RapidDev builds custom mobile and web apps in Columbus, OH, typically shipping a production MVP in 6–12 weeks for a fixed $13,000–$25,000. That is a fraction of the cost of hiring an in-house team in Central Ohio (roughly $360,000–$420,000 for two engineers in year one) or commissioning a Columbus agency ($120,000–$400,000 per build). One team ships the iOS app, the Android app, and the web app on shared infrastructure, and the founder owns all of the code.
One team for your iOS, Android, and web build. We help Columbus founders go from a Figma or Lovable prototype to a production app your users — and your investors at Rev1 or Drive Capital — actually trust.
Columbus is the Midwest's breakout tech story — and building here means building where capital is efficient and talent is deep but not yet saturated. Rev1 Ventures has supported more than 1,400 Central Ohio companies that have collectively raised over $2.1 billion, and Drive Capital — the first modern VC in Columbus — now manages $1.2 billion and sees roughly 7,000 startups a year. Intel's $20B+ New Albany semiconductor project and Amgen's $900M expansion are reshaping the talent pool, while Nationwide, JPMorgan Chase, and Cardinal Health keep insurtech, fintech, and health-tech demand strong. The upside for founders: you can raise from a real local ecosystem and hire engineers at two-thirds of Coastal salaries — but the same engineers you'd want are increasingly contested. We build for that reality, so you can ship your v1 now and hire deliberately from traction later.
Rev1 Ventures is the gravitational center of the Columbus startup scene — a venture-studio and seed investor that has backed 1,400+ companies. Its new 43,000-sq-ft Rev1 at The Peninsula hub downtown is built for software startups, and Rev1 reports that companies inside its network raise 2.5x more capital than peers outside it.
Drive Capital was the first modern venture firm to bet on the Midwest from Columbus. It manages $1.2 billion, fields interest from about 7,000 startups a year, and actively builds the local innovation economy — which means a fundable v1 here gets seen by real institutional investors, not just angels.
Intel's semiconductor build in New Albany — potentially $20B+ and 3,000 jobs, with a vision that could reach $100B — is pulling engineering talent into Central Ohio fast. Tech job postings jumped 38% year over year, so hiring is heating up even as salaries stay well below Coastal levels.
Columbus's economy is built on insurance, finance, logistics, and healthcare — Nationwide, JPMorgan Chase, Cardinal Health, and one of the top-five US logistics corridors at Rickenbacker. Apps here solve real operational problems for real revenue, which is exactly the kind of fundable, defensible product we build.
Central Ohio by the numbers
Who we build for in Central Ohio
Payments, lending, and insurance apps for a metro anchored by JPMorgan Chase and Nationwide — Stripe, real compliance, and security from day one.
Fleet, warehouse, and last-mile apps for the Rickenbacker and I-70/I-71 distribution corridor — one of the top five logistics markets in the US.
HIPAA-aware patient and provider apps for Central Ohio's health-tech corridor around OhioHealth, Cardinal Health, and Nationwide Children's.
Multi-tenant dashboards, admin panels, and role-based access for the vertical SaaS startups coming out of Rev1 and Ohio State.
LLM-powered products with streaming UIs, vector search, and usage-based billing — the category drawing new Drive Capital dollars into the Midwest.
Two-sided platforms and commerce apps built on the retail DNA of a city that grew L Brands, Express, and Victoria's Secret.
RapidDev builds native and cross-platform mobile apps, Next.js web apps and dashboards, full MVP-to-scale product builds, and production AI features for Columbus founders — mobile and web ship from one team on shared infrastructure.
No stitching together an app shop and a web agency. We scope and ship your iOS, Android, and web product on shared infrastructure — so everything actually works together.
One codebase, both stores. We build React Native and Expo apps that pass App Store and Play Store review the first time, with the native feel your users expect.
Fast, SEO-ready web apps on Next.js. From investor-facing marketing sites to the logged-in product itself — dashboards, admin panels, and customer portals.
