Mobile Apps or Web Apps?
[3 key factors in deciding what type of app to build for your business]
Introduction
You are reading the blog because you probably need to have a custom app for your startup or business. You have probably searched the web and come across many options to do so. Now you are wondering which one to choose to build your app. In this blog, we are going to help you answer that question.
About the Author
I am the founder and CTO of Apsy, where we use machine programming to automatically generate repeatable parts of the apps to lower the cost as much as possible. Before Apsy, I worked at the head of engineering a director of digital platforms and senior director of advanced systems leading projects to build apps and digital systems. I am also a Ph.D. student at USC researching machine programming and app theory.
Mobile and Web app differences
Many people want to know which platform is best to build their app. Native apps (iOS or Android) or web apps. What is the difference?
Native apps can be installed on the phone and be launched quickly by tapping on the app icon. They could work without access to the internet and access native phone features like face recognition, NFC, push notification, and integrated Ads.
On the other side, you can open web apps using URLs in the browser, or as progressive web apps, you can bookmark after the first opened in the browser. The main advantage of the web app is that the user does not need to find and install the app from the app store. The last advantage is probably the most crucial deciding factor for a web app compared with the web.
If you are building an app that does not need to access native phone capabilities and you are at the stage of business to find more users and grow, it would be easier to ask them to tap on a URL to see your web app rather than installing your mobile app.
Web or mobile?
There is a specific way to share more than 80% of the app code across the web and mobile apps. The question of “web or mobile” is mute.
That has several key benefits:
- Rather than paying or waiting twice to create both iOS and Android, you only do 1.2 times — since 80% of the code will be shared.
- Your web and mobile experience will be identical, and users do not need to get used to two different user interfaces.
- You don’t need to look for two different dev shops to build your apps.
So what is the reason that people don’t do it that way? The answer is technical complexity that arises, and most app builders out there do not have the skillset to handle the complexity or even know how they can do so.
Android or iOS?
There are three popular options to build apps for both in one shot. These platforms called cross-platform include: Xamarin, React Native, and Flutter (introduced by Microsoft, Facebook, and Google, respectively.)
Therefore this question is mute as well.
All-in-one: Web, Android, and iOS, possible?
Yes! If done correctly, one single codebase can serve all three platforms, saving you 180% of the cost of building each separately.
As I explained in the blog, there are not three key factors. All you need to do is find an app developer who knows how to do the all-in-one magic!
