“I want to learn French”, “I wish I knew Spanish”, “I’m thinking of learning Chinese”.

With the whole world getting connected, such phrases have become trivial. People have started showing interest in not just in traveling to different parts of the world, but also in learning their native languages. They have started turning towards different mobile applications to learn vocabulary, practice the words they heard, and become fluent in the Language.

An impact of which is that mobile Language Learning market is thriving.

This market growth is so vast and significant that the competition in the market to emerge as the ultimate leader is on the rise.

While all these language learning web and mobile portals have proven to hold a momentous position in the market, the one that is leading the show is Duolingo.

About Duolingo – The App Ruling the Language Learning Domain

Duolingo is a language-learning platform that offers 90+ courses in nearly 22 different languages. The platforms, founded in 2011 by Luis von Ahn, has made a valuation of $700M and gained 300M user acquisition so far.

The application works in a very simple and hassle-free manner, something that is well-explained by the video below.

The application received the credit of being the first educational app to receive the fame of ‘iPhone App of the Year’ in 2013 and ‘Most Downloaded App’ on Play Store for 2013 and 2014. It has also been rewarded with many other titles, including being announced as one of Forbes’s “Next Billion-Dollar Startups 2019”.

Because of all these achievements and appreciation, the application has not just become users’ favorite, but has also proven to be a profitable idea for education industry enthused entrepreneurs to enter the mobile market. A ripple effect of which is that various startups and Entrepreneurs have started showing interest in getting familiar with Duolingo-like app development cost and other related requirements. Something about which we will discuss in this article in detail.

 But firstly, let’s get familiar with what issues Duolingo solved, which resulted in its popularity.

Language Learning Issues that Duolingo App Solves

1. Boring Learning Process

Regardless of whether you pick a book or turn towards some mobile education platform, the learning process was hectic and uninteresting.

 Duolingo added fun to learning and made users more excited to achieve their desired goal via Gamification.

2. Low Credibility of App Content

With most of such applications running on software and algorithms, it was a question for users, if to pick these apps over real tutors or not.

 Duolingo solved this issue by ensuring that the content delivered to users is not just checked by AI-based algorithms, but also verified by users. For this, the app look into the answer offered by users and validate the one selected by the majority.

 Not only this, the application has also initiated a certification process making you leverage the same perks as offline learning programs. Something that again adds to the benefits of language learning apps like Duolingo.

3. No Customization

Above all, the existing web and mobile learning portals were not offering any personalized services. Users were compelled to go through the same journey as others, irrespective of whether they have the same goal or not.

 But, with the advent of Duolingo, the situation took a 180-degree turn. The application came loaded with personalization elements, making it easier for users to plan their own journey and enjoy.

 Duolingo In the News: 

•  Duolingo Redesigned: Here’s What Has Been Changed

The language learning tool has received a new look, which is expected to attract more users. The design, created by Johnson Banks, was conveyed by a cartoon own mascot named Duo and showed various remarkable changes in the form of revised core colors, logo lock-ups, and typography styling.

This redesign is expected to transform the lives at the heart of brands’s mission statement, perfectly described by its tagline, “Everyone can Duolingo”.

• Duolingo Launched its First Ad Campaign

After being in the market for 8 years, the language-learning app has finally launched its first campaign. This came as an outcome of Colin Watkins being appointed as the first employee in the UK.

The campaign, which is running for four weeks across road, rail, and underground sites in London, is spreading the message of making Duolingo their companion while traveling across the city. And this way, better utilize their time.

• Duolingo added Latin to its free language learning app

Duolingo, the most popular language learning platform, also added Latin to its languages set. This language, though not used as a native language any more, is the base of many languages like Spanish, Italian, and earlier Romanian.

So, with a hope to give users an opportunity to get familiar with the basic one, the platform introduced terminology and grammar-related lessons for users.

• Duolingo pairs up with Twitch to promote language immersion via streaming

Duolingo, with an aim to motivate users to learn new languages and polish their skills, have undergone a partnership with Twitch, a digital media company owned by Amazon.

 With this covered, it is time to get into the technicalities related to how to build a language learning app like Duolingo. So, let’s begin with taking a walkthrough of app features, and then jump to the duolingo-like app development cost estimation.

 Note: While there are a plethora of features available in Duolingo app, we will talk about the most basic (MVP) features only.

 Top Features of Language Learning App like Duolingo

1. Profile and Settings

The foremost feature to consider while performing Duolingo like mlearning app development is Profile and Settings.

 Here, user can save their personal details and see all the activities they have performed so far. Also, they can make some changes in the content shared or its privacy, ultimately enjoying a safe and satisfied experience on the platform.

