Go Native ? Or Progressive Web App?

July 7, 2019

When it comes to designing and buidling mobile apps for our customers there are a variety of tools and techniques we have in our locker; each comes with their own set of pro's and con's. For today's blog we are going to concentrate on why at Infraweb we have started to concentrate on progressive web app development over native app's.

What is a native mobile app?

A native mobile app is coded in a specific programming language to target a specific operating system. If you are developing a native Android app you need to know Java, whilst Objective C is used for iOS native applications. The characteristics of native mobile apps provide the end user with a high degree of reliability, are fast, have access to devices such as camera and contacts, and can be used without an internet connection, often referred to as offline.

However, this type of app is expensive to develop because it is created to support one type of operating system, forcing the business to creates multiple versions of the same app to work on different platforms - the overhead is substantial.

What is a progressive web app?

Progressive Web applications(PWA) are web applications that load like regular web pages or websites but can offer the user additional mobile functionality, such as push notifications, the ability to work offline when there's no internet, and access to other device hardware that was traditionally available only to native mobile applications.

Progressive web application technology is maturing rapidly and is now considered a viable alternative to developing native apps. They offer a single shared code base that works with minimal effort across different mobile platforms, therefore reducing cost and time to market for customers.

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What does that mean for our customers?

We don't make a decision upfront. We kick off with a detailed requirements phase engaging our customers to make sure we have the evidence to make the best decision for the business, that could be native or a PWA.

In recent years we have seen a trend heading towards PWA's mainly due to the advances in technology. To prepare for this our core development team have focused on using thier R & D time to experiment with new PWA frameworks such as Ionic, Reaact and Vue. There have been up and downs, but we have learnt a lot in the past few months and can see real benefits in adopting PWA's going forward.


So, if you are starting to think about mobile apps or mobile software development please get in touch today and we can discuss your requirements.

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