Everything About Netflix App and How to Build a Similar App?

What Is Netflix and How Does It Work?

Netflix is a global online video-on-demand streaming service which offers popular movies, TV shows and documentaries users can watch over the internet. It has over 100 million members across 190 countries. You can subscribe to Netflix in order to watch movies and TV series online. It has become go-to channels for so many people all over the world. The titles available to stream mainly depend on your Netflix region. Each Netflix region has a different library. Netflix adds and removes movies and TV shows to each Netflix region every month. This gives you fresh content always. Once you subscribe to Netflix, you are free to stream all movies and TV shows available at no additional cost.

You can watch Netflix videos either on Smart TVs or on Netflix video streaming app on your smartphones and tablets. Benefit of using your smartphones or tablets to watch some content is that you don’t need to leave your Netflix movies in the middle when you move out of home and you can watch the whole thing anywhere, while on the mobile with the Netflix mobile app. For this you just need to be subscribed to Netflix and you need a right phone or tablet. Android, Apple and Windows 7 mobile device owners all can access the Netflix mobile app.

Although experts say that only a handful of Android systems support the Netflix streaming so far. Netflix says it is working fast to bring video streaming to more mobile systems but it is hampered by the lack of standardized streaming playback features across Android phones. The price for Netflix steaming starts at just $7.99 a month and you won’t find a better movie-viewing application.

How to Get Netflix like Mobile App?

There is a requirement of a top Mobile Application Development Company to build an app like Netflix. To download Netflix Mobile app, just search for the app in the Android Play Store, Apple App Store or Windows Phone 7 Marketplace. Register and Log in with your Netflix username and password, and instantly stream movies already listed in your Instant Queue. You can also download the app without being a subscriber and try the company’s free month-long trail to see if you like the service.

If you have a Droid, check Netflix’s database of devices to see if your system is compatible. The reason for the exclusivity is that Android phones are fragmented which means phone manufacturers and carriers have customized so many types of Androids that each one needs its own app. Developing so many apps take time and Netflix is even working on this. Apple and Windows users have total integration, or zero variance in their mobile systems. This lets every Apple product like iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and Windows 7 Phone access any apps launched for them.

Let’s now discuss about the device limit. Netflix lets you register up to 50 devices per account but only six can be active at one time. So more the phones and tablets you activate, the fewer computers, DVD players and streaming boxes you will be able to use at home. You can go for more comprehensive Netflix subscription for using more mobile devices simultaneously.

What are the Reasons Behind the Success of Netflix App?

The Netflix subscribers base is continuously growing both in the USA and abroad. The reports say that there is a total of 131.7 million subscribers both inside and outside the US as of September 2018. To be precise, there were 58.5 million Netflix users in the US and 78.5 million subscribers internationally. Most of them use the regional Netflix service but some people also use VPN service in Australia to get access to more content. Although now there are many competitors in the market but Netflix is still the leader in most of the regions. Let’s now discuss the top reasons behind the success of Netflix.