2. Course and Levels

Here, users are offered an opportunity to pick from 90+ courses related to 22 languages and decide the pace at which they wish to learn. Meaning, they can choose if they want to learn on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis.

3. Language Practice and Revision

This is the feature that defines the actual purpose of the application. Here, users come across different speaking and listening exercises, alongside those requiring choosing from multiple options or translating the displayed content.

4. Push Notification

Push Notification is yet another feature that you must consider while creating an app like Duolingo.This feature reminds users to complete their course, if they miss out any. Also, it contributes in terms of motivating users about leaving their laziness and focus on achieving their targeted goal soon.

5. Gamification

Gamification is one of the core features of Duolingo-clone app.

 This feature deals with adding gaming elements into your application, is used in different forms in the application. Two of the prime area of usage are:

1. Experience and Levels – Gamified elements, like Animation and Sound effects, are used to make the screen super-engaging.

2. Achievement and Badges – Whenever you complete any course or task, you are awarded with a badge and associated items. Also, there’s a leaderboard screen where you can see all of your achievements and feel motivated.

6. Social Media Integration

Last but not least, the Duolingo application offers users an opportunity to login via their existing social media accounts.

While these features impresses users looking to learn a new language or polish their skills at one they already know, what makes them pick Duolingo over Babbel or any other mlearning app is their UX strategy.

Duolingo UX Takeaways

1. Simple yet Engaging Onboarding Experience

Many business enthusiast and mobile app developers make the mistake of considering On-boarding screens as the area where they could share all of their apps’ features. However, there are various users that wish to explore the app on their own or get irritated by seeing this user manual.

 This is where Duolingo has outshined in the market. The application has minimal screens with short and crispy content; making a way for users to land into the platform at the earliest and explore it themselves.

2. Delayed Registration Process

This language learning application does not force users to create an account at first. Rather, it lets users choose the course, level, and perform a few lessons. After this, it displays a positive message to encourage users to register for an account, “Time to create a profile to save your progress and continue learning for free”.

This way, it shows what the application can do and how, before making it imperative to create an account. Something that increases the chances of user conversions.

Besides, the application has made the registration process short and faster to give a pleasant experience to users.

3. Push Notification

Knowing the fact that building a push notification strategy can increase conversions, Duolingo has also introduced different push notification mechanisms into the app. They have used this technique to remind users about their daily/weekly/monthly goals and encourage them to take another course with some positive and personalized content.

4. Progressive Onboarding Experience

Another mistake that app designers and businesspeople make is that they limit the scope of onboarding experience to the point user enters the app. This is where Duolingo has proven to be an expert.

The application has introduced onboarding elements throughout the application. This way, they have succeeded at simplifying the workflow and delivering a higher level of personalized experience to users.

5. Speed and Convenience

The application has also worked on delivering higher speed, convenience, and a valuable experience to their users – something that only a few applications like Netflix has nailed at.

6. Positive Messages and Encouragements

Duolingo app has also worked on adding positive vibes into their design. They have introduced positive messages to encourage users, in case they fail. This way, they have given an impression that they understand their user pain points and have the knack of how to bring them back.

The effect of which is that more than 25M users use the application every month.

7. Voice Recognition

Lastly, they have looked into how to use voice recognition and Artificial intelligence for delivering better user experience.

These features make Duolingo enjoy limelight in the language learning industry. However, they are able to perform smoothly and deliver exceptional experience because of the tech stack used. So, before we look into the cost of Duolingo-like app development, let’s uncover the tech stack these apps are backed with.

 Tech Stack to Consider for Building a Duolingo-clone App

The tech stack of Duolingo app, that power up the features and make it darling of every user, includes:

It uses Java, Kotlin, Objective-C, Swift, Scala, and Swift for native development while backend is backed by Python, Vue.js, React.js, and Angular.js. CSS, jQuery, and Bootstrap are used to create the UI/UX design journey, whereas MySQL, Postgres, MongoDB, HBase, and Cassandra are considered for meeting the database management needs.

 Likewise, Hadoop and Spark big data frameworks, Apache, and IBM are often considered for real-time analytics, and Amazon Data Services or Google Cloud Storage for cloud storage needs.

 Now that you know the features and technology stack for language learning app development, let’s make no further delays. And see how much does Duolingo-like app development costs.

 How Much Does a Language Learning App like Duolingo Cost?

The cost to develop duolingo clone learning app depends on multiple factors. The prime one among those are:-

1. App Platform

The choice of building an application for Android, iOS or both makes a difference in the cost value. This is because the tech stack required, app complexity, and other factors varies as per the platform involved.

2. Front-end Development

While some programming languages and frontend development environments are open-source and secure, others demand a higher fee to use. Also, a few of them does not offer customization in terms of tech stack. All these factors again create a significant difference in the language learning mobile app development cost.

