Static rebrand vs live rebrand: what it costs

Static: somebody rebuilds a player APK with your name, icon and colours baked in, and hands you the file. Everything about the brand is fixed at build time. The file is yours to host and distribute however you like.

Live: the app is built from your settings, and it reads them again every time it opens. The name and icon are still baked in - Android insists - but the theme, the prices, the notifications, the server list and the support details come from a panel, and change without a reinstall.

A static rebrand from a freelancer runs $90–400, once. A hosted platform builds it for you as part of the plan - on iBoMate, $0 on top of the $9.99 a month. On this line alone, static wins if you never subscribe for more than a few months. Nobody stops at this line.

This is where the model shows. With a static APK, a new server address, a new support number, a new price screen or a new logo is a new build at $50–150 - and a reinstall on every customer's device, which means messaging every customer, walking some of them through it, and losing a few who cannot be bothered. Three changes a year is not unusual for a growing business, and three changes is another $150–450 plus the evenings.

With a live rebrand those changes are a form in the panel. The app picks them up on next open. Only a new name, icon or package id needs a rebuild, and that build installs over the old one with the same id, so it is an update rather than a migration.

The APK has to be hosted somewhere your customers can download it - $15–20 a month for a small server, or a file host that changes its rules. The customer list, the expiry dates and the reminders are separate software ($40–100 a month for a CRM, $20–50 for automation) or a spreadsheet and your own memory. Added up, the tools a static-rebrand reseller runs alongside the app come to $75–170 a month before the app itself.

A hosted platform folds those in. iBoMate includes the hosting, the updates, the customer list, the reminders and the automation in the one price, which is why the comparison on the pricing page puts the whole stack against a single line.

• You have a handful of customers, you host the file yourself already, and you are certain the brand and the server will not change for a year.
• You need a platform the hosted product does not support yet.
• You want to own the build pipeline end to end and have somebody who can run it.

For everyone else the second change is the moment the arithmetic flips, and the second change always comes.

Put twelve months on paper. For the static option add the build, three changes, hosting and whatever you use for the customer list. For the live option add twelve subscriptions at your customer count - on iBoMate that is $9.99 a month up to 100 active customers, $19.98 from 200. Then add a line for the renewals you will not lose because the reminder went out on time. That last line is usually the biggest number on the page.