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How to Create an App Like TikTok

04.05.2020 Victoria Daneeva,Daria Mickiewicz
4 Comments
How to Create an App Like TikTok

Today, TikTok is extremely popular, and it is used by millions of people around the world.

Between January and November 2019 alone, the app was downloaded 614 million times

How to create an app like Tik Tok

For these and other reasons, every company that wants to create similar software should learn from TikTok. Developing an app like this has the potential to draw millions of users and earn big revenues.

In this article, we’ll look at how TikTok works and offer some guidance on how to create a similar app successfully.

What is TikTok, and How Does it Work?

TikTok, formerly called Musical.ly, is an application that allows users to create short videos, share them, and watch videos made by other users. In other words, this is a social network for amateur music videos.

TikTok’s users mostly record videos in which they sing, dance, and do gymnastics, parkour or cheerleading. Comedy videos have also gone viral on this social network.

Using TikTok, you can create 15-second clips and combine linked videos into stories of up to 60 seconds each.

Users can upload their videos from phones, so it’s not necessary to shoot them using the app.

If you’re interested in developing an app like TikTok, it’s important to understand its functionality.

TikTok’s Primary Features:

Video uploading

TikTok users can upload ready-made videos to their accounts and share them with other people.

Video editing

The application has rich functionality for video editing. Users can rotate and crop their videos, use various animations and stickers, even change the color of eyes and hair.

Social sharing

Users can share their videos and those of others on social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.

QR code scanner

For convenience, users can find each other using unique QR codes.

Live-streaming

This premium feature allows video creators to go live with their subscribers and broadcast video.

Duet option

This feature is very convenient for those who want to collaborate with other users.

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All you need to do is sing, make a video, put a hashtag #duetwithme, and other users will be able to sing along with you.

Geolocation

The app can track the locations of users to recommend bloggers nearby.

Year in Review

This year’s resume is a vertical video scrolling down the vertical to describe the account owner’s interests and activities in 2020. There is an option to share this video on your TikTok profile to get a special profile badge that places “2020” on top of your profile photo.

Why You Should Create an App Like TikTok

Now let’s discuss in more detail why TikTok’s example is a great one to follow:

TikTok is extremely popular

The application’s statistics are truly amazing.

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In November 2019, TikTok surpassed 1.5 billion downloads on the App Store and Google Play.

TikTok is a fantastic example if you’re hoping to develop software that becomes wildly popular.

TikTok has a large active audience

The audience isn’t just huge, but also very active.

TikTok had 500 million global monthly active users already in 2018.

That kind of audience opens up great scope for monetization because you can sell premium and additional features to millions of users.

TikTok is growing

The app is constantly breaking its own financial records.

In Q4 2019, the app’s revenue grew over 300% from the same period in 2018.

Choosing a development model based on TikTok’s example could be a wise step for your company.

How to Create an App Like TikTok

Here are the major steps to creating a similar app:

1. Think out your future app and conduct preparatory research

If you have appropriate professionals in your team with the necessary competencies, you can do the essential preparatory work. Otherwise, you’ll need to find a competent contractor to complete the following steps:

Create a Software Requirements Specification document

This document contains a basic description of the product, namely how it should work, what goals it should fulfill, and what features the product should contain.

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To create a correct and detailed document needed to develop an app like TikTok, you need to possess the necessary skills and understand the nuances of development.

Create a buyer persona’s portrait

It’s crucial to understand your potential audience — who will want to use your product, and how. It’s important to create an approximate portrait of a potential user.

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Think about what your potential audience is: How old are the typical users, in which countries do they live, what are their interests and goals?

After you have done some preparatory work, you can proceed to the choice of a developer. Or, you can entrust all the work to your future contractor.

2. Hire a software development team

In the end, the success of your product will depend on making a careful decision when it comes to your contractor.

Here are some steps toward making the right choice.

Choose a company with good ratings and reviews

You can use directories to help you select a trustworthy team.

For example, consider only teams that have a good rating and good client reviews.