3. Backend Development

When it comes to develop education and mobile web platforms, the backend development languages, frameworks, hosting servers, etc. adds to the app price.

For example, when you choose microservices architecture over monolithic, you get better futuristic services but at a higher cost. Likewise, use of Node.js costs less when compared to that of Java’s.

 Likewise, when you do not ask your hired development team to pay for backend hosting services, you get an opportunity to reduce app development cost.

4. Design Process

When it comes to designing, various factors affect the cost to create a Duolingo clone. This includes not having a clear vision of what design elements to use, what design tools to prefer, the use of animation content, and more.

Besides, various companies charge separately for user persona, UX research, and user journey mapping. In such a scenario, it is better to hire app developers like that of Appinventiv who do not charge separately for the research and guesswork.

5. Testing

Last but not least, the tools and efforts related to quality assurance process also reflects the difference in the overall app development cost.

To know the cost estimate while incorporating more of features in your application, Contact our mlearning app experts today.

But, wait!

Before you choose our development team or hire any, it is good to get a clear understanding of the development challenges and the ways you can earn back the money.

So, let’s check for the development challenges you might face in the process to build mlearning app like Duolingo.

 Challenges You Might Face While Duolingo-like App Development

While there are various challenges associated with developing a Duolingo-like application, the two main ones are:-

1. Deliver Impeccable Chatbot Services

Duolingo’s bot is available in more than one language and delivers longer sentences. To create one such language-learning chatbot, you need to dive into complex algorithms and integration processes, especially when starting from scratch. This demands higher efforts and budget, and many times does not even deliver results in the form of intelligent conversation as expected. So, it is a risky investment both for businesspeople and developers.

2. Integrate Voice Technology with Bot

Another such challenge that can be faced by the development team is to integrate chatbot with Voice-recognition technology. This is so because the voice technology is still immature with less sources to make this possible. Something for which we advice to go with top mobile app development companies only.

With this covered, let’s see how this language learning mobile app makes money (and you can too.)

 Business and Revenue Model of Duolingo

Dulingo, just like reCaptcha, works on Crowdsourced Business model. It makes some text/content available to users for translation as a part of their learning course. When multiple users give the same translation for any particular content, the website considers it as the right translation and save it as translated text. This text is then shared with organizations like BuzzFeed and CNN in return for some monetary benefits.

 Besides, Duolingo also earns money by embracing the following two monetization models:-

1. In-app Advertisement

Under this business model, the application allows users to enjoy free content but loads it with advertisements from brands who pays on the basis of CPC and CPI.

2. Subscription Model

Here, the application provides an ad-free experience alongside various other perks to users, when paid. The app lets users gain gems and in-app currency to unlock content beforehand and get more chances in competitions.

Also, the language learning app asks for a fee of $49 for enrolling for a certification in any language.

 While these are the business models that Duolingo prefers, there are various other strategies that new-age businesses can emulate to earn money from a mobile app, with Affiliate marketing being on the top of the list.

With this covered, let’s wrap up this article covering a few tips that can make your app prepared for the future.

 Tips to Make Your Duolingo-Clone App Successful

1. Focus on Customers

One of the reasons Duolingo is leading in its respective domain is that it solves users’ pain points better than others. So, taking the same forward, keep planning as per your user expectations and needs. Target local markets to get a microscopic understanding of their requirements and implement them in the global market.

2. Introduce ‘Real-Time Translation’ and ‘Writing’ Feature

There’s hardly any language learning application that offers the functionality of translating any word in real-time or learn how to write them. So, it is again a profitable opportunity to consider while building a Duolingo-clone app.

3. Localize Your App

App localization can help to get more conversions and loyal customers. So, hire the experts and localize your app content in languages spoken in your target audience (usually in those that are majorly used by them).

4. Embrace Latest Technologies

Gamification and Artificial Intelligence are making a good profit. No deny to this. However, with the changing market, it is necessary to welcome other technologies too.

 So, look ahead to integrate AR/VR, IoT, and other such trending technologies into your Duolingo-like app development process.

5. Follow UI/UX Trends

Knowing that the UX is the secret sauce of Duolingo’s success, it is again a profitable act to consider the top mobile app UI/UX design tips and trends.

6. Promote Your App

Last but not least, it is necessary to take the right steps for promoting your application. While Duolingo team relied only on ‘Word of Mouth’ marketing, you can turn towards other effective methods to promote your app and get better results.

 In fact, it is better to invest in pre-launch app promotion to prepare market for your application and enjoy higher downloads. And eventually, get back the money invested in the form of Duolingo-like app development cost.

The post How Much Does Duolingo like App Development Cost? appeared first on Appinventiv Official Blog for Mobile App Development.