The whole thing, mobile and web, on shared infrastructure. Ideal when you're moving off a Lovable or Bubble prototype that's hit its ceiling and need production code that raises well with Rev1 or Drive Capital.
Ship the AI feature your product actually needs — chat, search, or agents — wired to your data with streaming, evals, and cost controls, not a demo that falls over.
You see a working, deployed build every single week. Here's the exact path from a first call to a launched app — five steps, no surprises.
We map your idea (or your stuck prototype) to a concrete feature list, a fixed price, and a timeline. You leave with a plan whether or not you hire us.
What you get
A fixed price + timeline
Clickable Figma flows and a technical architecture you sign off on before a line of production code is written. No surprises later.
What you get
Clickable Figma + signed-off architecture
You get a working, deployed build every single week — not a black box. Test on real devices, give feedback, watch it take shape.
What you get
A deployed build every week
We handle App Store and Play Store submission, production deploy, and a full handover — code, docs, and access are yours to keep.
What you get
Live app + all code and access
Keep us on a retainer for new features and fixes, or take the wheel with your own team. Your call — we don't lock you in.
What you get
A retainer — or a clean exit
Production-grade, boring-in-the-best-way tools that your future in-house team can hire for and maintain. No lock-in, no proprietary magic.
Building a custom app in Columbus costs anywhere from $13,000 with RapidDev to over $400,000 with a large agency, depending on who builds it. Here is the honest math on the four realistic paths — with real 2025–2026 Central Ohio numbers, not a vendor's guesswork.
Hire a team in-house in Columbus
true first-year cost of a minimal 2-engineer team
Columbus / US agency
typical price for a comparable custom build
Offshore / freelance
typical Eastern Europe / LatAm blended rate
RapidDev
fixed price, quoted before we start
| Path | Typical cost | Time to first shipped product |
|---|---|---|
| Hire a team in-house in Columbus | ~$360K – $420K / yr | 2–4 months just to hire, then build |
| Columbus / US agency | $120K – $400K+ | 4–9 months |
| Offshore / freelance | $25 – $50 / hr | Highly variable — often 2–3x quoted |
| RapidDev | $13K – $25K | 6–12 weeks to a live, submitted app |
The numbers behind this, sourced
For the price of about two months of one Columbus engineer's loaded salary, RapidDev ships your entire app — mobile, web, and backend — in 6 to 12 weeks.
App development in Columbus with RapidDev costs a fixed $13,000–$25,000, quoted before any code is written rather than billed by the hour. A focused single-platform MVP starts at $13,000; a full mobile-plus-web product with payments and AI features runs up to $25,000.
You get a fixed price before we write a line of code — quoted, not billed by the hour. Every Columbus build lands in the $13K–$25K range depending on scope.
Solo founders and pre-seed teams validating one core flow with real users.
Seed-stage startups shipping a fundable v1 to the App Store and the web.
Growth-stage teams replacing a no-code MVP or adding serious AI features.
A few of the builds we've shipped for Columbus founders. Details generalized to protect client confidentiality.
Challenge: A Columbus founder had a Lovable prototype for a claims-intake app but couldn't pass a security review to land their first carrier pilot.
What we shipped: We rebuilt the backend on Supabase with real RLS, moved payments to Stripe, and shipped native iOS + Android — clearing the carrier's security checklist.
Challenge: A Rickenbacker-corridor team's fleet-tracking demo worked on stage but fell over with real warehouse traffic and had no way to bill customers.
What we shipped: We shipped a real-time driver app, added role-based dispatch dashboards on the web, and wired per-seat billing into Stripe before their Rev1 round.
Challenge: A Series A team had outgrown a Bubble MVP — every new feature broke two others and hiring engineers to work in it was impossible.
What we shipped: We migrated their data into a proper Postgres schema and rebuilt the HIPAA-aware product on Next.js with role-based access, so they could finally hire and scale.
190+ people across 17 countries, a 4.9 rating on Clutch, and 600+ apps shipped. Here's the leadership standing behind your build.
