what happened when we chose the cheapest app developer and what fixing it cost us

the app launched and worked technically everything functioned

what it didn't do was perform in the way a real customer uses an app under real conditions

load time on product pages was four seconds on a decent connection push notifications delivered inconsistently checkout flow had three unnecessary steps that we only noticed when we watched a real customer try to use it and abandon halfway through

went back to the developer fixes were slow communication got worse with each week that passed it became clear that post launch support was not something they had genuinely resourced

hired a second developer to fix the problems the original had created that cost 60 percent of the original build fee

the cheap option cost us the build fee plus the fix fee plus six months of a poor customer experience during which we were actively acquiring app users into a product that wasn't good enough to keep them

price is not the right primary filter for choosing an app developer it is one input among several and probably not the most important one