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This will help you avoid losing time and money while redoing a defective or poorly designed product.

Choose a company with relevant experience

After you have come up with a short list of several teams you might entrust the product to, consider which of those teams has the most suitable and rich experience.

To do this, check company sites as well as portfolio and case studies.

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Pay attention to whether the team worked with projects similar to yours and what the final result was.

Contact the team and ask them questions

After you have selected several teams, it’s time to communicate with them.

Ask as many questions as possible to understand the specifics of the team and how strongly your project interests them. This will help you make a wise and balanced choice.

3. Create an MVP

Once you have decided on a contractor and plan to start development, we recommend that you create a Minimal Viable Product, an MVP.

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Creating a minimum viable product helps you avoid spending extra money and time developing a complete solution before you’re absolutely certain you’re ready for that.

Instead, you can create a working prototype, verify its appropriateness and effectiveness, and then continue the development process.

To begin with, you can come up with basic UI and the concept for features such as user login, user profile, video editing, posting, social sharing, and so on.

4. Get feedback and improve your app

After creating the product, you should conduct a study of the target audience to understand whether your product meets a demand and whether it successfully performs the features assigned to it.

If everything goes as it should, you can continue to develop an app like TikTok and get a relevant and effective product.

Wrap up

TikTok is extremely popular and brings millions of dollars to its creators.

Which is why developing an app like TikTok holds great potential. To get started, you’ll need to take several basic steps:

  1. Think out your future solutions and conduct preparatory research
  2. Choose and hire a software developer
  3. Create a Minimum Viable Product
  4. Get feedback, test, and improve your solution

How Much Does It Cost to Develop an App Like TikTok?

A brief estimate of a project like TikTok is made by the team of business analysts and developers at VironIT.

 

An App Like Tik Tok Cost

Admin Panel (Front-end) $5,000 – $9,000
Back-end $17,000 – $27,000
Android App $18,000 – $33,000
iOS App $18,500 – $33,000
Project Management $6,000 – $10,500
Total $64,500 – $112,500

Optional Costs

Quality Assurance (QA) $11,500 – $20,500
UI/UX Design $3,000 – $4,000
Business Analysis $2,000 – $3,000


If you have more questions about how to create an app like TikTok or want to hire professional software developers, feel free to contact us.

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4 responses to “How to Create an App Like TikTok”

  1. Richard says:

    Reply

    Hello! Thank you for such an interesting article, especially, for the prices. But I have a question, maybe you know the tech stack of TikTok? I am thinking of creating an app like this and couldn’t find any information like that.

    • Victoria Daneeva says:

      Reply

      Hey! Thank you for the good words! Before I answer your question, I have to warn you that this information may be slightly different from the original. But I’ll be very glad if I could help.
      Check out the tech stack of TikTok:
      Real-Time Analytics: Azure Stream Analytics, Spark Streaming, Apache Flink
      Cloud Environment: AWS
      Database: MailChimp Integration, Postgres, Cassandra, HBase, MongoDB
      Universal Operating System: Debian
      For emails: Mandrill
      For Database Management: Datastax
      For Powerful programming: GWT
      Payments: Paypal and Braintree, e-Wallet, Stripe
      Phone, Voice & SMS Verification: Twilio, Nexmo

  2. Nate S. says:

    Reply

    Hеy, Victoria. Atm I am planning my budget for developing my TikTok like project. What is included in the TikTok app maintenance?

    • Victoria Daneeva says:

      Reply

      Hello. Thank you for your question! Well, TikTok has 700 million active users. They upload a massive amount of content every day, so first of all, you have to think of where to store all this. Also, you will need to pay for a Content Delivery Network (CDN), which depends on the about of data you want to transfer. For example, for TikTok, it is approximately 7041 PB (PetaBytes) per month which costs around $7,380,000 monthly. Of course, the fewer users and data you have, the cheaper it will be. Don’t forget about tech support for your users and your team of developers for debugging, and releasing new features.

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