• Netflix almost never goes down: Netflix company’s service achieved an availability rate of 99.97% in 2017, according to reports. Netflix has learnt a lot from outages early on therefore now it uses Amazon’s AWS data centers across three regions. When one of those regions does go down, Netflix automatically redirects all of its traffic to the two other regions. Actually, the company regularly tests this fall-back feature by taking a region offline itself to check the reliability of service – something the company calls chaos engineering. Netflix says, “We intentionally introduce chaos into our systems”. Up until recently, it took Netflix up to an hour to successfully redirect all requests in case of such a massive failure. More recently, the company was able to bring that time down to less than 10 minutes. This kind of high level of reliability in their service is one of the main reason behind their impeccable credibility and success in the market.
• High Quality Original Content: Netflix is providing a unique selling point to its customers, to create a high quality content and original content for the audience to engage with. Netflix has realized the importance of having its own high quality content many years ago which gave it a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Netflix owns rights to so much of the movies, TV shows and video content. Netflix also works in the direction so that the audience gets more and more engaged with the content listed on the platform.
• Ratings: Netflix always gives importance to the customers’ experience and encourages them for ratings. Based on the ratings, Netflix then recommends other titles that the users might enjoy watching. In this way, the users can discover new movies and TV shows that they might like and this makes it even more easy as it even personalizes their user experiences.
• Commercial Free Content: Generally, people don’t like the commercials in between when they are watching their favorite movie or video series. That’s why people prefer Netflix more than the services like YouTube which shows commercial in between the streaming of the videos. These ads stitched in between the popular TV series or movie completely turns off the audience. Netflix made it possible to enjoy the content without getting distracted even for a second. For this users do not mind paying monthly subscription fees which is the business model of Netflix.
• One Month Free Trial: Netflix provides a free monthly trial which allows the users to use their service free of cost for a period of 30 days which showcases the high value of the product to people who need more time to get convinced. In this one-month free trial period, the users get to know the high quality and reliability of Netflix services which surely impress most of the users and make them to go ahead in their decision to subscribe Netflix from second month onwards.

How Much Does an App Like Netflix Cost?

Let’s now discuss more about Netflix app, what are its benefits and how much it will cost you if you go for development of your own mobile app just like Netflix.

There is no doubt that internet has become the most influential medium to reach to millions of people and potential customers. Search engines, emails, blogs, social media and many other type of websites and mobile applications are examples of such internet based services which have become successful. Netflix is one such service which is entertaining us for so many years. Infact, Netflix was there even before Google. Yes, Netflix was founded in 1997, while Google was founded in 1998.

Initially Netflix was providing DVDs through traditional pay-per-rental model. After two years, in 1999 they launched digital distribution of movies and TV programs. By that time, they had established themselves as an amazing entertainment provider company which led to a successful IPO in 2002. Now this video streaming company is valued at around $20 billion. Netflix right now has 60 million subscribers globally with $5.5 billion annual revenue. Recommendation algorithm is highly important for every online portal like Netflix. Hence they had held a million-dollar contest in 2006 to get the loop of best recommendation algorithms to implement in their online video streaming service. Just in enhancing the recommendation of titles, they have invested around $150 million in the research which clearly shows in the result as a viewer takes only 2 minutes of browsing before deciding the title.

Netflix spent a lot in research to become the leader in the video streaming through internet service. It has already surpassed cable TV in terms of rating. ‘House of Cards’ a Netflix original series won the Emmy award for outstanding directing, which made Netflix the one and only online movies and TV shows streaming company to earn such an award.

Now you know all the incredible facts about Netflix. Let’s now also know why anyone should opt for the Netflix mobile app. This Netflix application is full of portability and entertainment which allows you to watch the series or movies at desired time and place. There is no limitation of schedule and place which removes the situation of missed episode completely. Netflix has highly personalized title recommendation and amazing user interface which make this mobile app a topmost in the list of most popular apps on App Stores. Netflix has taken our movie and TV shows watching experience to a new level. It is accessible from multiple devices running on Android and iOS and bring to us a new kind of and easier to access entertainment.

While looking at so much popularity and benefits of Netflix, so many business houses around the world are looking to develop a similar mobile app as Netflix which is quite possible. If you too want to take a plunge in this movies and videos streaming app business, then you can contact some expert mobile app development company which understand the business model of Netflix and which has expert and experienced mobile app developers.

The approximate cost of developing a mobile app like Netflix is around $ 15,000 – $ 25,000 each for Android and iOS platform. You can certainly build a mobile app like Netflix and gain millions of customers around the world and become successful. Just you have to take a decision and go for it.

