![How to Make an App Like Instagram in 2024 [Complete Guide]](data:image/svg+xml;nitro-empty-id=ODAxOjIxMQ==-1;base64,PHN2ZyB2aWV3Qm94PSIwIDAgODI1IDQyNSIgd2lkdGg9IjgyNSIgaGVpZ2h0PSI0MjUiIHhtbG5zPSJodHRwOi8vd3d3LnczLm9yZy8yMDAwL3N2ZyI+PC9zdmc+)
Collecting memories over the years by clicking pictures has become essential to our everyday life. As everyone knows, photography is essential in modern society, and people greatly relish this cult. Clicking photos and sharing with friends is now easy because of social networking platforms. With the help of these kinds of applications, everyone can now upload good and memorable photos to their friends and family by connecting on the platform. As you know, the most popular platform is “Instagram” in this scenario. In this blog, we will discuss how to create an app like Instagram.
No wonder Mike Krieger and Kevin Systrom decided to take advantage of this back in 2010 by introducing Instagram. Since its launch, people around the globe have widely embraced the service, and it is constantly gaining prominence, offering new features, and reaching unimaginable heights. Currently, Instagram is an indisputable leader as it comes to a picture-sharing platform known all across the world. The official data provided by this service sounds incredible.
As of January 2022, Instagram was the 4th most popular social media platform in the world. According to Statista in 2021, there were around 1.21 billion monthly Instagram active users (MAU), comprising over 28% of the world’s internet users. It has been forecasted that this number will reach 1.44 billion by 2025, and the Instagram community will make up 31.2% of global internet users. Developing an app like Instagram can help you tap into this huge potential user base and divert the traffic to your app.
If you also want to create an app like Instagram, this blog will discuss the complete Instagram clone app development process, including cost and features.
What Makes Instagram So Popular Among Its Users?
What makes Instagram a unique and likable photo-sharing app among its users is that it never stopped evolving. This is one fact common with successful digital products. Besides multiple new features that were seen on Instagram over the last few years, the platform also underwent an array of design changes that were both minor & major. No one can deny the significance of user experience in driving new users and retaining the existing ones. These days, UI/UX design is another component that helps stay competitive by providing a good experience to app users. Looking at apps like Instagram, you can see that their technically complex features are enfolded into this easy-to-use covering owing to their harmony with design.
Thus, all the features that a photography app like Instagram is packed with must also be enfolded into an appealing and aesthetic design to improve the UX. Now, if you are looking to create a mobile app like Instagram, then you must be prepared to invest not just in the technical side of your product but also in the design. However, design is certainly not the sole thing that has improved Instagram over the years.
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Instagram Users Worldwide Stats
When it comes to developing an app like Instagram, the developers are committed to integrating all the exceptional features that make Instagram popular. These features, unique to any photo-sharing application, were a key factor in Instagram’s success. Over the years, our developers have consistently used cutting-edge technology to deliver innovative solutions.
Stories Highlights:
This is a section where users import or highlight their ongoing and past stories so they can be seen by followers regularly.
Reels:
This is the most wanted and attractive feature of Instagram because, with this, you can share and scroll short videos and also make engaging reel content about your hobbies, services, products, and more.
Shoppable Posts:
This feature allows business accounts to mark their services and goods on photos or videos. This feature can help you easily attract a large number of customers, which will be beneficial to your business.
Explore Page:
These are some of the innovative and unique features that Instagram introduced to the market. Over time, the Instagram app development team has experimented and built an application that stands ahead of its time and offers users an engaging and interesting experience.
Meta AI:
With this feature, everyone can search for anything on Instagram now. This advanced AI assistance empowers people to get things done, stay informed, and explore anything creatively.
If you want to enter the market with something similar or advanced, hire a social media app development team to help you generate great profits from your application.
Instagram Clone App Development
To create an app like Instagram you will need to hire a top mobile app development company. Meanwhile, this is just a sneak peek of the full list of features introduced during this period. However, this does make it pretty clear how important constant development is if you are keen on creating a mobile app like Instagram that is capable of competing with the other big players in the market. With this trend, you can build your position in this market easily. So, if you want to build an app like Instagram, then don’t think too much and talk with the experts in this field.
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Are You Looking to Develop an App Like Instagram?
