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The rise of ride-sharing apps like Uber, Lyft, and Grab has undeniably transformed the taxi industry. Are you a taxi service owner witnessing declining ridership due to these convenient on-demand options? Or perhaps you operate in a market yet untouched by these giants, offering a prime opportunity to establish yourself as the leader in mobile taxi services?
Creating your own taxi app can be the answer on both fronts. For established businesses, a well-designed app recaptures customers accustomed to the ease of ride-hailing, while in untapped markets, it positions your brand at the forefront of on-demand taxi services. Moreover, a taxi app goes beyond just attracting customers. It streamlines your operations, improves the customer experience with features like fare estimates and driver tracking, and boosts brand recognition through a readily accessible mobile presence.
In today’s evolving transportation landscape, to build an app like Uber isn’t just a way to compete, but a way to thrive by offering a modern, convenient, and customer-centric service that leverages technology to your advantage.
Uber did not achieve success overnight. However, today, its services have been scaled to several options:
As for calculating the cost of a trip, Uber has a 2-step system for this: if the taxi moves at speeds up to 11 miles per hour, the driver app charges passengers per minute—otherwise, passengers are charged per mile.
With the launch of ride-sharing and ride-hailingsolutions like Uber, Lyft, and Grab, created through native or cross platform mobile development services, people have another alternative they could use when needed, avoiding high costs for parking, insurance, and fuel for their private vehicles. However, the launch of these services dramatically impacted the incumbent taxi services that had long been a monopoly in the market. So, let’s find out how to start an app like Uber.
The ride-sharing revolution wasn’t a one-company show. While a taxi booking app like Uber ignited the spark, competitors like Lyft, Grab, Ola, and others saw its meteoric rise and acted swiftly. These ride-sharing apps recognized Uber’s growing dominance in various markets and understood the power of a user-friendly ride-sharing app.
Instead of being spectators, they prioritized the development of similar apps, each tailored to specific regional needs. This strategic move allowed them to rapidly penetrate markets Uber had initially saturated. Their success highlights the critical role a well-designed taxi app plays in attracting customers in today’s on-demand economy.
The flow of using an app is the following:
Simply assuming that “If you build it, they will come” is not a recipe for success. Building a good mobile application is not a trivial undertaking.
When undertaking an app like Uber, you need to understand your target market and why they would be interested in your services.
If you’re aiming to create an Uber-like app as an alternative solution, this is not the best idea, because there are too many global competitors in the ride-sharing and ride-hailing market. However, if you offer something new and distinctive—for example, through getting inspired by our mobile application ideas—you’re likely to get more users and, as a result, improve the business metrics reflected in mobile app analytics. Having a clearly documented and defined plan to make an Uber-like app, as well as understanding of what you might require in the future, will help you determine your development options.
When thinking about how to make an app like Uber, the business plan for a mobile app is only the first step. The next requirement is a consideration of all the technical aspects of the project and choosing the right technology stack. Professional software development companies can help you estimate the cost to make an app. Also, to save your time, you can come up with an RFP for mobile application development. NIX has a large team of experienced programmers in mobile app development, web development, UI/UX design, project management, business analytics, and QA. We provide full-cycle software development services.
From a point of view of creating an app like Uber, you have to consider:
From a business management point of view, look for the following skills:
Other costs to consider include:
The next thing that you need to consider is who will build your app.
Using the services of an offshore software development company like NIX could be a very cost-efficient alternative. NIX has access to thousands of developers around the world with the skills and knowledge you are looking for when making an app like Uber.
With Uber-like app development, a key consideration needs to be customer features. Customers expect certain functionality from their ridesharing application based on what Uber has already provided. If these mobile application features are missing, they’ll be less likely to use your app.
With Uber, passengers expect to be able to contact the driver directly from the app and also see their proximity and where they are on their route. Rideshare customers want to have a seamless experience with registration and look for apps that give them all of their information in an intuitive manner without having to dig through menus and settings.
From a cost point of view, riders are looking for an app that will give them an estimate of their total cost before entering the vehicle. Similarly, for payments, they want an app that integrates seamlessly with popular payment providers. Additionally, consider services like fare splitting for riders who share a vehicle with others.
