- What is Pinterest and How Does it Work?
- Astonishing Facts About Pinterest
- Must-Have Features of the Pinterest App
- Login/Create Account
- Home Feed
- Search
- Save and Share Pin
- Create
- Following Tab
- Notifications
- Dashboard
- Advanced Features of the Pinterest App
- Group Boards
- Post Reactions
- Message
- Suggestion Feed Queries
- Designing Guidelines for the Pinterest App
- Lucid
- Animated
- Unbreakable
- Pinterest-like App Techstack
- How much Does it Cost to Develop Pinterest-like App?
- Platform Choice
- Frontend and Backend Development
- App Complexity
- The Team Size
- Location of the Agency
- Development Approach for Building an App like Pinterest
- Gathering Requirements
- UI/UX Design
- Agile Development
- Testing and Launching Process
- Monetization Strategies of Pinterest like App
- 1. Subscription Model
- 2. Referral Programs
- 3. Freemium Model
- Final Note
- FAQs
What started off as an introvert’s haven soon became the house of some of the most creative minds in the world, who came to the platform looking for ideas and hobbies.
The idea bagged the 50 Best Websites of 2011 award from the Times Magazine. And after a decade, its application now hosts over 433 million monthly active users.
This product that took an off-stream approach and created a new business model & industry standard was Pinterest.
In addition to being a non-intrusive platform, Pinterest has set a benchmark for businesses: giving them a path to succeed on both user engagement and business revenue front.
Today, there is hardly any business person who doubts the benefits of building an app like Pinterest. Or one who is not scratching the internet looking for answers on how much an app like Pinterest costs.
What is Pinterest and How Does it Work?
Pinterest is a social media platform that enables users to share media related to goods, services, and projects and discover new interests by looking at the images that others have posted.
One might think of the Pinterest app download as a web-powering bulletin board, but with higher organization capability.
Users normally save, a.k.a, pin the images they find on the web or Pinterest on different boards on their profile. Most of the images saved on Pinterest are clickable and opened in a new tab when clicked. The Pinterest app for Android and iOS is free to download.
Astonishing Facts About Pinterest
A. Pinterest started 2020 with around 320 million monthly active users. And now, their user base has increased to 433 million monthly active users.
B. In August 2021, Pinterest launched a first-of-its-kind hair pattern search for inclusive beauty results. This hair pattern search enables Pinners to refine hair searches by six different hair patterns: protective, oily, curly, wavy, straight, and shaved/bald. So basically, this feature allows users to find hair inspiration that is most relevant to their style and preference. Pinterest also introduced new tools for the creator community that will allow them to make money from their content.
C. Getting more conscious about its users’ mental health, Pinterest trained its algorithms to identify disturbing content and remove it from the application.
D. Pinterest is currently the third-largest social network in the U.S.
E. In the second quarter of 2022, Pinterest generated $666 million U.S.
F. There are approximately 2 million monthly searches on Pinterest.
G. Pinterest is more popular with women than men.
Must-Have Features of the Pinterest App
The feature set that Pinterest comes with is fairly straightforward and concentrates on one purpose – saving and sharing ideas. Here are the features that carry an impact on the cost of the Pinterest-like app:
Login/Create Account
Similar to the maximum of applications operative in the market today, the Pinterest app too offers users the functionality of creating an account and logging in. To expedite the process, the app offers the option to do social media logins.
Home Feed
The Pinterest home screen is made of a slab-like portrayal of media that users can then choose to Pin or scroll through. This part of the application is governed by Artificial Intelligence technology. The feed gets adjusted on the basis of users’ interests.
Search
This is the section that users make use of to search for pins related to the topic of their interest. Pinterest has been making a lot of effort to make the search functionality advanced and extremely precise. If you, too, are planning to build a Pinterest-like app, then this feature is important. It will help users get information on topics of their interest without any hassle. The search function will give them relevant information and, in turn, increase users’ engagement.
Save and Share Pin
This is another feature you can include in your Pinterest clone app. When users click on a pin, they are given two options – A. Put the pin on board B. Share it with their friends through different mediums. This is one way how Pinterest betters its user engagement numbers.
Create
Pinterest gives users two options when it comes to creation – Pin and Board.
You can either create a pin by uploading a media element from the gallery or capture a picture from the camera. You can also create a board wherein you can add multiple pins related to the topic of your interest.
Once created, you can modify the pins on the board or delete it – pin/board – altogether.
Following Tab
This part of the application shows users what people they follow have saved in the app. It also comes with a recommendation tab, giving users to find new people/accounts to follow.
Notifications
Pinterest uses this re-engagement marketing technique perfectly by sending notifications to users related to their boards and new additions made in the pin type they have shown an interest in.
