Rideshare App Development: Features, & Cost to Develop a Rideshare App

Rideshare apps have gained a notable amount of growth and popularity among people during the most recent years. The luxury of riding in a vehicle of your own choice is truly warming for many of us. Youngsters and aged people who prefer cost-effective public transport now experience the same with more luxury and certainty. As the future of online ride-hailing app development is at its peak, rideshare apps are going to become the most favourable way of travel. 

One can easily book a cab rideshare cab anytime using their smartphone with just a few taps. The rideshare app comes with a plethora of unmatched features with only one motive to provide people with an economical ride. 

With the fact that ride-sharing and the carpooling app is still a lucrative marketplace, you can also make cash out of this by creating a unique rideshare booking app. Here in this blog post, we will serve you with plenty of information such as features of the rideshare app, technology stack and the cost of rideshare app development. 

What is a Rideshare App?

As the name predicts, the rideshare or carpooling app works on the concept of sharing a ride with another passenger who is heading in the same direction as you. The idea of ridesharing is to split the fare between the passengers to make the ride more pocket friendly. 

In the old days, rideshare was a term that was used by car drivers who give a lift to a passenger heading in the same direction in exchange for an agreed amount. But, today due to technological advancement, online taxi booking companies like Ola, Uber, Lyft and so many others have begun to offer rideshare as their separate service, in which a driver offers transportation services to more than one passenger at the same time. 

How a Rideshare App Works?

Today, most rideshare service providers have their mobile app to allow riders to connect with their nearby drivers. The working mechanism of the rideshare app is as follows. 

1. Request: The process starts with a request made by the user and then this request is sent to the nearby driver. 
2. Finding Driver: The driver receives the ride request then the driver can accept or deny the passenger’s ride request. 
3. Rideshare: Now the passenger can opt to share the ride with another passenger who is heading in the same direction. 
4. Payment: At the end of the trip, the passenger needs to make payment. The passenger can either choose cash or cashless payment which seems comfortable to them. 

What are the Notable Features to Include in Rideshare App Development?

To embark with the right technology and approach is essential to capture the attention of people. The concept of rideshare app development has become a common subject at present. It is a must to include some unique and advanced features with your rideshare app to make it superior in the market.

The following are some essential features that you must include in your rideshare app. 

Customer App Features

Registration: A rideshare app needs to equip an encrypted environment to confident the users to securely share their basic information with you. 

Finding a Ride: This feature aids the customer’s to find a suitable ride option for them between a private and shared cab. If a customer picks the shared cab option, then he or she will be able to see the information of the co-passenger with whom they are going to share the ride. 

Real-Time Driver Location: This feature helps the passenger to get real-time notification of the driver’s location and preferred route of the driver to reach the destination.

Payment System: There should be an efficient payment system to allow the customers to register their debit/credit card to make a cashless payment. 

Fare Estimation: This feature helps the rider to see the estimated fare that needs to be paid to the driver at the end of the ride. 

>>>Read More: What are the Smart Features of Ride Sharing Apps ?<<<

Ride Cancellation: A flexible option should be provided to the customer’s to cancel by following certain guidelines and rules. Cancellation charges can be added if customers cancel the ride after an allowed time frame. 

Bad Behaviour Reporting System: A customer will feel more satisfied and confident when he has the option to report the bad behaviour of the driver. This will build trust and motivate the customer to keep using your application even after the bad experience. 

Customer Support System: The support system needs to be there to allow the customer to seek out the solutions for their problem in minimal time without facing any issue. 

Push Notification: This feature serves the customer with information such as ride status, estimated time of arrival, car information, drive information and so on. 

Review & Rating: This feature allows the passenger to rate the carpooling app depending on their ride experience. 

Driver App Features

Registration: This allows the driver to register themselves on the application to begin offering their services. 

Accept/Deny Ride Request: The driver can accept or deny the ride request whenever they need it. 

Rider’s Trip Information: The driver needs to have full information about the time spent on the ride and the fare that needs to be collected. This will help the driver accept or deny the request of the rider. 

