It is a lot more important than probably most of us think! Honestly I would never thought that I ever have to deal with this topic but after an experience I heard from one of my friends last weekend, has changed my opinion.
On the weekend I ran into an old friend of mine and found out that he had been trying to get apps done for his company for quite a while now. But as he didn’t wanted to spend much on it, he only worked with the cheapest, independent developers he found. Let’s be honest. Nobody wants to spend more on something than it is necessary, so it’s understandable, however when a service is suspiciously cheap, usually there are some pitfalls hidden in it. In app development, one of the most common pitfalls lies in the publishing. Every iOS and Android app needs to be published and has to go through a check by the mobile platform operator before appearing in the store. Until it’s not in the store, and has been double checked by the clients and the developers later on that it’s downloadable and functions well, the job is not done.
The developers which my friend worked with told him that the app is completed after the development process and that he needs to do the publishing himself. Of course my friend, like most other clients, had absolutely no idea that publishing is not so easy and had no idea of the checks being done by the mobile platform review team. He just believed in the developers and paid for the apps, but when he finally managed to find how to publish an app and submitted his apps in, they were all dropped back with errors. As he is not a programmer, he couldn’t do anything with them and the developers he had been working with just simply ignored his demand for a correction or a refund. My friend wasted 4 months and lots of money on 3 completely useless apps which now needs to be thrown away as none passed the checks and were unable to get published.
So what can you do to prevent this from happening to you?
The best way to find out if an app developer is reliable is by checking their products, which in this case are the apps they published so far. Before you start a similar project, always make sure you download one or two of their apps. Check if it’s working properly and user friendly. If they don’t have any app available to download, that most likely means that they are unreliable.