Dashboard
Denoted as ‘Saved,’ this is the user profile section of the application. This details the number of followers and following and boards and pins that they have created and saved. Here, the users also get a ‘Sort’ feature, which gives them the facility to either sort their boards according to alphabetical order or time-wise.
Advanced Features of the Pinterest App
Although not main or must-have, these advanced features are one that makes Pinterest what it is. These tend to carry impact the cost of Pinterest app development greatly.
Group Boards
Pinterest gives users the functionality to create a board and invite their friends to collaborate on it. This makes it possible for them to make plans together and work on them.
Post Reactions
While not originally in the plan, Pinterest gives users the functionality to react to a pin through emoticons.
Message
Stepping one step further in the social media game, Pinterest gives its users the ability to send messages to other people from inside the application.
At Appinventiv, our experts worked on a social media app like Vyrb that enables users to send and receive audio messages with the help of Bluetooth wearables. Popular audio command features like Siri and Google voice assistant were implemented into the app, along with incorporating autoplay functionality.
Suggestion Feed Queries
When you enter a search term in the app, Pinterest gives additional queries for you to select from. This makes the search process a lot more advanced and engaging.
Designing Guidelines for the Pinterest App
When you create a Pinterest mobile app, you don’t just have to consider the features set. What makes the app truly special is the experience that it offers to the end users through its design.
When Pinterest started its operation, there was little to no focus on design principles. The focus, back then, used to be entirely on offerings. That was the time when Pinterest UI looked like this:
It was in 2017 when Pinterest’s product design team brought the corporate focus on changing the app design on the phone.
The foundation that they set for the app was –
Lucid
- It’s intuitive, not learned
- It makes the user feel powerful
- It makes the content taste better
Animated
- It’s colorful
- It’s visually responsive
- It’s unexpected in a good way
Unbreakable
- It’s built for exploration
- It’s impossible to mis-tap
- It’s reversible
The foundation principle gave birth to a revamped app design that focused on white space and intuition. The two factors played a massive role in taking the app’s engagement off the charts.
At Appinventiv, we perform a series of research to back the UI and UX of an application. We start with a product discovery workshop which lasts for five days. This lets us create wireframes and mindmaps, which help set the future of user experience. We also follow a series of UI/UX trends to ensure the app design is extremely on-point, right from the onboarding stage.
This is something our clients would find in our estimate of the cost of developing similar apps like Pinterest.
Besides the designing process and elements, the other factor that is included in the Pinterest clone app cost breakdown is the technology stack.
Pinterest-like App Techstack
The technology stack used to create a Pinterest clone application can majorly be divided into four segments – Application & Data, Utilities, DevOps, and Business Tools.
Pinterest, as an application, grows continuously, both in terms of the user count and the ads business. Increasing with it is the review volume. In order to develop Pinterest-like app, businesses will have to work around a technology stack that solves the flourishing operational and engineering challenges at scale.
How much Does it Cost to Develop Pinterest-like App?
The cost to create a Pinterest clone application can be estimated upon the study of the factors that would go into it. While the design is one of those, it is not the only one. There are a number of things that come into play in the cost of app development range.
Here are some other prime factors that affect the cost of Pinterest like application development.
Platform Choice
When developing an app like Pinterest, you should keep in mind that the cost of developing the app for iPhone differs from the Android platform. However, there is not much difference. If you are a startup with a minimal budget, better opt for one platform in the initial stages; later on, you can shift to multiple platforms.
However, it’s best to get an MVP developed and validated first before going live on multiple platforms. Once you have tested your product in the market, you can decide which platform is best for your product. In case you still cannot decide between iOS and Android platforms, you can take help from an iPhone application development company or Android app development company.
We also give them a third choice – Cross–Platform app development, specifically React native app development. There are a number of reasons that validate why React native can be the best decision for startups.
Frontend and Backend Development
Developing the frontend and backend of the application takes up the majority of the social media app developers’ time, along with adding on to the cost of Pinterest-like app development. While the efforts required to do frontend development are still less compared to the backend, it is not unimportant.
Now when we talk about backend development, there are two options available to businesses – Monolithic and Microservices, with the latter being more expensive than the former.
App Complexity
There are a number of elements that define app complexity – features set, the tech stack that backs it, the design elements, etc. It is the app complexity that differentiates a $10,000 app from a $100,000 mobile app.
Pinterest in itself is a mid to high–complexity app. But it’d depend on your business choice whether you want to make your app complex or not.
The Team Size
Another factor that greatly affects Pinterest-like app development cost is the team size. Usually, the team composition for an app like Pinterest looks like this –
- Project Manager
- Team Lead
- Back-end Developers
- Front-end Developers
- QA
- UI & UX Designers
Location of the Agency
The cost of developing Pinterest like app also depends greatly on where the development agency is located. An agency based out of the USA or Australia will charge a lot more than agencies based out of Eastern nations like India.
