The ability to stay updated on your family member’s whereabouts without intruding on their private space is the need of the hour. And this is exactly what the Life360 app offers by making it easy to stay connected to the people who matter the most.
Life360 is an innovative application that leverages state-of-the-art GPS location technology. The app provides real-time locations of the family members who have accepted your invitation to join your circle and share their live location. The incredible family locator app has enabled family members to stay privately connected to each other. Thus, it acts as an emergency beacon in times of any unfortunate event, such as an accident or a medical problem.
If as an entrepreneur, you are interested in this concept and wish to develop an app like Life360, you have reached the right place. This guide will help you understand all the core and optional features of building an app like Life360 and identify the associated cost of development.
What Is GPS Family Locator Mobile App & How It Works?
Many parents are genuinely worried about their children, especially if they are teenagers. As these children take their first leap into this world on their own, parents want to help them and make sure they do the right thing.
A GPS family locator app allows family members to stay connected to their loved ones. The membership of these apps can be availed only on invitation by the group manager, who is typically the most responsible member of the family, i.e. the mother or the father. Every family member in the group receives a live update on the shared locations by other family members. Thus, whenever a person enters or exits a designated location, is driving, or gets involved in an ill-fated event like a crash, everyone is notified instantly.
GPS family locator apps have simplified the tracking of children or elderly people, making it as easy as reading a notification on the smartphone.
Benefits Of A Family Tracker Mobile Apps
A family locator app is an invaluable tool, especially for parents who wish to monitor their child’s location and ensure they are where they are supposed to be. These apps can be used with a few intentions: security, responsibility, and parental peace of mind. They provide a life-saving technological solution that can come extremely handy in times of an emergency.
Some of the most noteworthy benefits of using family locator mobile apps are as follows:
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Peace Of Mind
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Family locator apps send notifications when the kids are at home, they arrive at their school, when parents leave work, etc.
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Stay Connected
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These apps enable family members to send messages to each other with a single click and stay connected at all times.
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Be Secured
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If someone gets into trouble, these apps send alerts to all the other family members along with their exact location.
Monetization Opportunities For Family Location Tracker Apps
The prime goal of every appreneur is to build a highly utilitarian mobility solution and create a steady stream of revenue. Here are some of the best and most popular monetization strategies that can you use to generate money from your app.
Selling Advertisements
This is a great monetization strategy in which the app owners can earn money by displaying advertisements of related products and services on their app. For instance, family locator mobile apps can show advertisements from travel companies about the best family vacation destinations. In return for displaying these ads, the app owner can charge a specific amount of money from the advertising businesses.
There are different kinds of ads that can be displayed on the mobile app. The most common ones are banner ads, reward ads, native ads, and affiliate ads.
Integrating An eCommerce Store
Using this strategy, the app owner can integrate an eCommerce platform into the app from where the users can purchase related products or services. It is a popular money-making technique wherein one can sponsor products of a brand that provides something pertaining to a similar industry.
Paid Subscription Plans
This is one of the most effective ways of monetizing a family locator app that can help to set up a recurring revenue stream. As the app owner, you can charge a monthly or annual membership fee in return for the app services. You can offer different plans with varying levels of features and functionalities. The users can easily choose the one that suits their needs.
Top Family Locator Mobile Apps Available Apps In The Market
GPSWOX Family Locator
GPSWOX is a great family locator app that ensures to keep your family safe at all times. Available on both Android and iOS, the app offers real-time as well as historic locations of all family members. It even notifies when a family member’s smartphone battery is low so you don’t get any panic attacks.
The app enables the head family member to set alerts when their family members check in or check out of a certain place or even drive at a higher speed.
Verizon Smart Family
Verizon Smart Family app enables parents to manage and locate their child’s device with ease. Parents can keep a tab on their child’s phone usage and view their call logs and texts. They can even block certain internet features and filter social media and gaming apps to protect their kids. Additionally, the app allows tracking the device locations of all family members in real-time to ensure everyone is safe and protected.
Sygic Family Locator
This advanced family locator app is designed to keep the kids safe and families connected to each other. The app uses the phone’s native GPS tracking system to track the real-time location of all family members. The users can mark safe and unsafe zones and get notified if their kids step in the latter. The app also helps to send and receive emergency messages if any family member lands up in any kind of trouble. The app also works as an offline GPS for hassle-free driver navigation.
Foursquare Swarm
Swarm is an innovative app that enables users to keep a track of all the places they visit. With this app, the users can check into places and collect bonus points for each check-in. These points can be piled up and turned into a fun family game. Besides, kids can also message their friends that check in at a location, provided that they have this app installed. It must be noted that Swarm does not offer any live tracking.
Key Features Of A Family Tracking Mobile App
Real-Time Location Tracking
This is the most important feature of family tracking mobile apps. It provides real-time location of all the family members in the group and helps them to stay connected with each other. With this, learning about the whereabouts of children as well as the family elders has become very easy.
