How Much Does It Cost to Develop An App Like Clubhouse?

During the COVID pandemic, people missed hanging out with their friends, going out, and planning to get together on weekends. Now, everything has been back to normal but at that time, people were really frightened to see the consequences of the pandemic. At that time, mobile phones and social media apps were the only way to communicate with loved ones for people. It has also brought an increase in the development of social media applications. 

Among all the outbreak of COVID-19, audio social media app like Clubhouse has managed to grab the attention of a large base of audience. The CEO of Tesla “Elon Musk” has been invited officially on this social audio app Clubhouse where a few exclusive audiences joined the voice chat. Clubhouse touched a user base of more than 2 million overnight after the tweet of this honorable invitee of the app. If as a businessman, you are thinking to go with the idea to develop a similar app, we have brought a complete guide on how to build an app like Clubhouse?

Get Insights About Clubhouse App

In layman’s words, Clubhouse is an audio social media application, or we can say an invite-only mixture of Twitter, Podcasts, and phone call systems that you can use without any legal implications. It was launched in 2020 and is now available for both iOS and Android users. This app allows users to have audio interaction via chat rooms that are capable to have a maximum of 5000 users at a time. 

This app has a host that can create virtual rooms and send invites to the people to join the live discussions along with the chance to become the speaker or can be the part, being a listener. These discussions don’t include any kind of texts, videos, or pictures, just audio-only. Through various ways, Clubhouse is redefining the occurrence of social media, and the engagement for marketers and businesses. 

How Clubhouse App Works?

With the boost in social audio app development, businesses are showing their interest in building a voice chat social media app like Clubhouse. Thus, they are getting details about the working of the app.

Since the Clubhouse app is popular as an online place to meet, communicate, and share ideas with people. It permits you to create and join a chat room via provided links. This app is only about chatting through audio not sharing any images, or videos. To know more about the working of Clubhouse, have a look at the below points-

• First, download the app from the Google Play Store or Apple play store.
• After opening the app, users will have featured rooms including the user’s name in every room. 
• Users can join the chat room just by clicking on it as they are open for users to join. 
• Users can enter any room as an audience, and they can ‘raise their hand’ if are interested to talk.
• Then, the speaker will select to invite you up. 
• Users can also accept the invite sent by their friends or known ones.
• Through the app, they can pick the topics of their interest and can follow the other users as well. 
• They can manage their app profile and add whatever they want.
• They can create a chat room or can join one or put a request to speak in those rooms.
• Users can add or invite friends to a room via the link. They can also leave a room as per their choice.

Market Growth and Figures About Clubhouse App

Marketers and businesses are impressed with the growth of the Clubhouse app, this is the reason they are taking assistance from social media app development companies to develop a similar app like Clubhouse. While providing insights about the market growth of the Clubhouse, we would like to add that the social media industry has seen a lot of drastic change in its revenue during the pandemic but now, with the arrival of a lot of new apps including Clubhouse, it is getting back on the track again. 

Under the category of the social media network, Clubhouse has secured the rank between 8 to 10th position last year in May. According to the sources, the monthly downloads of the Clubhouse app from September 2020 to June 2021 are amazing as it has grabbed tremendous growth in February 2021. In September 2020, Clubhouse only had 2,070 users and this user base reached around 9 million in Feb 2021. And then, in June 2021, it almost had 8 million downloads. Look at the below graph to get insights-

After knowing about the monthly downloads of the Clubhouse app, let’s jump to the weekly active Clubhouse users. As per the reports, the Clubhouse app has got good growth between April 2020 to February 2021. As of February 2021, it had 10 million users approximately which was quite good in comparison to 2 million users in January 2021. Get a clear picture about the market stats and figures of the Clubhouse app through the below graph-

Must Have Features to Add in Social Audio App Like Clubhouse

Features are an integral part of a mobile app that makes it worth using. Integration of basic and advanced features is one of the main causes behind impacting the cost of mobile app development.

