There is a rapid increase in the development of on-demand and economical ride-sharing applications. Many startups recognize this trend and are investing in creating apps like Uber and Lyft. They both are leading online taxi-hailing businesses with millions of customers every day. You can easily copy their development model to build your own Uber app. All you need is a reliable mobile application development company that will understand your requirements. So that together you can create something that is not only competitive but also unique and relevant in today’s market.
Table of Content
- How to make an App Like Uber?
- How Uber Works Step by Step?
- Recreating the Functionality In an Uber-like App
- How Long Will It Take to Build an App Like Uber?
- What Factors Influence the Uber App Development Cost?
- The Overall Cost of Uber-like App Development
- Conclusion
How to Make an App Like Uber?
If you are a business owner or developer, you need to do your research before taking on a major project. You need to consider all the aspects and not just the cost and labor used to build an app. You need to sit down with investors, SMEs, sales, and marketing teams to come up with a solution that is both profitable and conventional.
This blog will guide you in the right direction and simply pave a way for any future development. It will answer all your questions about how to make an app like Uber? It will present you with the various features, estimated time, and cost analysis that will be helpful to someone looking to create something like Uber. You can compare the findings and understand the working of a ride-sharing app to implement in your own version. Continue reading to find out more.
What is Uber and How Does It Work?
It is easier to understand the app by knowing what is all about. Here we are discussing Uber, which is a leading taxi ordering service that connects riders with drivers. It allows passengers to choose their ride with just one tap on their phone. The nearest car picks up the customer within minutes of booking.
Travis Kalanick and Garret Camp found Uber in the year 2009. They started it as a company by the name of UberCar and completely revolutionized the way people travel. Now, it has over 78 million users with a revenue of over 40.7 billion U.S. dollars in gross bookings worldwide.
They have a wide customer base in over 110,000 cities in 69 countries. The best part of Uber is the ease with which one can book a taxi for their everyday needs. It can meet the high and constant demands of the global audience using digital technology and innovation.
The service also provides job opportunities for anyone with a private car. They can join the app and become an independent driver. They can also profit from the unique technical features and get the convenience of setting their own work schedule.
Through the app, passengers can also benefit from location tracking and cashless payments. The cars that they book from Uber cost much lower and are faster than a regular taxi. All they need is a phone and they are good.
If you want to build your own Uber app, it is important to understand their business strategy and working pattern of the application. Here is a step-by-step guide to explain how the app works:
- Step 1: The user needs to set whether to request a car instantly or schedule it for another time.
- Step 2: Next, they need to add the end destination to request a trip. The Uber app matches the request with the nearby available driver. It displays a list of vehicles available nearby with their associated price range for the trip. The cost varies according to vehicle type and car model.
- Step 3: The user needs to add a PayPal, Google Pay, or Apple Pay account to the app. They can even use their credit or debit card to process the payment automatically.
- Step 4: A customer needs to select a vehicle they find convenient and confirm the date and pickup location. The drivers receive this information in their application.
- Step 5: It is up to the driver to choose or decline the request in their application.
- Step 6: The customer can track the location of the taxi as it approaches and knows the estimated time of arrival.
- Step 7: The payment transfers to the driver’s account automatically after the ride is complete. The application sets the total price beforehand, which makes the process smoother for both parties.
- Step 8: A user can rate the driver based on the services rendered. This helps improve the reliability of the app.
If you want to create Uber-like similar apps, you need to keep in mind the fare calculator. It has to be simple and effective. You need to keep in mind that Uber considers both the time and distance for a particular trip to calculate the total cost. If a vehicle moves lower than 16km/hr, the application charges the passenger by the minute. Otherwise, the app charges on the distance traveled.
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Recreating the Functionality In an Uber-like App
Uber app is not just one, but a combination of three applications. Each has its unique features and necessity. You need to understand all of them to create your very own unique taxi-hailing service. Below we list the three parts of the same application:
- Drivers: It is the application essential for taxi drivers to accept/reject requests, view customer location, and to view payment history.
- An App for Riders: This app will be useful for passengers to request a cab, estimate wait time, track location, routes, and make payments.
- Admin App: It is essential to connect the two individual apps into a single fully functioning system.
Make sure to also include a landing page to register users and drivers for the taxi-hailing business. Here we list some major features of Uber-like similar apps that are essential to working on such an application. You can take references from this list and add the essentials to your app.
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Features for Passenger App
Here is the list of basic functions that are necessary for the working of a booking interface of a customer app:
- Registration: This is the section where users can sign up with the taxi-hailing service. It should be simple and allow customers a variety of options to log-in. It can be through their mobile number, email address, or any social media account like Facebook.
- Taxi Booking: The app must come with the feature to book a cab using pickup address, drop-off address, and to select a preferred car type.
- Price Calculator: This is a feature that can assess the total cost of the trip before booking. You need to create an application that calculates the price range based on the distance of the trip and the time it will take to reach the destination.
- Tracking: Passengers use it to track the movement of the driver and estimate their route, location.
- Payment: This is an essential feature to pay for the services rendered. It is the primary source where your app can generate revenue.