Finally, think about social features like ratings and reviews, as it’s something that’s helped Uber grow in many markets. Also, don’t forget some of the advanced features that Uber has recently released, like the ability to book a ride for others and schedule a ride in advance. However, if you need even more inspiration when planning how to make an app like Uber, let’s take a closer look at the next list of extra features to implement.
Passengers simply set their location, and the app automatically pinpoints their nearest available driver. This translates to faster pickups, happier customers, and increased efficiency for your business. Plus, real-time tracking keeps everyone informed, allowing passengers to see their ride approach and drivers to optimize their routes. In today’s fast-paced world, convenience is king, and geolocation makes your taxi app the on-demand transportation tool.
This option is usually present in ridesharing services, so why don’t you implement it? Indeed, passengers don’t always have the opportunity to pay in advance for travel services using their bank cards. At the same time, you’ll need to consider how to implement this payment scheme without compromising your service—for example, if the passenger refuses to pay or cancels the trip. Specifically, in this case, you can debit the required amount of money from this passenger’s account, which will be automatically deducted when paying for the next trip.
This option can be used by passengers who choose a large-sized vehicle service. In particular, thanks to this feature, your customers will be able to book tickets for themselves and their friends, colleagues, family, etc.
You can also give your customers the opportunity to split the payment for the trip if they share their route with friends, colleagues, or someone else. This will significantly improve the convenience of your service.
You can add several customization fields to your user profile, be it uploading their personal photos, creating a list of their most frequently visited addresses, paying quickly with their bank cards, changing the app’s theme, and much more.
You can strengthen security measures for drivers by providing them with additional tools for checking tickets within your application. These could be, for example, QR codes—although, in practice, there are many more options.
If your customers regularly use your service for work trips, you can simplify the accounting of their payments and provide them with digital receipts that they can later submit to the accounting department of the company where they work.
Passengers can easily rate their experience, comment on driver courtesy or vehicle cleanliness, and suggest improvements. This two-way communication allows you to address concerns swiftly, maintain high service standards, and identify areas for driver training. Positive feedback also builds trust and attracts new customers, while negative feedback becomes a roadmap to continuous improvement. Ultimately, a feedback feature empowers you to make data-driven decisions and ensure your taxi app delivers exceptional service, keeping riders happy and coming back for more.
Finally, you can allow your customers to tip drivers for service that exceeded their expectations. This, in turn, will be an additional incentive for drivers to constantly improve their quality of service.
Eventually, when you decide on the feature list, just remember that three major factors havean impact on the customer’s sense of comfort: price for the service, full awareness, and the ride itself.
Uber wouldn’t be the world-spanning, multi-million-dollar business without its global team of drivers. While you might have your own fleet of vehicles, the basic features and functions that Uber provides to its drivers are worth noting, as they might be of use to you as well.
When building an app like Uber, think about how your drivers will use the app. Give them the capability of indicating their availability with an active and inactive flag. They should also be able to communicate directly with passengers directly from the app.
Also, when you decide to build an app like Uber, your app should offer maps (for example, through Google Maps API) that not only display maps but also traffic conditions, along with advanced route optimization. This can include shortcuts and even secure routes that aren’t as well known in some regions.
Drivers should be able to get reports on bookings over different periods so they can calculate their earnings quickly and easily. In addition, the app should offer a timer so that if users choose to cancel after a certain period, they will still be charged. And, of course, you’ll have to think about how the cost of the trip will be calculated as part of your global plan to make an app like Uber. Specifically, your cost calculator may be based on one or more of the following parameters:
Additionally, you can open up expanded opportunities for your drivers to increase their income:
Now let’s talk about the prospects that should open up for you after launching your application. In particular, there are several monetization options that are suitable for the vast majority of Uber clone apps.
The easiest option to generate recurring income from your app is to provide third-party brands with space to display their ads. This can be either random advertising selected by advertising platforms specifically for the needs of a particular user or advertising of specific brands that have made a deal with you directly.
