How to Create a Language Learning App Like Duolingo? [Cost + Features]

Duolingo was released back in 2011 to remotely teach English language to millions of students all around the globe on their mobile phones. It has become a world leader in terms of revenue, and the annual income of Duolingo was around 140 million dollars which was a record revenue for any educational app.

The revenue may not look that high in numbers but imagine an app that doesn’t charge a single penny from its users and still generated so much revenue in just a year. This fact changed the perception of many entrepreneurs who want to develop language learning apps.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also boosted the educational app sector because everyone wants to learn from home and stay safe. Therefore, the trend of learning apps is at it’s peak and people are searching for the best educational apps to help their kids. So here is a complete guide answering all your questions about developing a language learning app, but first, we need to learn what the Duolingo app is?

Duolingo Introduction | Development Guide

Duolingo is a language learning app through which users can build up their knowledge about the English language from scratch. It features training programs per the latest standards for quality education. It reminds you about upcoming lessons and learning sessions through push notifications and alerts.

After each session, students can take regular tests to assess their knowledge and move to the next chapter after acing the test. All the study materials are regularly checked and updated with advanced Ai algorithms. Users can translate words, sentences, and phrases by pasting them in the app.

Key Features of a Language Learning App

To Build Language Learning App Like Duolingo and make it popular, you need to add some core features to it, and below are some of the most popular language-learning apps.

1. Login and Sign up
2. For the first time sign-up, users need to enter their email, name, phone number, and strong password that they will use to log in to the app in the future. All their app data will be saved on a secure cloud server, and they can access their data by logging in to the app with the same email and password.

2. Profile Management
3. Through profile management, users can set their daily and monthly learning goals to achieve them and celebrate their achievements with fellow students. They can change their login information, including password, recovery email, phone number, name, etc.

3. Courses
4. The courses menu will showcase all the available courses and the name of the current course that the user is learning. Users can apply filters to sort the courses into completed courses, available courses, and ongoing courses. If your language learning app offers a variety of courses, it will become popular compared to the app, which offers only a few courses.

4. Progress tracking
5. The best thing about language learning apps is that they help learners celebrate their achievements, and progress trackers are the best tool for this purpose. Each student’s weekly and daily rating motivates them to use the app, again and again, to boost up their knowledge.

5. Video and Audio Lessons
6. All the good language learning apps feature audio and video lessons to improve the learning experience. Users can easily stream audio and video lessons online or download them to watch them whenever they want without an internet connection. Their pronunciation will become better if they listen to native language speakers every day.

6. Integration with Social Networks
7. Students can directly share their achievements with their family members with social media networks integration. They can also enable the one-touch login feature to use their social media accounts to log in to the app instead of email and password.

7. Push Notifications
8. Push notifications and alerts are a great way to motivate users to complete the ongoing courses, especially if they haven’t logged in to the app in the past few days.

8. Built-in Forum
9. Although the primary purpose of language learning apps like Duolingo is to teach various languages to users, they can also become a place where users can make new friends. Forums are a great place where users can engage in discussions with like-minded people and share their ideas with them.

9. Tests
10. Daily, weekly, and monthly tests are a great way to keep track of your performance. An app that features a test after each lesson and at the end of each course has better chances of success than apps without the testing feature.

Steps to Develop a Language Learning App Like Duolingo

Here is a step-by-step guide to develop language learning app like Duolingo even if you do not know development-related stuff. Follow these steps to ensure that you launch the app on time and defeat the competition by offering better features.

1. Work on the Concept
2. Writing the code of your app is essential, but first, decide the idea of your app and work on the concept. Once you have a clear picture of your app in your mind, share your vision with fellow entrepreneurs to get advice from them. The idea of your app will define what your app will do and how it will look to investors.

2. Analyze Business Idea
3. Business analysis will help you learn about all the requirements of your app and what features you need to add to your app to make it successful. You can also use the discovery phase to get a clear vision of the concept of your app, and below are some facts that you will learn with analysis.

• Relevance of your app idea
• Analysis of market
• Business goals
• Data of competitors

3. Make a list of Features
4. The next step in the development phase is to list all the features you want to add to your language learning app. One way of getting an idea about features that you can add to your app is to use a similar language learning app to learn about trending features.
5. Share the requirement list with the Mobile App Development Company to get an idea about the development cost and how long it will take to develop the app. You can also ask for suggestions from users to add features that they like the most.

4. Choose Platform and Technology Stack 
5. In today’s market, more than 80% of online language learners use their mobile phones for learning, while 50% use more than one device at the same time to learn. To ensure that your app will become a leading language learning app, you need to go for a cross-platform app.
6. Below are some standard SDKs, architecture, programming languages, and development tools for all the available platforms.

• IOS Native development
• Developers use the Xcode development tool and write the Swift and Objective-C programming language code to develop an iOS native application. MVC, MVP, MVVM, and VIPER are some common architectures of iOS native development.
• Android Native Development
• Java and Kotlin are the two main programming languages for Android App Development. Developers use MVVM with Android Architecture Components, Android SDK, and Android studio development tools for the best results.
• Hybrid App Development
• React Native, Xamarin, Flutter, and Cordova are the best frameworks and technologies and Redux architecture if you want to develop a hybrid app.
• Web App Development
• For developing a web app, developers use React.js, Vue.js, AngularJS languages for front-end development and Java, Python, Ruby, C#, Node.js languages for back-end development. Databases for SQL-based web apps are MySQL, PostgreSQL while MongoDB, Amazon DynamoDB, Apache Cassandra are the most commonly used databases for Non-SQL apps.

5. Work on the Design of the App
6. Make your app’s interface interactive and attractive so users can easily access the desired menu in a few clicks. The interface doesn’t have to be the same for all the platforms, but it should deliver the best results based on the device.

6. Create Content
7. Content is the most important in any language learning app as users want to learn the desired language through the app. Consult professional teachers of all the languages you want to offer in your app and create content according to the latest trends. Cover listening, speaking, writing, and reading skills in the content for better results.

7. Develop the App
8. After finalizing your idea, design, and content, it is time to develop a similar language learning app. Hire a professional team of developers to build both the front-end and back-end of your language learning app.
9. Standard tech stacks for front-end development include CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. For back-end development, there are many technologies available in the market today, and you can choose the desired technology based on the complexity of your project.

8. Test the app
9. Apply quality assurance even during the development to save your time and develop all the app components according to the industry standards. Launch a beta version of your app in the market so users can test it and share their reviews with you to remove any bugs or add better features.

9. Run a Marketing Campaign
10. Marketing is the final step in the development of the app, and it is a crucial step as marketing decides the future of your app. You can create a landing page for your application and write a guest post on some popular websites to market your app.

Cost of Developing a Language Learning App

You need to have a minimum budget to develop a language learning app, and the budget may differ depending on what type of iOS App Development Services you want. The cost will increase if you add better functionalities to your app and make it look good. Below are some features that affect the development costs.

• Design of app
• Development
• Marketing

Do you have an Idea?

Conclusion

Now that you are aware of all the features you should include in your app and how much it will cost to develop it. It is time for you to build your language learning app and enjoy your fair share of profit in the education application sector. But be sure to hire the best development team for better results.