Navigation System: Having an efficient navigation system is important to ease the driver’s efforts to find passenger’s pick up and drop off location. 

Contact Passenger: The driver can contact the passenger directly to discuss ride-related things. 

Receiving Payments; The driver can receive the payment either in cash or a cashless way depending on the choice of riders. 

Admin App Features

Driver Management: With this feature, the admin can screen or approve the new driver’s. 

Vehicle Management: The admin can check and screen the vehicle to see if the vehicle is well maintained and following the company’s vehicle norm policy. 

Payment Management: This feature allows the admin to check the commission rate of drivers and the total number of earnings. 

Rating & Review Management: This helps the admin to see the track the performance of the rideshare app and helps them to determine the necessary actions to improve the app’s performance. 

Complaint Management: This aids the customer to find out the problem and helps them to address them to build customer retention and loyalty. 

Advance Features

These were some of the most basic features of the rideshare app. You also need to incorporate some advanced features with your carpooling app to make it more attractive and efficient to use for ridesharing customers. 

SOS Button: This feature will go a long way to build a significant amount of trust and security not only for riders but also for the drivers. 

>>>Read More : Taxi Market- Growth, Trends, Challenges, & Forecast- 2021<<<

Discount for Loyal Customers: Offering attractive discount and bonus offers will increase the customer’s retention rate and attract potential customers to use your rideshare app. 

Schedule Ride in Advance: Having the functionality to schedule a ride in advance will make it more convenient for regular users to meet their transportation needs. 

Multilingual Support: This feature will make it even more convenient for a wider range of customers to use your rideshare app. 

Save Favourite Location: This feature will help the riders to save their most frequent location, so they need not type location manually each time they make a booking on your rideshare app. 

Add Tip to Driver: To encourage drivers to do good work and increase more money, you can add tips for them. 

How to Create a Successful Rideshare App?

The popularity of the rideshare app followed by the number of rideshare apps available in the market. Indeed, you need to take care of a few things before creating your rideshare app. Here are some of the things that you need to know. 

Do Some Research

There are hundreds of ridesharing apps available in the market and your rideshare app must have its own identity to stand up in the market. When developing your rideshare app, it is a must to make sound business strategies. The business model should be well versed to align with the customer’s expectations along with the stakeholder’s expectations. Among several other factors, you also need to pay attention to the customer segment, cost structure, revenue stream and so on. 

Make Features List

Features are what makes a rideshare app more efficient and attractive. Overloading the app with unnecessary features might have the opposite effect on the performance of your app. Hence, it is important to incorporate the optimal number of features into your application.

Prototype and UI/UX Design

It is important to have an attractive yet easy to navigate user interface to keep the user’s engaged with your rideshare app. But before that, you need to develop the prototype of your app screen that displays the design of the driver, rider and the admin panel of your application. This might seem a time-consuming process but it will act as the foundation of your rideshare app development in a later stage. 

Development

This is the stage where a team of developers start working on your application. The developers’ team work on setting up the app server, web server and database for your rideshare app to make your application work. This stage will go a long way to determine the functional core of the app. 

How Much Does it Cost to Develop a Rideshare App?

The cost of rideshare app development mainly depends on factors such as app features, UI/UX design, rideshare app development company and location. Approximately, the time needed to develop a rideshare app would be around 120 to 150 hours. For rough, the average cost of developing rideshare incorporating the aforementioned features would be somewhere around $110,000 to $125,000. However, the development scope of every project is different and so is the price. 

>>>Read More: Top 10 Ride-Hailing Apps with their Estimated Cost in 2021<<<

Where to Create Your Rideshare App?

In the end, you must have a specific game idea to enhance your game performance while creating a rideshare booking app. Your dream will turn into reality with the aid of the right rideshare app development company. 

BR Softech is among the world’s most recognized rideshare app providers. We provide a flexible development model to our clients to cater to all their requirements. Contact us today to get a quote for your rideshare app development idea.