How to scale up your mobile app to manage millions of users: 4 tips for success

Building an app that can scale to meet the demands placed upon it is important, especially if you want to be ready for the possibility of a sudden spike in user interest.

This is not always easy, but with enough planning and the right strategies, it should be achievable. Let’s go over some top tips to scale up your mobile app without hitting avoidable bottlenecks.

The importance of load testing

More than anything else, if your app is hit with heavy loads and you have not prepared for this, performance will suffer, along with the quality of the user experience.

It is not just about how quickly the app responds to user inputs and requests, although this is obviously a big part of why load testing is important.

It is also about looking out for any unforeseen bugs and other issues which only crop up when the load being shouldered by the app passes a certain point.

You should aim to load test API calls and factor in any other aspects of an app which will need to be resilient enough to deal with the duties that they are tasked with during peak periods of use, whether that might be a third party chatbot or any other external integration you have embraced.

Bear in mind that the point of load testing is not to push the app beyond the parameters which it is designed to handle; that’s a job of stress testing. Instead, load testing is about ensuring that the app is up to spec, and will function normally when it is hit by the loads you are anticipating.

The power of the cloud

If you are still reliant in part on in-house hardware to host the underpinnings of your app, then it is unlikely you will have the resources or the budget to continue to handle everything on-site if you want to scale up the number of simultaneous users it can support.

This is where the cloud comes into play, both in terms of long-term planning for gradual scaling, and for accommodating any seasonal spikes in usage which are likely to ebb away, depending on the industry you occupy.

Adopting a hybrid hosting system which combines internal infrastructure with external hosting for this immediate yet affordable scalability is sensible in this scenario.

Additionally, cloud platforms like AWS and others are well suited to scaling, with the ability to implement this automatically in many cases.

Obviously you need to set this up in preparation for a sudden influx of users, but once the tools and safeguards are in place, scalability should be able to occur without the need for direct human intervention.

The influence of accessibility

You need to remember that your app will need to work consistently and perform flawlessly on an array of different devices.

As such your scalability planning and testing has to encompass whichever operating systems and hardware setups are likely to run it, so that performance issues can be ironed out prior to launch, rather than in a rush afterwards.

The more people can access and enjoy your app, the more its scalability will benefit them, and the more its growth will be perpetuated.

The role of marketing

Lastly, it would be churlish to suggest that every app which now has millions of users was able to reach this pinnacle on its own merits, and with the assistance of organic word of mouth recommendations.

This does happen from time to time, but the apps which gain traction and retain their place in the spotlight only do so if they are marketed and promoted in the right way.

Catering to audiences on as many devices and platforms as possible is helpful as a starting point. You also need to make impactful use of digital advertising ecosystems, both on search engines and social media, to promote your app to the right audience.

There is no point having an app which is capable of scaling up, but which doesn’t have the enthusiastic and thriving user base to justify all your hard work. Hopefully you now have everything you need to achieve this and more.