While developing a photo-sharing mobile app, one must keep a particular factor in mind: your app must provide attractive and unique features to stand out from the crowd and find a place for itself in the overcrowded app market. Simply focus on the uniqueness of your mobile app and the kind of opportunities it is bringing to the users.
This will be your best bet to develop something extraordinary and worthy. Further, we will discuss in detail how to create an app like Instagram with engaging features that can make your app more reliable.
What Features Are Important For Creating an App Like Instagram?
Any mobile application establishes its place in the market owing to its features. In the case of Instagram, the feature list is still being updated, which gives users something new to explore every day. If you want to create an app like Instagram, then it is important that you first understand what the store has to offer its users. Here, the feature panel is divided into two categories:
Features of the User Panel:
- Login
- Sign Up
- Home Screen
- Live Stories
- Search Media
- View Profile (Other User)
- Post Media (Pictures/Videos)
- Direct messages
- Notifications/Favorites:
- My Profile
- Settings
- Misc
- Report (Offensive Content or User)
- Block (Unwanted Users)
Features of the Admin Panel:
- Login
- Dashboard
- User Manager
- Report manager
- Content Manager
These are the basic essential features that your Instagram clone app development team would take care of. In addition, there are a lot more interesting and engaging features that set the application far ahead of the other giants in the market.
Advanced Features of Mobile Apps Like Instagram
As of now, every mobile app development team is quite versed in how to build an app like Instagram. Developers are professional and have years of experience, so they have delivered several projects with similar demands and integrated some really interesting and advanced features in the applications to make them unique and one-of-a-kind in the market.
Authorization with email & social media accounts:
You must enable your app users to sign up/log into your app via various methods, including mobile phone, email ID, and social networking accounts like Google and Facebook. This way, users can log in to the app according to their preferences.
Activity Log:
You can divide this feature into your activity and your followers’ activities. Here, users can also receive suggestions on whom to follow and keep track of their recent actions within the app. This feature will enable your app users to check the recent activities they performed on your app, like comments on pictures, following/unfollowing users, and checking other users. Posts, and a lot more. The follower’s activity feature must show complete information about what the app followers are doing and also their exact time of activity.
Stories:
As very much evident on Facebook, WhatsApp app & Instagram, Stories have turned out to be a majorly engaging way for content generation by users. As a story gets published by a user, the app must send a push notification to fellow users. Thus, story features can be best used to enhance user engagement. You can further make the story feature unique by allowing the users control over the amount of time they want the story to be displayed. Like, by default, the duration of the story can be 24 hours. However, you can allow the users to set the duration of their story display just as they desire.
These highlights have improved the client inundation and taken the application to a higher degree of diversion:
Boomerang
– makes 1.5 seconds circling recordings.
Superzoom
– records a 3-second clasp that zooms incredibly close to what the camera is pointed at.
Rewind recordings
– make a rewind video out of the conventional film.
Emoticon slider
– this sticker can be added to a story and allows clients to ask their crowd inquiries. Individuals respond by sliding an emoticon.
Question stickers
– These are intuitive stickers to impart to the crowd and let them ask you questions.
Nametag
– It is an adaptable personality card that permits you to discover individuals on Instagram when they are checked.
Stories feature
– A part where users can import their continuous and past stories so others can see them consistently.
Instagram Marketing Posts
– business records could now stamp their merchandise on photographs.
Search Page
– it was reconsidered and overhauled.
Hashtags and profile interfaces in bio
– Instagram permits individuals to incorporate hashtags (#) and profile joins (@) in their profile, which fills in as live connections that lead to a hashtag page or a profile connect.
When it comes to developing an app like Instagram, our experts ensure there is enough scope for expansion and future improvement in the delivered solution.
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GPS Integration:
Certainly, your users enjoy traveling to places, and often, they want their social media followers to know where they have visited. Thus, GPS integration is a must for your photo-sharing mobile app. This feature is quite dynamic and allows users to automatically fetch the location, or they may also choose to add the location manually when there is poor connectivity.
Social Media Integration:
So, your user posted a picture on your platform. They may want to post this same picture on their other social media platforms. Thus, the synchronizing feature can be really helpful here, as it will allow the users to share the image on other accounts as well. Not only this, but this is also a great means to promote your app; after all, every new platform requires promotion, and nothing can be better than Facebook in this aspect. So, it is vital that, if not others, you at least provide a Facebook integration.
