How much does it cost to develop an app like Abhibus for bus ticket booking?

The rise of mobile applications has made ticket booking and ride-hailing services very popular.

Among them, bus ticket booking apps such as Abhibus and Redbus are making a lot of money.

Booking bus tickets has been made very easy just a matter of a few clicks.

The rising populations have created a need for the alternate need for transports such as private buses and cargos.

If you are planning to start an online bus ticket booking business this is the best time for you to do it.

The success of any public usage application depends upon the attributes of the digital business architecture of the application.

Nowadays cross-platform hybrid applications are on a rise with the coming of frameworks such as React Native and Flutter.

Abhibus handles ticket inventory from over 2500 operators with coverage of 100000 routes.

Started in 2008 Abhibus provides its app solution to over 100 private bus operators, 4 state transport corporations and two operators of international routes.

The application platform of Abhibus has an excellent e-ticketing system, fleet management and vehicle tracking infrastructure.

Now such an application generally requires a lot of planning, testing, and implementation at various levels.

You need to make sure that the app is available on all platforms such as Android, iOS and Windows.

The app must have strong support for the frontend as well as backend architecture.

Abhibus has a very large app architecture which provides many services from sleeper bus to luxury car rental.

The app also supports multiple payment options such as net banking debit or credit card and personal wallet.

The app of Abhibus is known for its quick and responsive customer service.

I would personally recommend you to invest in technologies such as artificial intelligence and data analytics to remain competitive.

A chatbot can make all the difference resulting in higher conversion rates, happy customers and growth in sales.

The study of customer behavior can bring you profitable insights and better bus ride service at all.

There exist many phases for developing any large app such as planning, designing, building, testing, launching, and support.

You must be always to ready to explore technologies for Operating systems, payments, cloud integration, analytics, text, and voice along with third-party integration.

The right stack of technology may vary upon your exact requirements and objectives.

You may need to create separate account panels for users and bus associates.

Geolocation technology now allows users to always keep track of their drivers.

My suggestion for you would be to develop an intercity bus service application first and then advance accordingly.

The main question arises is about the pricing of the application and its different components.

The following article provides information about the costing and the effort required to develop any robust application like Abhibus.

What would be the costing and unique features of any bus ticket booking app?

Any such development will require expertise in application development in all platforms.

You would need to hire a team of experts with experience in a similar industry.

Nowadays many proven app solution providers can be trusted upon for taking care of your bus application.

The best way is to start making it yourself with the help of few colleagues with the help of online courses such as Udacity and Edx.

Normally a bus ticket booking app will be made of different modules such as customer relationship, administrator, operator account.

It is time for you to draw out a comprehensive plan for your product and meet the experts to deduce the costs.

Generally, app developers can be hired according to their expected salaries and experience.

Another option would be hiring freelancers who have the cost per hour or individual cost for particular modules.

If you have a strong backing you can assemble a complete team with mobile developers, designers, and technology and marketing experts.

Always leave a nice chunk out for digital marketing and advanced systems such as AI and Big data.

Let us discuss in detail the most important features along with its requirements.

Social Media Signup

The age of social media has made it mandatory for app owners to allow all its users to sign up through their accounts such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Provide such as easy access to make customers happy.

Also, it leads to self-promotion of the application leading to better sales.

I would advise you to meet any social media expert to discuss as well as develop this proposition.

Real-Time Seat Display

It is one of the best features of any bus ticket booking app.

People love to use that app which offers a manual selection of seats.

Majority of the travel and ticket booking apps have the feature for providing maximum convenience to the customers.

You can discuss it with your team and integrate it with the system of bus operators.

Setting up pick up and drop off location 

Many times people need their bus operators to pick them up from any preferred location on the route.

Provide facility so that any customer can insert the pick-up and drop off location at the time of booking.

This type of integration will attract many daily commuters.

The feature is not so difficult to implement and can be included in the design plan itself.

Cashless Payment Facility

People love cashless payment options in any app citing many reasons such as security.

Try to keep as many cashless payment options as available such as Google Pay, Debit card, Pay TM, etc.

It can be done with very little effort as the APIs can be built very easily.

If you want to make money you need to provide a quick, secure and hassle-free medium of payments.

Real-Time Track of Location

To ensure full safety and compliance by the bus operators provide a real-time location tracking system in your application.

The passenger needs to know where they are currently located at all times.

This particular effort may cost you up a little bit more.

Still, you will get your return on the investment and your value will rise in the eyes of customers.

Many apps such as Uber, Ola, Rapido, Zomato, and Swiggy show the location of their delivery partners at all times.

The particular feature may require the integration of geolocation with real-time data analytics.

Complete messaging platform

Try your best to allow all the users as well as bus operators to chat with each other at all times.

Many bus ticket apps are offering in travel chat with fellow a passenger which is a huge hit.

It also allows drivers to pass important messages and urgent notification to all the travelers.

This particular feature will require time and effort but cannot be neglected at any chance.

You can contact any proven firm to build you a perfect platform particularly for messaging.

You are advised to make your chatbot with AI to provide the best customer service possible.

Central Booking Management Module 

People want flexible booking options and prefer to use them at all times.

Bus travel is a dynamic field in which users need to book and cancel tickets based on urgency.

Try to provide such a facility with minimal charges for higher retention rates.

The system must provide all the alerts and notifications connected to their bus journey.

This particular module is the core component of the digital architecture of your app.

Make sure it is properly done and planned with the help of solution experts.

You can contract a well-known firm to provide you with the most advanced booking management system.

Allocate enough funds for it as your users will expect the most out of this particular module.

Complete Validation and Security 

QR Scanning is important for checking the authentication of passengers as well as drivers.

Remember you are playing with a lot of sensitive data and it is your prime responsibility to safeguard it all times.

Your app must be tested for all types of vulnerabilities and threats.

Every panel must be incomplete access to the central security module.

Any breach must be reported immediately and must be resolved immediately.

Invest nicely upon a central security module and you will never be disappointed.

Meet app security experts and discuss your plans about securing all the data as well as operations.

You are advised to not compromise on security and allocate appropriate resources for it.

Conclusion

Take time to design everything as once development starts it is very difficult to backtrack.

It is very important to select the main framework for your platform whether it should be a Cross-platform or any individual platform.

The total costing can be roughly estimated to lie between US Dollars 15,000 to 75,000.

Still, it completely depends upon the requirements of your app and the funding that you have.

The truth is that there is no limit to the amount that you can spend on your bus ticket booking app.

But financial planning will ensure a longer time for your app-based business.

Remember to research the average costing of each component.