Bike Rental Software: What Do You Need For E-bike Sharing Business and How Much Does It Cost?

E-bikes are a popular way to get around, especially in big cities where there is a lot of traffic and parking problems. Along with the popularity of this healthy mode of transport, the demand for e-bike rentals has increased. E-bike is a fairly bulky thing, which should be allocated a place for storage. In addition, if a person is going to ride far from home, it is sometimes difficult to get the bike to the place.

Much more convenient and easier to take it to the point of rental. Such points exist in all large and medium-sized cities. However, often potential entrepreneurs are discouraged by a lack of understanding of how to organize the software part of this business. In this article, we will look at what bike rental software is, what functions it performs, and what kind of bike rental software you need to start this business.

Bike rental software: What Is It?

As the name suggests, bike rental software is a set of solutions needed to run an e-bike rental business. If the vehicles are the body of your bike rental business then the bike rental software is the brain. As a rule, this software suite consists of:

• Client application
• CRM for management

The first is responsible for the interaction of customers with the e-bikes and includes functionality for unlocking the vehicle, the payment options, and other functions that your customers need. The second is a control panel for the managers of your company. It includes functionality for tracking electric bikes, monitoring their condition, and other features needed to manage your fleet. Let's take a closer look at each of these types of bike rental software.

What Software Do You Need For E-bike Sharing Business

As mentioned above, you need a client application for mobile devices and bike rental software for managers to run your business. What features should these types of bike rental software have?

Smart locking

If your app has an unlock system, it should also have a locking system. This bike rental software functionality allows users to lock the bike at the destination so that another customer can pick it up.

Payment systems

A true quality bike rental software should have at least two payment systems on board. It would be frustrating if a user already decides to use your service but can't do so simply because they don't have the ability to pay for it. Particular attention must be paid to security when integrating a payment system.

This is the main functionality of bike rental software for users. In addition to this, the application can include the following features from the list at your discretion.

• registration/authorization
• map with the position of bikes
• bike status and information on the map
• bike rent for the trip
• personal account
• travel history
• balance
• promo codes
• referral program
• messages (incoming notifications and newsletters)
• settings (password, speed limited login mode)
• info page and feedback form

Bike rental software for managers

No less important for the bike rental software is the management CRM which allows you to control all aspects of the business. Its main functions are tracking the vehicles’ status, statistics, etc. Also, a very important part of the bike rental software is the analytics module.

It allows you to track the efficiency of bike placement on the map. This feature of bike rental software allows you to see which routes bring income to the company and which do not. The analytics module allows you to effectively place e-bikes so they bring in the maximum amount of revenue.

In total, the functionality of the manager bike rental software is as follows:

• user management
• employee rights setup
• adding devices, editing, viewing the history of rides and renting
• creation of territories for individual cities, districts of cities, creation of traffic zones in these territories
• bike battery management
• battery replacement
• creation of promo codes
• newsletters
• editing the text content of the application
• settings
• franchise owner feedback
• statistics

How Much Does Bike Sharing Software Cost?

In fact, this is quite an individual question and it strongly depends on what kind of functionality you need. Also, the price of bike rental software depends a lot on whether you choose to subscribe to a franchise application, or whether you decide to develop your own custom bike rental software.

Whichever option you choose, remember the main thing: it's best to contact teams that already have experience developing bike rental software. It is not only about the experience, as some blocks of the software shell can be integrated from one application to another without any extra work. This makes the development of each subsequent bike rental software cheaper, which is more profitable for you as a customer. Now let's calculate the costs of each option using bike rental software from RexSoft as an example.

Bike rental software franchise

The fastest, easiest, and cheapest way to own a bike rental software is to buy an electric bike rental franchise. In this case, the business owner pays a one-time connection fee as well as a monthly subscription fee. The amount may vary depending on the number of bikes and the functionality of the bike rental software.

The connection fee can cost $5,000 to $7,000, and the monthly subscription fee for an electric bike business with 50 bikes would be $300 per month. You can see more details in the table below.

For this money, you’ll get access to customer and manager bike rental software, customized to your needs with the design and identity of your brand.

Custom e-bike rental software development

You may also order the development of fully custom software solutions for bike rental. This means you own the software and you only pay for it once. At the same time, the initial investment is much more substantial. The final price tag will depend on the time spent and the cost of specialists’ work. In particular, the time spent on the development of bike rental software will look something like this:

• Design - 80h;
• Application development - 360h;
• Back-end development/App API - 280h;
• Super Admin CMS - 140h;
• Device API - 160h.

In total, bike rental software development takes about 1020 hours. So, if you have ordered bike rental software development from the USA with an average specialist rate of $75/h, then bike rental software development will cost you around $76,800. At the same time, there is a way to reduce the cost by almost half. For example, if you order bike rental software development in Ukraine with an average rate of $40/h, then the price tag will be reduced to $40,800.

***

It is assumed that in the near future the market for bike rentals will only grow, and this is due to many reasons. Firstly, it is quite easy and quick to open such a business. Secondly, the financial startup may seem quite high, but it is possible to use a franchise. Thirdly, the project pays off well, and there is no need to spend time and money on staff training. Having the best bike rental software and a reliable partner to help with the purchase of vehicles payback will only be a matter of short-term perspective. Contact RexSoft now and we will advise you on all aspects of bike rental software and other nuances of this business.