This will enable your users to share their pictures on your photo-sharing app and from there to other social media accounts with a single tap. This way, you will not only build customer experience but also promote your app by leveraging user-generated content on prominent social networking platforms. Can there be a better win-win marketing gimmick?
Cross-platform Compatibility:
As is the case with Instagram, it is a dedicated photo-sharing app that doesn’t run all its features on many desktops and operating systems. Thus, it would be greatly beneficial to develop a fully functional web app and also a mobile app. This way, your smartphone camera will be important, but you can also code the app in a manner that will enable it to access the webcam as well as click a photograph. Meanwhile, it can be used for purposes other than posting & sharing pictures, as you can create this kind of app to help the user perform all actions using a web app, such as an image, commenting on that, or even sharing it with a group, etc.
Direct Messaging & Reacting Within Stories:
This is one exciting feature that users just love. It is much like speaking to the public, but you get personal replies. Here, the app user can ask his/her followers a question or may ask their suggestions, create polls, and continue the engagement within the platform via a short video, image, or plain text.
Filters for Picture Editing:
This feature will enable your app users to edit pictures using various filters and editing tools, such as rotate, color combination, straighten, crop, and perspective correction. Users can apply filters and upload pictures/videos on the app.
User Profile:
Your users will be able to maintain their entire profile, like detailed descriptions, such as name & email, following, followers, and an entire number of uploaded pictures/videos, & tagged pictures.
Search:
This feature will enable your users to search for another app user, including friends, family, relatives, or anyone, simply using their username or name. To initiate a search, users need to
click on the search feature and enter the user name.
Upload Pictures/Videos:
Here, users can upload photos and videos directly from the library or using their smartphone’s camera. Following these simple steps will enable your users to upload many photos and videos.
Push Notification:
This feature will allow your users to get real-time notifications that everyone has liked or commented on their photos/videos, sent friend requests, mentioned them in a comment or story, or maybe engaged in an activity related to them.
So, if you want an Instagram clone app, you are in the right place. We help you build a feature-laden application that will allow you to earn the most profits in no time.
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How to Create an App Like Instagram With Easy Steps
One has to follow the entire procedure before one begins with the app creation. Below, we have mentioned a few steps that need to be taken while creating such an app. They are:
Analyze Clients Requirements:
When you have successfully discovered a photo-sharing mobile app development company and begin the development process, you will first be contacted by a sales representative who will try to understand your expectations and requirements for the project and analyze your end goal, depending on the kind of photo-sharing mobile app you are keen to get developed.
Wireframing:
The next step is preparing the wireframes of your mobile app. Here, the business analyst will create a wireframe of each screen of the photo-sharing app and show you all the screens, features, and functionalities.
Designing:
The UX designer in the app development team is assigned the task of coordinating the interaction between the design elements. The whole UI designer is responsible for designing the look and feel of the app through graphics, perfect color combinations, and iconography.
Development:
It is at this stage that the app development team will begin the development of an Instagram clone app with the necessary features and specifications.
Testing:
This is when the app will be tested. The main aim behind testing is to ensure that your Instagram-like mobile app is bug-free and properly works on devices. The stakeholders are also involved in the final app approval.
Deployment:
This is when the photo and video-sharing apps will be finally deployed to your server and then released on the app stores so that users can install them and start using them.
If you want to develop an app like TikTok, then contact us.
Which Monetization Models are involved in Developing an App Like Instagram?
Well, in the case of Instagram, it makes money by monetizing the user’s attention span. The more attention span, the higher the revenue. Now, the possible revenue streams for your photo-sharing mobile app can be:
- Sponsored Posts
- Sponsored Ads
- Social Commerce
- Carousel Ads
- Video Ads
Everything regarding Instagram app development has been almost covered, so now you must wonder about the cost of creating such an app. Let’s find out next.
