Those days had escaped when family members used to discuss what to watch next. In current times you get access to watch anything, anytime, and from any device. All credit goes to online movie streaming services. As per the research and study, the global video streaming platforms are expected to reach worth $125 billion by the end of 2025. So if you are looking forward to developing the Hotstar clone app, then this is the right time.
The outburst of smartphones has motivated users to access their desired content anywhere, anytime they want. The success of Hotstar has caught the attention of various tech businessmen to get the fruitful reward of video-on-demand apps. Thus every businessman is looking out for opportunities to capitalize on this.
It is the most certain reason why players like Amazon Prime, Sony Liv, Netflix, Zee 5, and several others have paved their way into the market and established their respective brands in less time.
If you are curious to know how to make an app like Hotstar in android studio? Or are you in search of top mobile application development services? Here in this article, we have dug deep insights into how to develop the Hotstar app, the cost, factors, and several others.
What Is Hotstar: A Video Streaming Platform?
Hotstar is one of India’s biggest premium on-demand video streaming platforms owned by Star India. Star India is a subsidiary of Walt Disney. These streaming platforms provide users with 100,000 + hours of video content.
This content includes movies, web series, short movies, and many more in 17 distinct languages. In addition, Hotstar also provides its users with to see the live match of a major global sports matches.
Read more on Best Live TV Streaming Apps to Install Now.
- CEO: Sunil Rayan
- Founder: Sunil Rayan
- Founded on: February 2015
- Headquarters: Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
- Latest funding:₹1136 Crore
- Valuation of: Over ₹1500 Crore
- By the year of March 2020, Hotstar has reached 300 million active users
Some Facts And Figures About Hotstar App
- Hotstar, the well-known video streaming platform, has more than 8 million subscribers.
- This platform has more than 400 million downloads on the Hotstar app.
- The free version of Hotstar capitalizes on the Advertisement strategy, and thus the free version is also a great source for the revenue building of Hotstar.
- While the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 Semi-Final between India vs.New Zealand was held, there were 19 million viewers who streamed the match on Hotstar.
- Disney+ Hotstar provides its users with 100,000+ hours of unique and entertaining content.
- It was researched and analyzed that more than 90% of Disney+ Hotstar viewing happens through mobile devices.
- There was a calculated total of 267 million active viewers streaming the 2019 Indian Premier League Tournament on Disney+ Hotstar.
- There are more than 45.88% of total Indian smartphones that have Disney+ Hotstar installed on their devices.
Top 15 Must-Have Features You Should Integrate While You Develop Hotstar App Clone
The Hotstar clone app is defined by the features and functionalities it would offer. Looking at the number of users of Hotstar and the engagement it receives from its users is great.
It would be safe to say that the features and functionalities provided by the Hotstar app are really good and are working great for the users. Here is the list of the top 15 features you need to consider while developing a Hotstar app or an alternative to Hotstar.
☛ Video Library
As the Hotstar clone app would serve as an on-demand video streaming app, thus it is natural that it should have a rich and attractive video library filled with entertaining content for all age groups. It would be best to consider making two pages in your Hotstar design as one for the kids, where all the cartoons, anime shows, movies, and other content are shown.
On the other hand, the other video library would have appropriate content for teenagers. Your alternative to Hotstar should also have movies and series for adults. The app should also promote sports-related and political content. You should also make a separate video library for the users who love watching drama and daily soaps.
☛ Multiple Language Support
Hotstar API GitHub supports nine distinct languages. If you want people to spend more time on your app and watch content at their convenience, you should add content that supports more than one language.
As Hindi and English are the main two languages thus, your content should be available in Hindi, English, and other regional languages. With the help of multiple language support, you get to reach out to a wide audience.
☛ Search And Explore Options
To provide users with a better experience, you should consider making different genres of videos as your Hotstar clone app should provide users with different content options like live videos, movies, series, short stories, kids, and many more.
Furthermore, these options can be divided by genres and moods. Therefore, it will make it much more convenient for users to choose something interesting to their taste.
☛ Multiple Screen Mirroring
The feature of multiple screen mirroring will enable users to watch videos on television, iPad, laptop, and several other devices. It is a useful feature for users to use the services from whichever device they would prefer. Integrating this feature in your Hotstar clone app will allow you to target many visitors for your app.
☛ Reporting Feature
When users stream a video, watch it, and like it, all the data is stored in the database. This feature of storing the data is known as the reporting feature. With the help of a reporting feature, you can have in-built analytics. These analytics will help you understand users’ tastes better and thus personalize their user’s app experience.
☛ Payment Options
It is significant to integrate various payment gateway options while you develop the Hotstar app. As with these payment gateway options, you will receive your payments for the subscriptions. The user would like your app and would invest in it further would buy the premium version. Thus it is required to integrate all the basic and well-known payment gateway options.
☛ User Profile
The user profile feature allows users to create and manage their profile details like name, gender, age, avatar, watchlist, payment options, and several other things. If the app subscription includes more than one user, you can make various profiles, and your app permits several users.
☛ Push Notifications
The push notifications integration will notify your users that you have added new videos and movies to the app. These push notification features will boost the click rate of the video and help you boost the revenue.
The push notifications can also be used as a great reminder tool. They will send periodic reminders for the upcoming series or remind the users to finish their left video in the middle. There are loads of possibilities in this feature.