You can also implement fees for passengers that will be charged to them automatically when booking their next trip. At the same time, it’s important that this fee is affordable so that your online service remains valuable compared to similar software solutions.
In the same way, you can introduce fees for completed trips that will be charged to drivers using your online taxi service. This is the most frequently used monetization option that Uber practices and which does not close the possibility of using other options for you.
Additionally, you can introduce fees charged to users who cancel their reservation after ordering a ride. For this, a flexible pricing policy can be applied, taking into account the waiting time, the distance covered by the driver, the level of user demand at the taxi ordering moment, etc.
Your passengers may need an expanded list of ridesharing-related services. This can be transportation of people with disabilities, small children, and animals, as well as booking a top-level car with a driver with a high rating. Thus, for these extra services, you can charge your users a larger fee than was provided for the standard service package.
For regular users of your software solution, you can implement a monetization model through a subscription, thereby providing them with some additional features and benefits that are not available to free users. The key here is to understand that the value of these features and benefits must be truly high from the point of view of the user who is considering purchasing a subscription.
If you have in mind several brands that are not your direct competitors but can make your service more valuable to end users, try to form partnerships with them aimed at promoting their services and/or products. This way, you’ll be able to receive a certain percentage from purchases of these items in your application.
Finally, if you have your own fleet of vehicles but no drivers, you can provide cars for their use directly for an additional fee. Thanks to this, drivers will be able to earn income for making trips, and you’ll accumulate the money received for renting your cars.
To build an app like Uber, you’re basically building two different rideshare booking apps for passengers and drivers with the admin panel acting as a controller.
The purpose of the admin panel is to let you control the overall business. This includes collecting user data and payments and determining how much you should be paying your drivers.
The admin panel can also provide information about vehicles and their maintenance schedules, making it a complete control center for your rideshare business.
Building an admin panel can be a complicated process based on your specific needs.
Once your app is launched on mobile app marketplaces, you’ll need to figure out how to promote it to attract the right audience. In general, there are several generally accepted methods that can be combined with each other or used separately. Let’s look at each of them.
This is a rather expensive and resource-intensive but very effective technique, which was practiced by not only Uber but also other lesser-known taxi services when promoting their products. Within a few months after the launch of the first version, these projects, together with powerful advertising campaigns, offered their new customers large discounts on using the service—for its passengers, Uber Eats provided digital codes that gave users a 50% discount.
However, it’s also important to note that at the end of this voucher campaign, you’ll likely experience churn, so you need to be prepared for that as well and have a complementary strategy in place to minimize this churn by offering customers new, valuable benefits that don’t expire.
This technique consists of launching promotions that are guaranteed to gather thousands of posts on social networks. As an example, we can consider the sensational launch of UberCopter, which was accompanied by a limited-time offer to get a couple of minutes of helicopter flight. This news spread across social networks at the speed of light, which is exactly what the service was trying to achieve.
No matter how unnatural influencer advertising may seem, it still works and brings brands the desired influx of users. In general, this strategy is limited only by your budget, so the more popular the influencer you attract, the more effective this promo will be for your mobile service. Don’t forget to choose an influencer whose audience overlaps with your app—otherwise, you risk wasting a lot of money and losing valuable time.
In general, the possibilities of attracting an audience to your ridesharing service are endless, so try to soberly assess your budget and understand the needs of the audience in order to hit your target on the first shot.
As mentioned earlier, features require development time and effort, so if you’re interested in building an Uber-like app, you may need some idea of the development cost.
Let’s answer the question about the technical stack of your future application—that is, how to make an app like Uber from a practical point of view. For its first version, Uber’s team used Node.js and Python. However, after some time, this list was expanded with other tools and technologies. Thus, the cost of developing the version of Uber that we know today was approximately 200,000 USD.
At the same time, this doesn’t mean that you’ll have to face the same expenses from the very beginning. The final cost of the project very much depends on its functionality, as well as the tariffs of third-party digital services with which your mobile taxi application will be integrated.
