming process irrespective of which tools you have chosen. The time required to deliver a particular feature depends on the frequency of the changes in the idea of the feature. More development time means more development cost.

One of the best solutions to address this issue is that to build a Minimum Viable Product and launch it. Also, to gain traction you should get users’ feedback and have something to show to the investors.

This framework offers a few convenient features that help in reducing the total development time such as ORM as a convenient DB interface, a template engine, and generic classes that are free to be customized. Because of this the process of development can proceed more smoothly and MVP features can be integrated quickly.

This helps you in reducing the total development cost because it is easier as well as cheaper to reject a bad idea when you see it in action, spot its faults, and fix small issues with an otherwise good idea before it is grown into a fully-fledged complex feature.

Django is blessed with many standard libraries that help programmers to create commonly used features and solve typical development problems. Also, this framework offers a lot of different generic class-based views, which can be used wisely to reduce the implementation time.

2. Changes In Feature & Custom Code

Django also like other major web development frameworks offer a variety of built-in resources for the most needed functionalities such as registration, login, logout, password reset, and handling permissions for specific users. The list of these reusable solutions for Django is quite influential. You can reduce the costs of quality assurance by using these existing solutions which have been tested by many others.

But the point that is needed to be taken into consideration here is that an application won’t be created just by stacking existing packages like legos. There are many unique custom features that act as the main differentiating factors between competitors. Incorporating these custom-built features will require a lot of your time and money and it is a significant factor that has an effect on the total development cost of a Django application.

In addition to this, you need to consider the platform also for which you are building a web app or a website. For instance, if you are developing a web app, will you need native mobile apps in the future? If yes, then you have to take it into your account for calculating the total development costs. Also, there is a need for you to consider technologies that will allow you to reuse some of the code on multiple platforms.

3. Scalability Of A Developed Product

Once your MVP is all set and attracting a good user base you will definitely want to extend the features of your product. Also, you will want to enhance the user experience and scale the web app so that it can support a large number of users at one point of time.

Scalability is another important factor that you should take into your account for estimating the total development costs. Django scales well and it is easier to build up from an MVP once when the business concept has been proven. This framework has everything that is required to build most types of apps beyond that early stage. Therefore, there will be little backtracking and no unexpected costs.

4. Cost For Infrastructure Maintenance & Management

Most importantly for the web apps that have to be scaled for large user traffic, it becomes mandatory for you to spend money on maintaining a stable infrastructure and managing it efficiently. In order to take the advantage of modern scalable hosting solutions, Django apps can be hosted on many popular infrastructure providers such as Amazon, Heroku, and DigitalOcean.

It is advisable to consider a scalable service that requires you to pay only for the infrastructure your app needs at any given moment, such as Lambda, AWS, or the serverless approach.

5. Mistakes Of The Developers

It is quite obvious that the programmers can commit mistakes while building your Django application even if you have the best QA process and the most experienced team. This makes it essential for you to understand what your team will do to solve issues as they arise. Will they be able to find resources and solutions quickly, or will they be on their own?

With the help of the Django’s passionate community and good documentation, it becomes easier for the developers to find the information they need and discover solutions quickly. These resources are beneficial for your development team. Also, Python is blessed with a built-in library that comes with a unit testing framework and resolve a lot of common programming issues.

Because of its readability and simplicity, it is difficult for the programmers to commit costly mistakes. Also, it is easier for the new developers to take a glance at the code without spending additional time in understanding a project. Irrespective of which technology you select, ensure that the sole motive of your team’s development process is to keep the code clean and healthy. It’s a small investment, but it can help you in making huge savings in the long run.

6.Additional Costs For Custom Security Measures

Django is very secure by default and it prevents programmers from committing common security related mistakes. This framework offers a lot of built-in security features such as user password hashing, scripts, CSRF tokens, and authentication and authorization modules. With the help of these features the developers can run a security checklist before deployment.

However, if you need to incorporate some custom security measure in your web app then there will be some additional costs for the same. Also, there are external Django modules that can help your development team with the task.

For example, there are modules that will add two- step validation for the users or easily implement external file storage (like Amazon or Azure). Incorporating these additional security measures can be a bit costly, but ignoring application security can make you incur huge losses in the future.

Thus, these six factors have a direct impact on the total development cost of a Django application. Fortunately, this framework makes estimations easier and development more predictable by providing a vast variety of resources, flexibility, high development speed, code readability, and easy testing.