To keep your Clubhouse app development cost in budget, consider only important features to add to the app. Here are they-

1. Signup/Login

First, users have to get the app to use it. For this, they must have an invitation link from a clubhouse member so that they can download it after clicking on the link. After sign-up, they can log in to it via their other social media account or email. Users must put their username and photo to get into the chat rooms. At first, they will be on mute, but they can take approval from the host to unmute it.

2. Clubhouse Invitation 

The only way to connect or to join the chat rooms is by clubhouse invitation. With this invite-only app, users can send invitations to their friends and even those, who don’t have this app as they can download it via the link. People can also purchase the app invites from the eBay site to download the app.

3. Clubhouse Feed- Hallway

This feature is a must-have for an app like Clubhouse. Users can know about the current active rooms with rolling discussions through it so that they can join the room. Businesses that want to have Clubhouse clone app development services can add this feature to facilitate their users as it keeps the followed rooms and interest of users on the top. This hallway also includes current and upcoming rooms and profile management.

4. Chat Rooms 

The most integral feature of the Clubhouse app is a chat room that lets the users discuss with thousands of random persons. The clubhouse room or chat room is created by a host along with the room name, members list, and short description. Users can participate in these live podcasts, and get to know about the members, speakers, and moderators who are involved in that chat room. Users can also explore other rooms while taking part in another one through the hallway. 

5. Clubhouse Clubs

Clubhouse clubs are just like the groups on Facebook or other social media apps. People who have the same interest can make a group and chat over there. Group users can also provide references of their friends with equal interest to add to the clubs.

6. Audio Streaming

As we know that only 5000 people are allowed to have chat in a single chat room. Thus, there is a need for better audio streaming without any noise by looking at the strength of members. Hence, this feature is significant to add to the app, however, it will increase the cost to develop clubhouse app, but it also enables admin to have control on different functions like mute and unmute.

7. Push Notifications 

The users of the Clubhouse app will get notifications about any new chat rooms or the members or followers who are added newly to their chat rooms or someone invites them to the other room. App also sends reminders about the audio meetings soon. 

8. Moderation Rights 

This added feature is beneficial to have control over the activities of various users simultaneously just with simple clicks. Users must raise their hands virtually to participate. It is done to alleviate the complaints by users about abuse, or racist comments, hence you must choose expert social media app developers to build the app and have this feature. With the proper moderation space, the chat host can restrict the audience interaction to avoid any issue.

9. Clubhouse Activity 

This feature will let you see about your activities on the app, what have you done, whom you are following, in which chat room you were active, etc. Users can also find out who joined the app recently, or which club someone belongs to. It records all your activities.

10. Upcoming for You

This app feature is helpful for users to see and sort all their scheduled upcoming events. Users can also join the already started events via this feature. Along with the upcoming discussions, it includes chats, names of speakers, starting times, and topic descriptions as well. 

Monetization Model Applied by Clubhouse Application

While considering the cost to build an app like clubhouse, you should also focus on the aspects that can bring the highest revenue to you.

Choose an appropriate monetization model like Clubhouse including the techniques that can provide you benefits. These are as follows-

• Paid or Premium Subscription

It is the most used monetization technique used by marketers to get revenue. In this, users must pay a significant amount to get access to your app. It can be divided into weekly, monthly, or annually and they must pay accordingly.

• Freemium Model

In this, although the app is free to download for users but for any kind of account up-gradation or to use premium features apart from the core features of the app, they need to pay money to the app. 

• In-App Purchase

The app charges money to provide access for their advanced features & functionalities to users. After paying the amount, users can use those functions. 

• App Advertisement

The app ads monetization model includes different advertisement options such as cost per mille, cost per action, and cost per click. In this, the app can get benefits via posting ads of other businesses to their app that will show on the user’s feed in the middle of sessions or on the top of their hallway.

