Many people ask: does developing a mini program cost money? First, some background: in mini program development, enterprises (including individual businesses) register the most, and there are also personal, government, media and other organisation types. Personal-type registration is usually free, and personal types are simple display types; some platforms offer free versions of such display services, but they require the individual or organisation to have someone technical to do the configuration, which is impossible without the knowledge.
When WeChat first launched mini programs years ago, it encouraged everyone to use them and offered a store mini program that could be applied for right in the official account. But now, with mini programs widespread, WeChat has removed that feature, so most people do not have the ability to develop a mini program independently.
Personal-type development permissions are heavily restricted, so approval is harder and harder now. Most registrations are enterprise-type, including individual businesses.
Many will ask: can’t you register a WeChat mini program yourself, so why pay? Here is the explanation: the WeChat mini program account’s verification fee is 300 yuan a year, and this verification is the official review of your qualification; only with the qualification are you allowed to launch and operate. It is Tencent’s first checkpoint.
After registering a WeChat mini program account, it is like a physical store obtaining its business licence: then you need to rent premises or buy a shop to operate, which means buying a server to store your data space. For source-code development projects, people usually buy Alibaba Cloud or Tencent Cloud space, while most small and medium enterprises or merchants choose a third-party development company with server space included, linking data storage and program development together for easier management; such costs are usually much cheaper than source-code projects, and maintenance is much simpler.
After renting the store, you must also decorate it, arrange the goods and plan the displays, just like planning a mini program’s page design and function design. Does this not mean most merchants must pay to rent premises and decorate? Of course a few platforms build their own house, decorate it themselves and sell their own products, but those are the few very powerful players. Adding it up, do you still believe in free mini program development?
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