CEO & Founder
Founder of RapidDev, a global software firm whose team has delivered 1,000+ client projects. He helps founders cut through the hype and ship practical, production-grade software — fast.
Columbia University · Harvard Business School · U.S. Navy veteran · 1,000+ client projects
Matt on LinkedInCOO
Runs operations across RapidDev's 190+ person, 17-country team — the person making sure your build ships on time and on scope.
CTO
Owns the technical bar for every build: the architecture, code quality, and security review that has to survive investor diligence.
Dev Lead
Leads the engineers who ship your weekly builds across iOS, Android, and web on shared infrastructure.
Both — that's the whole point of working with us instead of stitching two vendors together. We build your mobile app (iOS and Android from one React Native codebase) and your web app on shared infrastructure, so your data, auth, and payments live in one place instead of three.
Yes, and it's one of the most common reasons Columbus founders come to us. No-code prototypes are great for validation but hit a ceiling on security, scale, and hiring. We migrate your data into a real database and rebuild the product in production-grade code you own — usually without losing any of your existing data.
Most builds land between $13,000 and $25,000, quoted as a fixed price before we start — not billed by the hour. After a free 45-minute scope call we send a concrete feature list, price, and timeline. The band depends on scope: a focused single-platform MVP sits near the bottom, a full mobile + web product with payments and AI features toward the top.
Typically 6–12 weeks from kickoff to a live, submitted app. A focused MVP can ship in 4–6 weeks; a full mobile + web product with AI features runs closer to 9–12. You get a working, deployed build every week, so you're never waiting months to see progress.
No — we work with Central Ohio founders remotely and asynchronously, which is how most Columbus teams operate anyway. You'll have a dedicated point of contact, weekly demos, and a shared board. If you prefer a video kickoff or working sessions, we're happy to schedule around your timezone.
You do — completely. The code lives in your GitHub, the App Store and Play Store listings are under your accounts, and we hand over full documentation at launch. We never hold your product hostage, and you're free to bring the work in-house or hire your own team whenever you want.
That's a big part of what we do for seed and Series A teams here. Columbus investors like Rev1 Ventures and Drive Capital expect a real product, not a clickable mockup — so we prioritize the flows that demo well, ship App-Store-quality polish, and make sure the architecture holds up to technical diligence. Many of our Central Ohio clients raise on the version we ship.
Absolutely — most of the founders we work with are non-technical or first-time technical founders. We handle every technical decision, explain trade-offs in plain English, and give you a product you can maintain or hand to a future CTO. You focus on customers and fundraising; we handle the build.
It comes down to structure, not corners cut. We scope a fixed set of features up front, so there is no open-ended hourly meter. A small, senior-only team does the work directly — you are not paying for account managers, sales overhead, or junior engineers learning on your budget. And we reuse hardened production patterns for auth, payments, and infrastructure instead of rebuilding them from scratch each time. An in-house team carries full salaries, benefits, and months of ramp-up before anything ships; an agency layers overhead on top of the build. We simply do not carry those costs.
Every build includes a 30-day bug-fix window after launch — if something we shipped breaks, we fix it at no extra cost. Beyond that, you can keep us on an optional monthly support retainer for ongoing fixes and new features, or take the code in-house and maintain it yourself. You own the code either way, so you are never locked in.
Small adjustments within the agreed scope are just part of the weekly sprint — you review a working build every week and give feedback we fold in. If you want to add or swap something bigger that changes the scope, we handle it with a simple change order: we tell you the price and timeline impact before doing the work, you approve it, and only then do we build it. No surprise invoices, and no silent scope creep.
Grab a 45-minute slot with our team below. We'll map your idea — or your stuck Columbus prototype — to a concrete feature list, a fixed $13K–$25K price, and a timeline. You walk away with a real plan either way.
Prefer email? Contact us instead.
Book a free 45-minute scope call. You'll walk away with a concrete feature list, a fixed price, and a timeline — whether or not you decide to work with us.
Serving Columbus and Central Ohio · Remote-friendly · You own everything we build