The difference in the average hourly cost can go up to over $40 – $50 per hour.
This massive difference in the development cost of Pinterest clone app that you are bound to see is what will make it a lot more beneficial to outsource the app development process.
In order to build a site like a Pinterest clone, you need to consider the above mention factors. Pinterest-like app today is very popular; therefore, investing in them will be financially beneficial. Creating a social media app like Pinterest would majorly benefit any app owner to reach greater business heights.
Although there is no accurate cost estimate to create a Pinterest clone app the implementation of features and functionalities and other technology stacks will mainly give you a complete estimate of your social media app development like Pinterest.
However, if you want to look at the detailed figure, then you have to multiply the number of hours by the rate per hour, after which you can get the real cost. Also, you will need to consider web design services and app testing services. In the US, custom social media app development like Pinterest will cost around $58,000 to $80,000.
Development Approach for Building an App like Pinterest
Pinterest, as an app, is designed for saving and sharing new ideas. With proper implementation of features, your Pinterest-like app can be a huge success. Here is the complete development approach for building an app like Pinterest:
Gathering Requirements
This step mainly includes the requirement gathering process, where you need to deeply analyze the ideas and how these ideas can actually be translated into various functionalities. Check the complete feasibility of your app idea getting translated into functionality. The planning phase would cost around $600, depending upon the availability and usability of tools.
UI/UX Design
The next step is to build a user interface design. It takes quite a significant amount of money to develop and build a user-friendly app design. An app with a strong interactive design and other navigational features involves more complexities. Therefore, the type of design features you choose for your app like Pinterest, the cost will be determined based on that.
Agile Development
Currently, the top app development companies prefer agile development. The reason behind this is that the agile development process is quick. Unlike traditional app development methods, it does not do app testing at the end of the development phase. In fact, it mainly does the testing at every single module, which helps in the reduction of bug encounters in the initial stage.
Testing and Launching Process
The user test scenarios and test codes are mainly written down by the QA team. The testers perform manual or automated testing to check the functionality of the app. Any kind of bugs or glitches gets removed by the development team, after which they go for the product’s MVP with the least features. This is also known as the beta version of your app. In any case, if bugs are reported, your Pinterest-like app will be updated accordingly.
Monetization Strategies of Pinterest like App
Pinterest, mainly earns its money through advertising, more specifically, promoted pins. These promoted pins are advertisements that appear similar to user-generated posts.
If you are following the Pinterest route, the answer to how much money you can earn will also majorly revolve around advertisements. Check out a few more monetization strategies for developing a site like Pinterest:
1. Subscription Model
The subscription model offers users access to additional Pinterest-like app features or unique content by paying a certain amount of fee.
2. Referral Programs
Attaching referral programs to a few images on your site can bring you income every time your users become leaders. You can attach a few links that will take your users to the photographer’s or product’s portfolio, travel agency website, auctions, and lots more.
3. Freemium Model
With the freemium version, your users can freely avail functionalities of an app like Pinterest. But to lift all the restrictions, they need to pay a certain amount and unlock the unique set of features.
Final Note
We hope this blog was helpful in answering some of the most asked questions like ‘what is Pinterest and how does it work,’ ‘how do I create a Pinterest app,’ and ‘how much does an app like Pinterest cost.’ If you’re also planning to build an app like Pinterest, you need to think out of the box to make the app user-friendly and fun, and exciting for users. Pinterest came up with a new concept, giving all these aspects importance, and therefore gained recognition.
In case you are looking for social media app development, and want to create similar apps like Pinterest, you can contact our experts. Our development team will guide you through the whole process and help you build an app like Pinterest with exceptional features and functionalities.
FAQs
Q. How do I develop an app like Pinterest?
A. If you want to know how to make an app like Pinterest, it’s advisable to work with an experienced app development company. They will guide you through the whole process while getting a better end result. However, here is the basic process of on-demand social media app development like Pinterest:
- Roadmapping
- App scoping & analysis
- Design & development
- Deployment & warranty period
- Post-launch maintenance
Q. How can we leverage the promotion of apps like Pinterest?
A. Here are a few tips for promoting your Pinterest clone:
- Promoted app pins
- Pinterest ads
- Use SEO for Pinterest
- Create a separate board for your app
- Post appealing images and videos
Q. Does Pinterest have an API?
A. Yes. Pinterest offers an API. It allows social media app developers to offer Pinterest’s Pin feature inside their applications.
Q. What are the alternatives to the Pinterest app?
A. There are a number of applications that have emerged as Pinterest’s competition. The top three of them are – We Heart It, Jux, and Gentlemint.
Q. How do you estimate the Pinterest app development cost?
A. Here are a few factors that will help you determine or estimate the complete Pinterest app development cost:
- The choice of platform
- Technology stack
- UI/UX design
- Complexity of features
- Development team’s size
- Development team’s location