A senior mobile pod operating inside your repo, your app store accounts, and your release process — quoted as throughput, not as hours, and behind your name from kickoff to v1.0 ship.
Mobile pod, predictable spine
These are the conversations agency owners describe when an app brief is in front of them and the in-house team has shipped two web projects but never a v1.0 to the App Store.
The brief is real, the design is locked, and the team has never run the App Store submission gauntlet. We take the build end-to-end — code, signing, provisioning, store metadata, beta cohort — without the founder learning Xcode at 11pm.
Decisions on Swift, Kotlin, or React Native cost six to twelve months of regret if they go the wrong way. We've shipped enough of all three to make the call cleanly — and write the trade-offs down so your team and your client can refer back to them.
Builds work locally but break in CI; signing certs expire; submissions get rejected for reasons nobody documented. We come in, fix the pipeline inside your tooling, and leave you with a release process the team can run without holding their breath.
Push notifications, offline state, deep links, biometric auth — the things that separate a credible app from a WebView. We design the surface around the device's strengths, not around what's easy to port from the web.
The shape below is the default for an Invisible Delivery Team SOW with App Development as the lead capability. Capability Expansion adds a capability lead on top when mobile is being stood up as a new service line.
Working session with your delivery lead and product owner. We pressure-test the brief, agree platform strategy (native iOS, native Android, React Native, or all three), and inventory the integration surface. NDA and SOW signed under Salt Technologies, Inc.
Repo, Fastlane lanes, signing certificates, provisioning profiles, and TestFlight / Play internal-track pipelines stood up inside your or the client's developer accounts. Architecture readout your team and your client can refer back to.
Feature-by-feature delivery with a TestFlight or internal-track build at the end of every week. Weekly working review with named owners on both sides. Crash analytics, release notes, and beta-cohort feedback tracked from build one.
Store metadata, screenshots, privacy disclosures, and review-board readiness — handled inside the same pod, not handed off. Post-launch support transitions cleanly into a Support & Maintenance retainer for OS upgrades, dependency drift, and v1.x feature work.
App Development is a long-arc capability — you don't ship a credible v1.0 in a week. The two shapes below are the engagements where mobile work actually lands.
App pod inside your SOW
Active client work that has been sold and now needs end-to-end mobile throughput inside your shared channel — long-arc, structured, named delivery owner.
Capability lead + delivery support
Standing App Development up as a defensible new service line on your rate card — capability lead, pricing template, monthly retainer with quarterly review.
Starting rate for a single-capability mobile pod. Multi-platform engagements (iOS + Android + React Native) and pods that mix capabilities are quoted at the highest applicable rate. Final SOW is scoped against the brief.
We work inside the platforms your team and your client run on — no parallel infrastructure, no "we'll just rewrite it our way" surprise.
App Development shows up most often as a Capability Expansion play — agencies adding mobile to a rate card that already has web. These three profiles describe the partnerships where it lands.
Boutique design and product studios shipping mobile companions to the web work they already deliver — without standing up a permanent mobile team.
HubSpot partners shipping mobile surfaces for client portals, AI workflows, and field-team tools — where the standard stack ends and a real native build begins.
Shopify partners adding native and cross-platform shopping app surfaces, loyalty companions, and merchant tools — beyond the standard storefront frame.
Every App Development engagement runs on the same operating spine that protects long-arc retainers and Dedicated Partner Pods — contracted through Salt Technologies, Inc.
We don't email your client, join their calls, or appear in the proposal — unless you explicitly white-list a named engineer in the SOW.
We work in your GitHub, your App Store Connect and Play Console accounts, and your Slack or Teams workspace under aliases that fit your team's naming.
Mutual non-solicitation written into every MSA, with a defined window after the engagement ends. Same clause across every track.
MSA, NDA, and engagement SOW are issued by Salt — the Delaware C-Corp behind AgencyRelay.
The same operating spine sits underneath every AgencyRelay capability. Read the no-poach and confidentiality page for the contractual instruments behind these defaults.
Most agency owners deciding between an app pod, a freelance specialist, or building mobile in-house weigh the same trade-offs. These pages address them head-on.
When an app pod is cheaper, faster, and lower-risk than the next senior mobile hire — and when staffing up is the right call.
The most common shape for adding App Development to your rate card — capability lead, pricing template, quarterly review on whether the new line earns its place.
The most common upstream pairing — product designers shaping the mobile flows the app pod builds against.
Direct answers to the questions that come up on almost every App Development scoping call.
Decision sits on three axes: animation and platform-feature density (favours native), team continuity and shared business logic across platforms (favours React Native), and time-to-first-build inside a fixed window (often favours React Native). We make the call inside the brief & platform discovery step, write the trade-offs down, and the SOW reflects the choice. We don't have a default — we have an opinion per brief.
Senior. Every App Development engagement is staffed with mobile engineers who have shipped real apps to the App Store and Play Store inside agencies and product companies — not a junior pool with a senior badge in the project channel. If continuity is ever at risk on a long-arc engagement, we tell you before the next sprint review.
By default the client's. We work inside their App Store Connect and Play Console under named seats that fit your delivery model. Where you (the agency) own the account on behalf of the client, we operate inside yours. Either way, the developer-account ownership is documented in the SOW so there's no ambiguity at submission time.
Yes. Store metadata, screenshots, privacy nutrition labels, data-safety form, age ratings, and review-board readiness are inside scope. We've shipped enough rejections in our previous lives to recognise most of them in the diff before the submission button gets pressed.
App Development isn't a one-week capability — a credible v1.0 typically needs at least a 6–8 week pod inside an Invisible Delivery Team SOW. For shorter mobile work (a tightly scoped feature, a release-pipeline rescue, a TestFlight cohort), we'll route the brief to an Overflow Pods burst if it fits cleanly.
Yes. App pods commonly extend into backend work — auth, push, sync, and the API surface the app talks to. That's quoted at the highest applicable capability rate (typically the App Development rate), not as a separate engagement.
The starting weekly rate for a single-platform mobile pod is $2,800 per week. Multi-platform engagements (iOS + Android + React Native) and pods that mix capabilities (App Development + UI/UX, App Development + Backend) are quoted at the highest applicable rate. Final SOW is scoped against the brief; the rate is the floor, not a ceiling.
Most apps graduate cleanly into a Support & Maintenance retainer post-launch — OS upgrades, dependency drift, crash triage, and v1.x feature work inside a monthly envelope. Either the same pod or a smaller maintenance crew carries it on the same MSA, no second sales cycle.
Yes. IP ownership and assignment on delivered code is written into the MSA — the work belongs to your agency (and onwards to your client per your own client contract) on payment of the relevant invoice. Apple Developer and Google Play account access transfers per the SOW. The Salt Technologies templates are counsel-reviewed and shared before signing.
Native iOS, native Android, React Native, or all three. Either way, the conversation starts with the work — not with a deck.
