Taxi booking has been done since the era cars were launched, even before that if we think about it and go back to the time when carts were used for traveling. Fast forward to our time and we can summon taxis on our will, at any time of the day, through online car booking apps.
If you are planning for starting your own on-demand taxi booking service and have a unique selling point to it, you should highly consider hiring an experienced taxi app development company for it. This space has already been filled with taxi business apps like Uber and Lyft, but still has a lot more potential on tap.
In this blog, we will try to bifurcate the working and features of an on-demand taxi app to help you gain a better understanding of how things work with on-demand taxi apps. As a business, the possibilities are endless, and analytics and data science take them even further.
The taxi app will act as a bridge between you, the drivers, and the customers while managing all the data on its own. While choosing a taxi app development company, it should have experience in creating a ready-made as well as a customized taxi solution. Choose the company wisely as it will matter the most in making or breaking your taxi app business.
But before we begin, let us start with why you should consider a taxi app for your ride-hailing business.
Table of Contents
Reasons to Consider Taxi Booking App for Your business
The taxi business has proven over time, the capabilities of the on-demand businesses. Uber is now one of the top companies in the world, and its major business was to take taxi booking online.
The global ride-hailing and taxi segment revenue are projected to be over $192,276 million, according to Statista. Mobile apps are playing a huge part in digital transformation strategy, if yours’ is an offline taxi business, there are many reasons to consider an app for your business.
Let’s begin with the Taxi app components and their specific features and working.
The choice actually depends on the client’s requirements, if you want, our taxi app developers can merge them and break them into components for separate logins for driver and passengers. To keep things more convenient and feasible, 2 apps are the most preferred and high return on the investment development path. All the features present below will, however, be present in both cases.
Passenger App
The passenger app is where the users would register to avail of your on-demand taxi service. The app features every service and facility you provide as a business, along with features necessary to an app made for on-demand taxi-hailing. The app will be kept minimalistic in terms of clutter, to encourage quick and easy booking experience for your users. An on-demand app development company has the expertise and know every know-how on how to build a taxi app, we recommend choosing one to ensure the users remain satisfied.
The main page
This is where your users will find themselves every time, they open the app, and most of the work related to taxi booking will be done form this page. Users will be able to see cars in a nearby area on a map, along with their current location denoted by a pin. We will provide an option for booking right then and there, and an option to book for later. The users also get the option of typing an address or simply 2-tap-book to places they have recently booked an app for.
Proceeding to selections
On the page after the main page, users get to choose between various cab types, they are displayed along with their arrival time and fare. This is a page where users can set payments, see the route the driver will be taking, and see start and end locations on the map. The passenger would be able to make a choice from types of cabs, payment options, and based on ETA, the app would automatically connect to the driver best suited to the user’s choice.
After the ride starts
The user would be able to see the live status of the ride while in the cab, as well as share their live location and ride information to a contact. We have also provided an emergency button, which can be used to notify the customer service and emergency management authorities, along with the live locations of both the user and the driver. The user can change the music and control audio-video capabilities of the car’s infotainment system within the app, in case of more premium cars.
End of ride
When the driver ends the ride, the user would be able to see the cash balance to pay, or the payment done through other auto payment options. This page also features a review section, for users to review the ride based on various factors. The feedback will be directly stored in the servers and can be used to improve the service and better match the users with compatible drivers in the future.
Driver App
The driver app will be tailor-made to keep the driver’s needs in mind. The app is based on the basic need of the driver’s quick response and hassles free experience on every end. The onboarding process would be very simple, the drivers can upload documents, and they would be cross verified automatically from the country’s databases and web portals. The admin panel will have direct access to everything that goes on in the driver’s app, to ensure maximum security and safety.
Registration page
The driver would be able to register as a driver with your company all within the app. There would be various fields with the specific document you select, and the driver can upload, manage, and see the verification status for each within this page. Once the driver is officially registered, you can send him the contract and appointment letter all within the app and wait for the approval of the driver.
Main page
This is the screen where the driver would find themselves once they login through their credentials. The main page is where they would accept or reject rides, based on various factors like distance to pick and end location. You will have full control over the parameters mentioned above, so you can run the business the way which suits you. For example, the admin can control if the driver can see the end location and route before starting the ride, and the same would work in the app.
After accepting the ride
When the driver accepts the ride, this page would show the driver the location of the user, live on the map, along with ETA. Both the driver and user can contact each other within the app, through our phone number masking implementation. As the driver reaches the location, the button to start the ride would appear, we can also instead implement an OTP facility to start the ride if you want.
While the ride
As soon as the driver starts the ride, they will be able to see the navigation and route to the user’s destination. The driver can detour on an available path, or if there is road closure ahead, the map would automatically update the route to accommodate it. The admin will be, at all times, able to see the precise location of the driver and the users on a particular ride. The drivers will get the option to end the ride as soon as they reach the users’ location, this can prevent accidental end rides and losses to the company.
After the end of the ride
As soon as the driver ends the ride, there will be a prompt to collect cash if the ride was made with cash as the payment option. After the payment received an acknowledgment, the driver will be able to see all the monetary details about the ride along with the pay-out. The app will automatically calculate the driver’s pay-out, and the company’s pay-out, with settings pre-set by the admin in their panel. The driver will also be able to rate the users and see their overall rating on this page.
Types of Taxi App Solutions
There are three different types of taxi booking applications businesses can have. Our efficient team of designers and developers provide app development services as per the client’s requirements. Below are some of the app types offered by mobile app development companies-
A White-Label Solution
White-label solutions provide businesses the facility to use the already built apps. They just put their name, or brand logo on it and can start using them. There are a lot of clones available on the internet, including the Uber clone app, Lyft clone app, and clones of other popular taxi apps.
A Readymade Solution
Taxi app development companies usually have readymade solutions of their own, they can even get them customized as per the feedback of the industry. These solutions tend to cost very less with basic customizations and goes a little much higher with advanced customizations.
A Custom-built Solution
These are the ones that cost the most, but also happen to be the most chosen among all of them. Custom solutions by our taxi app developers will be made exactly per your requirements, everything from design to development will be done from scratch, according to your business needs. Cost of these solutions depends on the level of intricacy.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop a Taxi App?
If you are someone with a pre-existing taxi business, or an entrepreneur planning to start a ride-hailing business, you have a variety of choices at your end. You can choose any of the available solutions depending on how you plan to start, run, and grow your business. The overall cost to develop a taxi app will be around $10,000 to $35,000 with basic functionalities. It would go higher if you want the app according to your business requirements and add some extra functions or technologies into it.
There are several factors responsible for affecting the complete cost of taxi booking app which are as:
- App Complexity
- App Features & Functionalities
- App Platform
- Experience and location of the hired company
- Team Structure
- Technology Stack
This above-mentioned cost assessment is dependent on these factors. Any changes in these would also bring a slight change in the taxi booking app development cost. Therefore, make all the decision by keeping these factors in mind.
Conclusion
The on-demand taxi app we create for you will be fully loaded with features to run your business online. The user and driver-specific apps are to unclutter, and for better management of your business. As we have worked in this industry for years now, we have various options you can choose from, ready-made taxi booking app development, white label taxi app solutions, customizing either of the prior, or custom mobile app development.