Set Privacy Zones
All people, including teenagers and young adults, don’t like to be tracked at all times. They also need their privacy. With this feature, they can create a temporary zone for a specific amount of time. During this, their location will appear as a stagnant dot as long as they are well within the zone radius. This is an important feature that gives the family a sense of control without intruding into the private space of the user. It must be noted that parents can eliminate the private zone and check in on their children, even when the time has not elapsed if they feel things have spiraled out of control.
Chat With Members
All members of a group can talk to each other via messaging and stay connected at all times. They can update about their location by sending a message to others in the group or have other family discussions using this feature.
Family Assistance – Road Assistance, Disaster Response, Medical Assistance
A good family locator app should offer 24×7 assistance to all family members within a group. There must be a roadside as well as medical assistance option that connects the family members to a live representative over the phone. This representative will know the user’s whereabouts and offer assistance in case of minor and major emergencies. This includes situations like a flat tire, low gas, minor accident, towing, etc.
Driving Pattern & Habits Tracking
Using this feature, the parents can view the driving pattern of family members within the group, especially young drivers. This helps to keep a tab on the driving speed and ensure complete safety. These reports can be made available on a weekly or monthly basis.
Member Near By Alert
In case of any emergency, the users can check out the family members who are nearest to them and ask them for help. This is a vital feature that ensures timely assistance in all cases.
Weekly Reports
One of the best features of family locator apps is weekly reports that can be generated on a periodic basis. They help to identify potentially unsafe driving behaviors, such as heavy speeding, rapid acceleration, hard braking, and more. This can help to promote the habit of responsible driving among the family members and have a good discussion about driver safety.
Things That Need To Be Considered Before Developing A Family Tracker App
Building an app like Life360 may be easy. The real challenge lies in marketing such a product. The users need to be assured that their location and privacy will seldom be compromised. Here, are some things that need to be borne in mind while developing an app like Life360.
Geo-location Accuracy Is Key
Family locator apps rely on GPS and location services. Each member of the group can see the other person’s real-time location on a map. Thus, for these apps to be successful, it is important that they offer location quickly and accurately.
The App Needs Permission To Access
Family locator apps must ask the user permission to access their location, call logs, or even messages. It is only when the user permits that these apps can use their real-time information to offer services during emergencies.
User location Data Safety
With family locator apps, protecting the user’s location data should be of utmost importance. The users will only use these apps if they are convinced that their location data, both live and archived, will not be shared with the government or any third parties. It is also seen that most users turn off their location tracking from time to time just as a precautionary measure.
App Store Approval
Getting Apple App Store’s approval is not always easy. The iOS community has very high benchmarks, especially when it comes to user’s safety and privacy. So make sure that the app is developed as per the App Store’s guidelines so that there is minimal risk of rejection.
Efficient Battery Use
Apps that use maps and location tracking services are often very heavy on the smartphone’s battery. They completely drain the battery, leaving the users at an even greater risk. So make sure that your app makes efficient use of the device’s battery to improve the user experience.
User Engagement Is One Challenge
For any app to be successful, it must keep the users engaged. To promote your family locator app and augment the user experience, you can offer reward points, relevant user notifications, special games that leverage geo-location technology, etc. You can even integrate social media platforms to further boost user engagement.
What Tech Stack Is Required To Develop A GeoLocation App Like 360?
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How Much Does It Cost To Develop A Family Locator App Like Life360?
The exact cost of developing an efficient family locator app like Life360 depends upon many factors. The most common ones are as follows:
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- Chosen app platform
- Type and number of features
- App’s complexity level
- Third-party integrations
- Cost of labor
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Roughly, the cost of developing a basic family locator app is around $15,000 to $20,000. However, a top-notch app with prominent functionality may cost you as high as $40,000.
It is important to note that the cost of labor is a huge factor that regulates the overall cost of development. The labor charges largely vary with different regions. For example, skilled professionals earn $70 to $250 per hour in the USA and Eastern Europe. On the contrary, in India, you can find talented and experienced professionals working at $20 to $70 per hour. So, regarding labor charges, India is a much more feasible choice.
Lastly, the development cost also depends upon the type of mobile app development company you choose. An experienced and practiced company will help you obtain a fully functional product at the best price. They will also give you a total cost break up to determine the project’s viability in detail.
Conclusion
Developing a family locator-tracking app like Life360 requires careful planning and execution. You need to identify the core features of the app, choose the right technology stack, and work with a reliable development team to ensure that the app meets the needs of your target audience.
However, with the right approach, a family locator-tracking app can be a valuable tool for families to stay connected and keep each other safe. If you’re interested in developing a similar app, consider reaching out to a reputable development company with experience in mobile app development.
At Appquipo, we have a team of skilled developers who specialize in creating custom mobile apps, including family locator-tracking apps. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you bring your vision to life and create an app that meets the needs of your target audience.
