Insights | Propel Ventures

Transitioning your App Development: From Agency to Software Development Partner

Written by Amy Johnson | Chief Product Officer Propel | Sep 28, 2023 4:15:10 AM

In Australia, talking about the ups and downs (mostly ups) of the property market is a national pastime. At Propel, we have been working with the team at Auction Snitch who have built a fun and intuitive app that crowdsources “hot off the press” property insights and prices that are often not readily available or are often delayed in their public release.

To validate the idea, Auction Snitch worked first with a mobile app agency to create a simple mobile application to test market demand. While this was a necessary first step to ensure the concept was viable and there was genuine interest among users before making a larger investment, the difficulty is that often, agencies make apps that are not scalable and have a short initial life.

They barely survive first contact with real users and are difficult to extend as the feedback comes flooding in. We have seen this several times where clients have come to us to ask for our help to scale up an app and ensure that there is comprehensive documentation to explain the code, automation testing to prevent regressions in quality, a build pipeline to reliably and safely deploy updates as well as a separation of testing and production environments to ensure releases are well tested and compatible.

At Propel, we ensure the highest standards of engineering when it's time to scale. We work with clients like Auction Snitch to implement robust development and build processes including modern infrastructure practices to allow you to scale your solution quickly.

“Auction Snitch is a bit of a passion project for us as we firmly believe that transparency is the cornerstone of a healthy real estate ecosystem, and this app will empower both buyers and sellers alike to make informed decisions with confidence. We were thrilled with the initial reaction of users to our App indicating a high level of interest and we wanted to be able rapidly respond to feedback and provide App updates without interruption” said Tamsin Lapointe, Co-Founder, “We approached Propel with the challenge of taking our App to the next level and we are so glad that we did!”

Getting to market to test your idea at low cost may make sense to start, but once you gain traction with your users, a more structured and robust infrastructure is crucial for handling your app's growing success and ensuring a sustainable expansion. We are delighted to have helped Auction Snitch improve the reliability and scalability of the app, positioning it well for future growth.

Have a look for yourself and get Snitching! https://auctionsnitch.com.au/