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Cost to Create a Photo-Sharing Mobile App Like Instagram
Well, to begin with, you need to focus on the return on investment. Now, to determine the expected return, you must first determine the required investment. So, here we have mentioned a few factors affecting the cost of developing a photo-sharing app like Instagram:
| Component | Description | Estimated Cost Range (USD) |
| App Design | UI/UX design, wireframes, and prototypes | $10,000 – $50,000 |
| Frontend Development | Development of the user interface for iOS and Android | $40,000 – $150,000 |
| Backend Development | Server-side development, database setup, API integration | $50,000 – $200,000 |
| Social Networking Features | User profiles, friend connections, feed, likes, comments | $20,000 – $70,000 |
| Photo/Video Sharing | Media upload, editing, filters, and storage | $30,000 – $100,000 |
| Messaging System | Direct messaging, notifications, chat functionality | $20,000 – $50,000 |
| Search Functionality | Search bar, hashtags, user and content search | $10,000 – $30,000 |
| AI Features | Content recommendations, facial recognition, content moderation | $30,000 – $100,000 |
| AR Filters | Augmented Reality filters for photos and videos | $20,000 – $80,000 |
| Security & Compliance | Data encryption, user privacy settings, GDPR compliance | $15,000 – $50,000 |
| Testing & QA | Quality assurance, bug fixing, user testing | $10,000 – $30,000 |
| Deployment | App store submission, cloud hosting setup | $5,000 – $15,000 |
| Maintenance & Updates | Ongoing support, feature updates, server maintenance | $20,000 – $50,000 annually |
Total Estimated Cost: $250,000 – $975,000 (Depending on the complexity and feature set)
This table provides you with an estimation, and actual costs may vary based on factors like location, developer expertise, and specific project requirements.
Features:
Here, you have a choice between three possibilities for developing such an app. You may choose the most viable features, advanced features, or a perfect blend of both basic and advanced features.
Operating System:
Now developing an iOS app will certainly be expensive in comparison to the Android app. However, ultimately it depends on your target audience and their choice of device to choose the operating system. There is a chance that your target audience will be having an equal ratio and you may need to launch a mobile app for both platforms.
Technology:
If you code your app in Kotlin, it will be costlier, however trendy. So, decide as per your mobile app development requirements. In the same way, you need to make a smarter choice between native & hybrid app development. If you’re not technically sound, you may choose to seek assistance from the app developers.
Resources:
If you do not have a team of hard-core developers and are planning on outsourcing them, then you must be careful while making the selection. You may choose to look for case studies & their experience. Next, compare the app development cost and then decide. Now, different development companies may have different variables. Hence, there will be ambiguity over the cost of making an Instagram-like app.
So, the exact figure is difficult to determine, but one can have a rough idea. When considering the most basic app version with MVP features and a clean UX/UI design, the expected price for the Instagram app development will certainly go up to $6,500. However, here, a little support & maintenance will be needed.
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How to Promote & Grow a Social Media Application?
Interesting question, promoting and growing your newly launched application is quite challenging. But everyone knows that nothing is impossible. Some ways will help you to promote and grow your social media application. The following are some methods:
Situational Marketing
Search for odd news, add an app link to it, and then distribute it across other social networking platforms. You’re so relevant now! For example, when Instagram servers crash, you should open X and write a post about all the amazing features your app has that they don’t. People will probably find your message by accident when they are looking for information about servers shutting down.
Building Communities
You should fascinate consumers with your application so they will recommend it to their friends and family and connect. Be considerate of your audience, speak appropriately, and make a good impression on your clients. Build a social media presence for your brand and use your app to facilitate the connection of like-minded individuals.
Creators’ Program
To create original content on your social media apps, collaborate with creators who already have a following on other platforms. They will provide their fans with links to your platform. If all goes according to plan, their audience might progressively move to your app to access new social interactions.
Content Branding
Add a logo to the content that consumers can share outside of the app. This increases the likelihood that their followers will install the program as they will see its name. For example, the middle of a Snapchat QR code displays the company’s logo.
Ads
Instagram advertisements, for instance, might be used to advertise a photo-sharing program. To attract the target audiences to download the new app, use brief films showcasing your app’s best features.
Nutshell
Hopefully, you are satisfied with this detailed guide because we covered all aspects of developing an app like Instagram. In this period of social networking, Instagram is one of the most popular and favorable applications. This will be greatly beneficial for every business because, with the help of these kinds of social platforms, you can showcase your products and services directly to your target audience and users.
After all, nowadays, people just love using social media platforms, and if you succeed in providing them with extra features and benefits, you will get the chance to lead the race of social networking. All right, now you may decide to make an app like Instagram, right? You just need to get in touch with the best app development company to build applications like Instagram.
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