Custom app vs white-label for taxi companies

As a taxi company owner, deciding between a custom-built taxi app and a white-label solution can be tricky.

Custom-made taxi apps often offer complete control over the app development, aligning precisely with your brand. Conversely, white-label solutions provide cost-effective, pre-built options, enabling swift market entry with minimal development effort from your side. Besides, ready-to-use white-label taxi apps save companies a lot of time and money. 

Here’s a no-nonsense comparison of both approaches and their pros and cons and some use cases.

Must-need features for a taxi app

Your choice for taxi software always starts with an overview of the technical features your taxi business needs to thrive. Some of these features are:

• real-time order tracking,
• secure payment processing and a variety of payment system integrations,
• driver/passenger communication tools,
• data processing capacity for working with large amounts of orders,
• data storage safety,
• smart order queue algorithms,
• automated driver billing,
• a well-developed admin panel with business analytics,
• functional dispatch.

If a custom app development company has solid experience building taxi apps, they probably already know what features are a must. They can further help your business identify the custom needs.

Research on the custom taxi app development market shows two common problems:

• Such companies often push software solutions already written for another client to get more margin, write less new code, and do less testing.
• Outsourcing custom app development companies often lack experience in the taxi industry. If your own team doesn’t have enough experience with high-load order management systems and specific features yet, there’s a chance the final solution will not satisfy the market demand.

This way, custom app development is a perfect fit if your taxi company needs to test specific features not provided in ready-to-use software. With a development team specialized in taxi app development, you can verify your market proposition.

However, there’s more than the features to consider when picking a perfect taxi app.

Custom taxi software development

Custom development of taxi apps begins with a thorough analysis of the technical features required for a platform to fit your business like a glove.

Control over the custom development process allows your taxi company to dictate every aspect of the app’s design, functionality, and user experience, ensuring complete alignment with your business goals and branding. Needless to say, the process only goes smoothly if the development team you hire is experienced in building ride-hailing or taxi apps.

While custom development offers unparalleled control, it often requires more time and resources, potentially delaying market entry and increasing upfront costs compared to white-label solutions. Specific costs for developing an Uber or Lyft, or Bolt-like app taxi software can be anywhere between $50,000 to $150,000 depending on the market, the number of features, and the level of the development team’s experience.

Pros and cons of custom taxi app development

Custom taxi application development is an excellent solution if:

• your company needs technical features that no ready-made solution on the market provides;
• you have the means to test the minimal viable product and the time to develop and stabilize the system;
• you plan to seek investments to further develop a unique technical solution.

White-label taxi app software

With white-label taxi software, your company utilizes pre-built software solutions that come with a range of technical features essential for running a taxi service.

White-label solutions typically offer a robust set of functionalities that are already tested and ready to use, minimizing the need for extensive customization. Besides, most companies providing white-label ride-hailing software have an impressive amount of use cases.

While white-label solutions offer less control over the development process compared to custom-built taxi apps, they do provide a degree of flexibility for branding and customization.

One inspiring example is Kaiian, a taxi company in Saudi Arabia that switched to Onde’s white-label taxi application after realizing custom-built applications take forever to be realized — and still did not allow Kaiian to scale the business.

With Onde, Kaiian innovated their booking system and business administration quickly and without pausing the business. They were immediately ready to enter new cities and quickly grow the customer base, becoming one of the market leaders.

For many ride-hailing companies, the key advantages of white-label taxi applications are the speed and cost-effectiveness they offer for market entry. Unlike with customer taxi app development, you don’t need any technical people on the team. As the white-label taxi software team solves the technical puzzles, you can focus on your business needs.

Using ready-made solutions, taxi companies can quickly launch their own apps, taking advantage of new opportunities and staying ahead of the competition without spending too much. However, it's important to carefully check that the features and ability to grow with these off-the-shelf apps match your taxi company’s specific needs and plans for expansion.

Pros and cons of white-label taxi app software

Choosing right taxi software for your business

Every taxi or ride-hailing business has its unique needs. You can always contact the Onde team to discuss the possibilities of our white-label solution for taxi companies. Make your decision well-informed.

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