Right, the 6 to 20 weeks timeline for on-demand mobile app development is a perfect baseline. But based on our experience at
Impero IT Services, having built multiple on-demand platforms (including ride-hailing, food delivery & healthcare booking apps) there are a few critical factors that often get underestimated or missed entirely:
1.
Business Logic Complexity
Many teams assume design or coding takes the longest in reality, the logic behind matching, payments, reviews & availability takes significant time. For instance, one of our ride-booking projects had over 25 condition-based triggers just for surge pricing logic. This can extend development timelines by 3–4 weeks if not scoped properly.
2.
Third-party APIs integration
- Payment gateways (Stripe, Razorpay, PayPal)
- Maps & geolocation (Google Maps, Mapbox)
- Chat/messaging (Sendbird, Twilio)
3.
Admin Panel & Analytics
Clients often focus on user-facing features first. But the backend admin system (order management, user activity tracking, push notification management) can take 20–30% of total time. A logistics startup we helped launch delayed by 2 weeks solely because analytics & delivery radius settings weren’t prioritized early
4.
QA, Staging & App Store Review
- Apple review times (3–10 days, mainly for fintech or health apps)
- Clients sometimes request last-minute feature tweaks post-QA
Planning for a buffer of 2–3 weeks post-core development saves a lot of stress.
Real Example:
For a multi-vendor food delivery app we built in early 2025:
- Timeframe: 16 weeks
- Team: 1 PM, 2 Devs, 1 QA, 1 UI/UX
- Challenges: Custom restaurant hours + Google Places integration
- Bonus Outcome: We built a referral engine that increased their user base by 30% in the first month
