# iOS & Android App Development

> Native mobile apps in Swift for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, with Android alongside, from £4,000 and live in 8 to 12 weeks. Built by a developer with his own award-winning apps on the store, including App Store submission, review, store listing and the first year of OS updates.

Canonical page: https://daveellis.dev/mobile-apps/
Made by Dave Ellis (Edinburgh, Scotland). Email: dave@daveellis.dev
Last updated: 2026-11-12

iOS and Android app development: what is included, what App Store submission involves, the proof, and the price.

## Mobile apps, built by someone who ships his own.

Native iOS apps in Swift for iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, with Android alongside where it earns its place. From £4,000, live in eight to twelve weeks, and the App Store submission, the review and the first year of OS updates are part of the price rather than a surprise in month four.

## Why the developer having their own apps matters

Building an app and getting an app onto a store are two different jobs, and agencies that do the first one occasionally are the ones who get caught out by the second. Apple rejects builds for reasons that are nowhere in the design, privacy disclosures have to match what the code actually does, and every September a new iOS arrives and quietly changes something.

I have apps on the App Store under my own name right now, and I go through all of that every month whether or not a client is paying me to. The Racing Line has been live for years and is used by more than 100,000 people. Sauna & Plunge and Peek Notes are both shipping, with Location Vault and Widgeling in the queue behind them.

That is the honest reason to buy a mobile app from a person rather than a team of five: nothing about the process is theoretical, and the awkward parts get flagged in week one instead of discovered in week ten.

## Included at the published price

- Native Swift, not a wrapper. A real iOS app rather than a website in a shell, so it feels like the phone it is running on and keeps working when the signal does not.
- Every Apple screen size that makes sense. iPhone first, with iPad, Apple Watch and Mac where they genuinely add something rather than to lengthen a list.
- App Store submission and review. The listing, the screenshots, the age rating, the data disclosures, the build upload and the back and forth if it gets rejected.
- Privacy manifest and policy. Required, fiddly, and the thing most often wrong on an app built by somebody who does not ship regularly.
- Widgets, notifications and the system bits. The parts that make an app feel native rather than visited.
- The first year of OS updates. When the next iOS lands and something shifts, it gets fixed. That is in the price.

## £4,000 to start, then it is about the server.

An app that lives on the phone is a known quantity. An app with accounts, payments and data syncing between devices is a second system behind the first one, and that is where the number moves.

£4,000 +

From · iOS, Android optional · 8 to 12 weeks

Design, native build, store listing and screenshots, privacy manifest and policy, submission and review, and the first year of OS updates.

- Swift, built properly, not a wrapper
- App Store submission and review handled
- Store listing and screenshots
- Privacy manifest and policy
- First year of OS updates covered
- Android alongside, priced on top

Live in 8 to 12 weeks

### What pushes the price up

- Accounts and logins. The moment users have accounts there is a server, a password reset flow and a data protection question to answer.
- Payments or subscriptions. Store billing, receipts, restoring purchases and the state where somebody paid and the network dropped.
- Syncing between devices. Two devices editing the same thing is one of the genuinely hard problems in software, and it is never a checkbox.
- Working offline. If it has to be right with no signal and then reconcile later, that is a design decision with a real cost.
- Android alongside iOS. Close to twice the testing and twice the store admin, so it is worth deciding deliberately rather than by default.

### What never costs extra

- Store submission. Including the rejections. They are normal, and dealing with them is part of the job.
- The first year of OS updates. A new iOS is not a change request.
- Owning your own work. The code is yours, and we agree at the start whose developer account the app is published under.
- Being told an app is the wrong answer. If a website would do the same job for a quarter of the money, that is what I will say.

## What getting on the App Store actually involves.

This is where first-time app owners lose weeks, usually because nobody told them it existed. Here is the real sequence, so it holds no surprises.

- The developer account An Apple Developer Program membership, which Apple charges for annually, plus identity verification. For a company that means a D-U-N-S number, which can take a fortnight on its own, so it is started in week one rather than week ten.
- The listing Name, subtitle, description, keywords, category, age rating, support URL and a privacy policy that has to exist at a real address. Plus screenshots at the exact sizes Apple asks for, which is a design job rather than a screen grab.
- Privacy and data A privacy manifest in the build and a set of disclosures on the listing, both of which have to match what the app genuinely collects. Getting this wrong is a common reason for rejection and an unpleasant thing to be wrong about publicly.
- Review, and sometimes rejection A human at Apple opens the app and tries to break the rules with it. Review usually takes a day or two. Rejections are routine, specific and answerable, and I answer them rather than forwarding them to you.

Android follows the same shape with different paperwork: a Google Play developer account, a data safety form instead of a privacy manifest, and a review process that is usually quicker but less predictable. If you need both stores, both sets of admin are handled here.

## Four apps, one developer.

Not a portfolio of work for other people. These are mine, which means I carry the reviews, the support emails and the store admin for every one of them.

### The Racing Line

Live motorsport and 220+ global series in one app. 100,000+ fans, 4.9 stars from 2,400+ ratings, and Brand of the Year at the 2026 Race Media Awards. iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, Apple Vision and Android.

### Sauna & Plunge

A contrast therapy timer for Apple Watch, built around the Action button on Ultra so it works with wet hands under Water Lock. HealthKit, App Intents, live heart rate.

### Peek Notes

Short notes on your Home Screen, with a widget per folder that pages through it. iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple Watch, synced through the user's own iCloud with no account.

### Widgeling

A custom widget maker with 128 widget types, a live editor, 31 themes and 60 palettes, across iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac and Vision Pro. Coming soon.

All work, including Location Vault

### What does a mobile app cost?

From £4,000 for a native iOS app, with Android alongside it priced on top, and 8 to 12 weeks from start to the store. That includes the build, the App Store submission and review, the store listing and screenshots, the privacy manifest and policy, and the first year of OS updates. What pushes it up is anything with a server behind it: accounts and logins, payments or subscriptions, syncing between devices, or data that has to stay correct when the phone has no signal.

### Do you build Android as well as iOS?

Yes. iOS comes first and is built natively in Swift, because that is where I ship my own apps, and Android is built alongside it. Whether you need both is worth a real conversation rather than a default yes: two platforms is close to twice the testing and twice the store admin, and for some businesses the honest answer is to launch on one, find out whether anybody uses it, and add the second once you know.

### Who handles App Store submission and review?

I do, and it is included. That means the store listing and the screenshots, the privacy manifest and the privacy policy, the age rating and the data disclosures, the build upload and the back and forth with review if something gets rejected. Rejections are normal rather than a disaster, and they are much less stressful when the person answering them has been through it with their own apps. The Racing Line, Sauna & Plunge and Peek Notes are all on the store, so this is a process I run regularly rather than read about.

Every question, answered