How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Cannabis Delivery App Like Eaze

Ishikha_Rao
Women in Technology
5 min readMar 15, 2024
Photo by Paolo Feser on Unsplash

Introduction

For a long time, cannabis was labeled as an illegal substance which resulted in its illegal distribution and trafficking. But after the legalization of Marijuana, substances like Cannabis are in higher demand than ever before. The revenues are great in the cannabis sector so after legalization, along with the customers, the number of market participants has also increased.

That is the reason why many producers and investors are now pouring in more resources to streamline the entire process. This includes looking for expert software developers that can help with cannabis delivery app development. But before you dive right into it, it is important to understand what kind of business model would be more beneficial to you. Selecting a relevant business model would also impact your cannabis delivery app cost.

The Business Model

A business model can either make or break a company so every company needs a clear business model. Lack of identifying the correct market and demands which can be associated with an inadequate business model comes right after lack of funding in the top three reasons why companies fail.

Having a detailed business model in place can aid you in both finding an ideal market and maintaining the cash flow of the company. In the case of the cannabis industry, there are three types of business models to adopt for your company

  • Delivery Model: It is just a basic service-based business model where you only engage in the delivery of the product and not in any other operations of the industry.
  • Retail Model: Adapting this business model will make you in charge of both sales and distribution of the product for your company. You can sell cannabis from your retail store as well as make direct deliveries to the customers. And of course, making deliveries means you will have to charge delivery fees to the customers which will bring in more revenue for your business.
  • Platform Model: This business model will enable you to serve as an online platform for various marijuana businesses and consumers along with managing their orders and deliveries. It is an eCommerce concept where you can earn commission from various marihuana businesses every time they sell the product.

No matter which business model you choose, a cannabis business app can help you streamline and expand your business. But is it even possible to develop such a profitable solution at an affordable price?

Key Costing Factors

Well, to answer the question posed above, let us browse through the most important factors that can impact the development cost of your Cannabis delivery application.

Platform Selection

Before starting the app development process, it is necessary to decide on which platform you want to create your app. It can be iOS or Android or maybe both. This decision will depend entirely on your budget as well as where your target audience hangs out more. If you have a startup with a small budget then it is recommended that you start with one platform first and then if everything goes well, scale up!

Features And Functionality

Features and functionalities have a significant impact on the development cost of your cannabis delivery application. The more features and functionalities you use, the higher the cost. Even if you use fewer features and functionalities but they are complex ones then also your cost will go high.

It is recommended that you develop a first iteration of the app with just the essential functions. This way, you might be able to deliver a decent user experience at a reasonable price. Take feedback from the users and then change the features and functionalities of your applications accordingly.

UI And UX

If you want the users to use your app again and again then you need to offer an enhanced UX and an elegant UI. Both of them play a crucial role in the success of both your application and your business.

Therefore you must include the necessary elements of UX/UI including icons, and notifications, and make some customization too. If your app is well-designed, then users wouldn’t hesitate to use your cannabis delivery application more often. However, designing a quality UI/UX can be very costly.

App Development Company

You can hire an in-house team of developers that can build a cannabis delivery application for you. But that will be a very costly option. Instead, you should hire a well-reputed mobile app development company that has some experience working on projects similar to yours in the past.

Of course, hiring a mobile app development company will also impact your total project cost but if they are experts in the industry and can provide end-to-end services without affecting the quality then it is all worth it.

App Maintenance

Don’t think that your app will cost you until it is launched. Even after mobile app deployment, you have to maintain your mobile application, fix issues and provide users with regular updates, new features, and functionalities. And all of these are going to cost you money. So, it would be wise to consider all these hidden costs when you are finalizing the budget for your app development project.

Conclusion- A rough estimate for developing a cannabis delivery application like Eaze.

Developing a typical cannabis delivery application can be very costly as it has more versions in comparison to an on-demand delivery application such as Eaze.

As we already discussed, mostly the cost of the app will depend on the features you add and the platform for which you are going to build. And to check out what’s best for you, and what works for the users, you have to build an MVP first, gather feedback and then make changes accordingly. Don’t forget to add essential functionalities only otherwise your development costs will unnecessarily go high.

If you are only adding the basic features then the cost of developing a cannabis delivery app might be somewhere between USD 40,000 to USD 50,000. It is just a rough estimate depending on the factors we discussed in this article. If you want to get an accurate estimate then you must talk to a mobile app development company. But before you do that you must have clarity on what are your business requirements and what business goals you want to fulfill using a cannabis delivery mobile application.

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Ishikha_Rao
Women in Technology

Tech Geek by profession, Technical Writer by passion.