- Push Notifications: It’s useful to inform the customer about the cab booking status, arrival time, and more. It can also be useful to notify users about any deals or discounts.
- In-app Messaging and Calling: It is a feature that can allow a passenger to communicate with the driver without actually sharing their phone number.
- Review and Rating: Essential for evaluating the services of the driver and the overall ride.
- Travel History: This section allows a user to view a list of all of their past trips.
- Customer Support: It can help passengers in case they face any issue with cab booking, route, traveling price, or time.
The idea is to create Uber-like similar apps with something unique and competitive. You can add the following features besides existing basic features to create a more advanced version of a taxi-hailing service.
- Favorite Direction: The ability to remember the most commonly used routes that the passenger uses.
- Split Payment: A feature to split the cost of a ride with other users.
- Panic Button: To send the geographical location of the rider to a select list of contacts in case of an incident.
- Ride Cancellation: Option to cancel a ride within a predetermined time.
- Interactive Map: Customers can observe the location of all taxicabs on the map in real-time.
- Book For Other: This feature allows a user to book for another traveler (friend, relative) from their account.
- Voice Recognition: Book taxis through voice commands.
- Waiting List: To create a wait list for passengers during peak hours.
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Features for Drivers App
Listed below are some features that can be useful in creating your own driver’s side of the application:
- Driver Verification: This feature will display all the details of the driver, including the vehicle license and insurance.
- Trip Alert: To notify drivers when passengers book a trip. The driver must be able to accept or decline a request based on their availability.
- Navigation: An ability to read about the fastest route to the destination, traffic jams, etc.
- Delivery Reports: General information about the payment history, distance traveled, the total number of trips, etc.
- In-app Messaging and Calling: To communicate with the passenger using no personal contact information.
Apart from the regular features, you can work on adding other advanced features to your taxi-hailing app for drivers. Here is a list of options that you can consider:
- Preferred Destination: The ability of a driver to restrict trips only to a specific area.
- Target Earning: This feature allows drivers to earn more if they can meet some predefined criteria.
- Wait Time: To set a minimal amount of time, a driver will wait and extra charges apply if the passenger exceeds the time limit.
- Heat Maps: Allow drivers to work in areas where there is a high demand from passengers.
- Forward Dispatch: This allows the driver to choose another trip while already on a trip.
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Features for Admin App
This is another important component of your Uber-like app. It must be able to provide a user-friendly view of all the booking data, transactions, user information, and the ability to grant access. Following are some key features of the Admin panel in an app like Uber:
- Admin Dashboard: Containing information about both passenger and driver apps. It can also display ongoing rides, requests, and reviews.
- Management: Allows an admin to set tariffs, discounts, notify changes, check reviews, and respond to each.
- Support: Allows an admin to receive new user requests, solve problems, and provide feedback.
- Billing: This feature allows managers to refund money to users in case of any conflicts or mistakes.
- Analytics: To extract, read, and download reports from Google Analytics
- Database: To download reports, process information, and extract data to improve the app or its services.
It is up to you which features you want to add to your admin panel. You need to discuss each app and related functionality with the team before deciding. Keep it user-friendly and minimal so that an admin can operate the panel effortlessly.
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How Long Will It Take to Build an App Like Uber?
Here is a list of the features and the corresponding time in hours it takes to complete the module for each iOS, Android, and backend.
Note: This number varies according to the type of resources you hire. If you hire designers and developers of different platforms from unique locations, it may cost more. We recommend you to hire a single mobile app development company. It will decrease the overall development time significantly.
What Factors Influence the Uber App Development Cost?
There are a lot of factors that influence the total cost to create a cab-booking application like Uber. Following are some key points that can affect the price range of the app:
- Features: The number of features you implement in your app will increase the overall amount of money you need to spend on creating it.
- Number of Platforms: You can decide to create an application for iOS, Android, or both. This will increase the cost price of your taxi service app.
- Technology: If you choose a native framework, it will cost more than a hybrid framework. This is simply because you need to create two apps for each iOS and Android with the native platform. It will take twice as much time compared to the hybrid type, and hence the cost.
- Developer team experience, location, and rates: If you hire mobile app developers from western countries, they cost almost $100/hr. This is quite an exorbitant amount compared to $20/hr when you hire developers from developing countries. Here is the average rate per hour of developers in different countries.
- North America: $60-$250
- Western Europe: $40 -$120
- United Kingdom: $60- $150
- Eastern Europe: $20-$100
The Overall Cost of Uber-like App Development
The following is an estimate of the total price of developing the three apps for a taxi-ride services app. It considers the total hours spent in creating both iOS and Android platforms. We arrive at this value by considering the standard rate of hiring a developer in the USA at $100 per hour. Here is the cost of overall development of an Uber-like application:
Conclusion
Although Uber has won over most of the market, there is still scope for new players. You can build your own Uber app with unique features, innovation, and technology and still be successful. If you are looking to hire software developers to work with you on your project, you have come to the right place. SunTec India has over 20+ years of experience working in this field. We provide you with flawless services that are affordable, customizable, and ISO-certified to provide high-quality results within tight deadlines. Reach out to us at info@suntecindia.com for more information.