If we consider a more primitive version of Uber, your team will be able to cope with its creation in 600-700 hours of work. Considering the approximate hourly rate of the developer is 40 USD, you’ll get the cost of the project for one platform at 24,000-28,000 USD, which no longer seems such a colossal amount. However, these calculations are very approximate, so you should take into account hidden costs for paying for subscriptions to third-party integrations, hosting, promotion, and more.
For a better understanding of what you need to pay on an ongoing basis, let’s consider some examples of third-party services you can connect to your mobile app.
Geolocation services allow passengers to see a driver’s real-time location. This helps understand where exactly the driver is so that the passenger can get ready. Furthermore, your GPS tracking application will help drivers accurately find the pick-up address of the client.
Payment integration should be decided early on in the Uber-like app development life cycle. For companies that want to keep all credit card and user information, PCI certification is a must. An alternative used by many (including Uber) is using a third-party that is certified by PCI—the industry standard for payment security. Payment integration costs vary based on the different payment options you want to enable.
The registration page should offer simplified authorization using existing profiles such as Google and Facebook accounts. It should also integrate with the ratings and review system so that only verified profiles can leave a review. The ability to leave reviews is one of Uber’s secrets and has helped propel it forward.
Calls between the client and the driver right from the app are an essential feature. In addition, developers also need to consider different messaging platforms and push notifications to guarantee that communication is seamless. Notification features, as well as geolocation, depend on the device being used, so costs of implementing this function will vary based on the platform chosen.
A significant benefit that passengers are used to from apps like Uber is the ability to know in advance what they’ll pay before they use the service. Ride cost estimation is not a simple calculation and varies based on the number of vehicles available at the time and also the type of vehicle chosen for the journey.
The back end of Uber-like app development is where the code that runs the application integrates with the databases that hold all the information. The back end and front end work together to power an app. Back-end development is complex and involved, and you can expect the team to spend the bulk of their time here integrating and testing all the features and functionality.
Front end Uber-like app development time varies depending on the platform, as the requirements are different for iOS and Android platforms. Similar to back-end development, this is another area that takes a significant amount of time and effort. The front end is the overall look and feel of the app, including the navigation menu, so getting it right is essential.
Overall, the total cost of Uber-like app development can vary considerably based on the features you plan to offer and the platforms that you want the app to work on. For example, a single app that is expected to work on either iOS or Android will be cheaper than an app that will work on both platforms. By the way, you can receive more useful information about cross-platform technologies by reading our article on React Native vs Flutter or checking the article dedicated to Xamarin app development. At the same time, it doesn’t mean that this approach will bring you customers, so when picking a platform you must depend on the audience preference, let your decisions be data-driven, and not make choices based on saving money.
In general, Uber-like app development requires a certain knowledge and skill set that is hard to find. If you’re looking to build an Uber-like app internally, you’ll need to hire a team that includes developers, engineers, project managers, and designers. This is an expensive and time-consuming process.
The fact is that your development team will need to understand how best to integrate your own Uber app with different payment platforms and have knowledge of both Android and iOS. So, while knowing what you need when it comes to a driver or passenger app is a good first step, it isn’t equal to understanding how to create an app that’s capable of competing with Uber.
In particular, you’ll need to clearly define the goals of your development from the very beginning—will it be software identical to Uber with some differences, or are you simply going to follow the same business model, but in your audience segment? If the latter, you can launch a complete analog of Uber in a region where Uber is not available, or apply its business model to an audience with other needs, be it consumers of the beauty industry, medical services, food and grocery delivery, delivery from online stores, or something else.
Be that as it may, collaborating with such giants as Uber, especially at the beginning of your journey, is very difficult, and the team of developers and other specialists taking part in the planning, creation, and promotion of your project must be prepared to spend a lot of time and energy on all this. That’s why it makes sense to outsource your app development to a third party and choose a mobile app development company like NIX.
NIX’s developers have experience with the latest mobile app development technologies. Our team of project managers and business analysts can work with you to make sure that you are considering all the requirements and that your rideshare app development plan is the most suitable for your requirements. Find out details of our success story here. You can also check out our mobile applications success stories to get even more inspiration for your future rideshare app.
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