Netflix Mobile App Features

Anything what you can do on the Netflix site, you can also do on the Netflix mobile app. Just the size is smaller. Netflix mobile app has tiny buttons and a small screen you can’t comfortably share during a whole movie. All other features are the same. You will get the same streaming selections you would find on the Netflix website. You can start movies from where you left off and buffering is really quick. Streaming quality is high and controlled by easy-to-understand buttons.

You have to make sure that your data plan supports the strong demands of streaming as streaming videos eats lots of data. Hence you have to use those data plans from your phone service provider which offer more data at cheaper rates. For example, streaming a two-hour movie from Netflix will use around 300 MB of data.

Netflix has taken enough precautions to ensure streaming security. Although it has caused some delay in releasing new Android app versions as Netflix has to customize security on each version of Android but people appreciate it as everyone wants secure streaming.

Essential MVP Features to Make an App Like Netflix

• User Registration: This feature of user registration is the most basic feature without which Netflix similar app development is not possible. Here the users should be able to register their account on the platform and later on login to their accounts to quickly access their Netflix services.
• User Profile: In this feature, the users can set up their profile by adding inputs about their preferred genres, actors, directors, movies, shows etc.
• Secure and Reliable Payment Gateway: Using this feature, the users should be able to navigate securely through the payment gateways when they decide to subscribe to the Netflix similar apps video streaming services.
• Content Search: In this feature, the users can search for their preferred content on the basis of actors, movies, TV shows, ratings, genres, user reviews and more.
• Adding Comment: In Netflix similar app development, this feature would allow the users to comment on the content based on their experience.
• Push Notifications: By this feature, the users receive a push notification when their subscription gets over, renewed or when they choose to cancel the subscription or when they decide to upgrade or downgrade their subscription.
• Reviews and Ratings: This feature provides an option to review and rate the content that they have just watched. This makes it an engaging activity for them and they can tell other users about their reviews and ratings of the content.
• Creating a Playlist Manually: Netflix has implemented many algorithms based on which it queues up the recommended contents which are designed as per the preferences of each of the users. The users can also create a playlist manually as per their preferences and choices.
• Netflix Roulette: This feature lets the users choose the filters based on genres, star ratings, actors so that they can search through the content to get access to the content which they are looking for with the least possible effort and time.
• Settings: This feature gives the users an option to set the audio tracks, subtitles, on/off, play/pause, rewind button, volume control and more with the help of the settings feature in the app.
• Multiple Device Support: Netflix application is responsively made which means that it is automatically supported by multiple devices like Android, iOS, Windows Phones, Mac OS, Smart TVs etc. This is one of the most important feature of a Netflix similar app.
• Multiple Language Support: It is important to provide multiple language support feature into the Netflix similar app so that the users are able to browse through various languages in order to view the content in their preferred language.
• Download Feature: This feature allows the users to download the content in order to watch it later anytime, even when his device is not connected to the Internet.
• Subtitle Appearance: This feature will allow the users to change the appearance of the subtitles, along with the style, font and color of the subtitle when they choose to view the content in a foreign language.
• Subtitle Enable/Disable: The users can choose to enable or disable the subtitle for a specific content in Netflix similar app.

Conclusion

We have just discussed various aspects of Netflix App, how it works, how to use it, what are reasons behind the success of Netflix app which you can understand to replicate it by building your own Netflix similar app, what are the features of Netflix app and what are the essential MVP features if you want to build a Netflix similar app and finally what is the total cost of development of a Netflix similar app which can vary depending upon the additional features you want to add into the app. No doubt, Netflix has given users a comfort to watch something from the comfort of their home, while travelling or while at work. As this company is growing, their services are getting even better. As we have discussed, due to their heavy research on recommendation algorithms, their subscribers get pretty accurate recommendations which match their watching preferences. People are getting high value for their money and this is the basis for any successful business. By reading this article you too must have become highly motivated and well informed to build a Netflix similar app. Now as you know all aspects of Netflix similar app development hence can proceed further, hire an expert mobile app development company, build your own app and become successful in the marketplace quickly.