Mindful Things to Consider While Building a Clubhouse Clone App

Numerous marketers have hired a leading mobile app development company to develop their app and still, couldn’t get success. It is essential to contemplate some of the major things that will lead you to success. Below are some considerable things to build an app like Clubhouse-

• Market Research and Study

Knowledge of current market trends & stats, competitors, loopholes, shortcomings, etc. is the first step to building a useful and amazing app. It is essential to restrict the cost to develop an app as it halts you from not adding unnecessary aspects into the app that are not liked by users at all. It also becomes important to know about the competitors and what they are providing as numerous apps are already entertaining people and developing the same would not benefit you anyway.

Conduct a SWOT analysis to better know about the market and your rivals. Recognizing their marketing tactics will also be advantageous for you in many ways as you can do something unique to get the audience’s attention.

• Identify Your Target Audiences

The large customer bases your app will have, the large it will be. Success starts when you get a proper understanding of what the target audiences want. Conduct research and get an insight into their likes, dislikes, demographics, and problems they are having with the current app they are using. Collect data by interviewing questions to the users as it will provide you an idea of what the mistakes are you should not repeat. You can provide them a suitable app with the help of a company that delivers custom software development services.

• Attractive & User-Friendly App Design

While having mobile app development services, think about having an eye-catching and impressive app design so that it will be easy to steal the audience’s attention and make the app famous. The app must design in a way that can fulfill the expectations and requirements of audiences. 

Despite the visual attractiveness, include some of the functions that can be used to create the content easily as it is trending nowadays. This way you can attract social media influencers to your app and can enhance the app engagement. To hit the large base of users, have a sense of balance between visual attractiveness and app functionality.

• Team Structure 

A skilled and professional development team is the reason behind the success of an app. Is it so easy to find the one who is capable and in-expensive as well? Easy or not, you must do it to fulfill the stages such as business analysis, project planning, app development, etc. Most importantly, the social media app development cost will depend on it largely. A knowledgeable and experienced team will help you in maintaining the workflow and fixing each issue, choosing the right technology stack, and developing the overall app. Therefore, choose accordingly. 

• Releasing an MVP Version

It is obvious to have lots of features in your mind to add to your app but comprising all of them in starting will not be worth it. In simple words, not all features need to be suitable to the app, so first, you should go for launching an MVP version of your app. It is cheap and doesn’t consume more time. 

MVP only includes essential features and releasing it in the market will let you know about the people’s reaction to your app. If it gets successful, you can launch the beta version with all the features and functionalities included. You must hire mobile app developers who have proper knowledge about this sector to have a well-developed app.

How Much Does It Cost to Build an App Like Clubhouse?

Estimating the overall cost to develop an app is very difficult because it depends on various aspects. The overall cost also differs considering, whether you are having Android app development services or iOS app development services. Hence, choose all the aspects by keeping in mind that any one of them can affect the cost higher or lower. These aspects include-

• Comprising Features 
• App Development Time 
• App Design Prototype & Wireframing 
• Front-end & Back-end Development 
• Technology Stack
• UI/UX Design
• App Maintenance
• Location and Experience of the Hired Company

Contemplating these above-described factors, the complete cost to develop an app like Clubhouse would be around $20,000 to $40,000. This estimated price might fly above or low according to the comprised features and other aspects. App complexity and time taken in the development process also impact the cost. If you are planning to have an MVP version first, then it will cost you a little lower.

Final Verdict

The monotonous period of the pandemic has made everyone have random discussions on video calls, phones, chat apps, and on different social networks. This sudden increase gave wings to the desire of marketers to step into the social networking industry. And, during this time, Clubhouse came into the knowledge and got success. It has become so famous that now businesses want to develop a Clubhouse clone app.

For such enthusiasts, we have above mentioned every detail about the Clubhouse clone app development along with its features & cost. The invite-only audio-chat app ‘Clubhouse’ has now known as a unicorn start-up, even though, it doesn’t have social media must-haves such as video creation, media sharing, and texting.

There are a lot of businesses or marketers who want to develop an app like the Clubhouse to expand their venture, they can take assistance from SemiDot Infotech. We are a well-known social media app development company that has an expert team of developers and designers who strive to provide you with a quality app. Our team always tries to build an app that goes with your expectations and business requirements. The social media industry might be the future for us, thus don’t be late and take an initiative by having our support!