☛ Watchlist
While you develop a Hotstar app, you should make space to make a playlist of selected videos. This customized playlist of users is known as a watchlist. A watchlist enables users to team the videos they want to watch or are interested in. There are very few possibilities when a user may not want to start something while streaming something else. Thus, for their convenience, they can add all the videos they like to the watchlist to stream them later.
☛ Social Sign-in
It is very hard to remember all the IDs and passwords, and your motive should be to develop a Hotstar app that is engaging and user-friendly. Thus the integration of the social sign-in feature allows users to sign in a few seconds, and the ID password will also remain the same for social media platforms and streaming platforms. It will assist the sign-in process and, therefore, will improvise the user experience.
☛ Privacy Settings
There are times when users don’t wish to share their watchlist or recently watched videos with their family and friends. Thus to handle this situation, you should integrate privacy settings for the account holders. All the subscribers should be allowed to add a password to their profile so that no one else can access it without permission.
☛ Buffering Free Broadcast
Buffering is one of the worst kinds of suffering as users have to wait to watch their favorite videos or shows. It can also be caused due to unstable internet connectivity, but in that case, the situation can be managed by simply degrading the quality of the video. As it will not let the video buffer and thus the user will be able to watch the videos even when their connectivity is poor, and the wifi is slow.
☛ Download And Watch Offline
There is no requirement to curb your app’s working to online mode. To provide your users with a better experience, this feature will enable them to download the videos they wish to stream. Thus, they can also look at the downloaded videos when they prefer to watch them without any connection.
☛ HD Videos Access
When you stream videos on Disney+ & Hotstar, users can stream the content in crystal clear quality. It allures the users and keeps them engaged in the app. The streaming quality of the video matters a lot in the experience. Thus all of the videos should be broadcasted in HD quality. The least streaming quality should be 720p, and nothing below this mark will perform.
☛ Original Content
The feature of original content sets Disney+ & Hotstar distinct from all the other on-demand video streaming platforms. The original content shown on Hotstar is known as Hotstar specials. The original content of Disney Plus is referred to as Disney+ originals.
All the videos of Disney originals and Hotstar specials cannot be accessed anywhere else. Thus if someone desires to watch the original content, the only option is to install the streaming services and get their subscription.
Read more on cost to develop an app like Netflix
Team Required to Develop Hotstar App
Hotstar app development is not an effortless task. It would be best to have a good app development team and advanced technologies to develop a good on-demand video streaming platform like Disney+ & Hotstar. It is an effort of a lot of proper teamwork and technical knowledge. So here is all you need to develop a Hotstar app.
App development team required to develop the Hotstar app:
- Android developer
- Project manager
- iOS developer
- Back-end developer
- Business analyst
- QA engineer
- UI/UX designer
What Would Be the Cost to Develop a Hotstar App Clone?
If you are looking forward to developing the Hotstar app, then it could cost you about $20,000 to $30,000 for a single platform, be it Android or iOS, with all the basic features. However, if you want to incorporate advanced features and technologies and develop alternatives to Hotstar for multiple platforms, the cost can range between $60,000 to $70,000.
These are some of the factors that majorly affect the app development cost of the Hotstar clone app:
☛ App Platform
The app development cost for developing an app for Android is less in comparison to iOS. If you are going for a single platform, the cost will be lower, but if you want to develop an app for both platforms, the cost will certainly increase.
☛ App Design
The app designers need to put their knowledge and creativity at work while developing Hotstar design as the design requires it to be both attractive and user-friendly. So if you want to build a basic design, the cost will be less, but if you want a unique but attractive design and more creative work, the development cost will be more.
☛ Development Team
If you are convinced to develop a Hotstar app in-house, you must hire experts to ensure an appropriate development process. In such a case, you have to pay for the team members and the hiring process.
Thus it can affect the cost to a large extent. On the other hand, If you merely hire a custom android app development company, you can outsource all the development work. Thus with this, you have to pay the stubborn fee. Thus it could be a cost-effective alternative.
☛ App Features
Every app feature and functionality requires proper time and effort to get developed. Thus each of the features has its own cost. Making an app with basic features won’t cost more, but the price will shoot up as soon as you add some advanced features to the list. Therefore the features and functionalities integrated into the app affect the app development cost to a large extent.
Technology Stack to Develop Hotstar App
- Hosting: Akamai Intelligent platform
- Design: Google Fonts, Weebly
- Storage: MongoDB, AWS, MySQL
- Analytics: Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, Clever Tap
- Productivity: GSuite
- Database and Cloud service: Amazon EC2, Cassandra, Oracle, Amazon S3, Atlas-DB
- Language And Frameworks: Java, HTML5, JavaScript, Python, Swift, Gradle, Kotlin, Codeigniter, Retrofit
Conclusion
2020-21 is the appropriate time to have a thought about developing an on-demand video streaming app. During COVID-19, video streaming platforms took a big lapse and gained a lot of popularity. People used to invest a lot of time watching good quality entertainment content, and people love streaming awesome quality content.
Thus it is a great opportunity for you to develop a Hotstar app. If you want to brainstorm some ideas and want more clarity, then reach out to top mobile application development services as they can guide you with their custom-made solutions. They can be a great help to develop an alluring, user-friendly, and profit-making video streaming platform.
