Mobile App Development

First question: do you need an app?

Before any code, we help you answer this honestly, because an app costs more to build and to keep running than a website. An app is usually worth it when your users need:

• Push notifications that reach them reliably, such as order updates, reminders or alerts.
• Offline use, for people working in places with poor signal.
• Device hardware such as the camera, Bluetooth, location in the background or sensors.
• Frequent, repeated use, where an icon on the home screen and a signed-in session save real time.

If people mainly browse, book or buy, a responsive web app is often cheaper, reaches everyone through a link, and needs no store approval. Our guide Mobile app or web app? How to decide walks through the choice in detail, and web application development explains the web route.

Native or cross-platform?

There are two main ways to build for iPhone and Android:

• Native: a separate app for each platform, written with Apple's and Google's own tools (Swift for iOS, Kotlin for Android). It gives the most direct access to new platform features and the most control over performance, at the cost of two codebases.
• Cross-platform: one shared codebase that produces both apps, using a toolkit such as React Native or Flutter. For most business apps (accounts, lists, forms, maps, payments, notifications) this is the sensible choice: one team, one set of features, both stores.

We recommend native when the app depends heavily on platform-specific features or demanding graphics, and cross-platform when the main goal is to get a well-made app to both platforms with one budget. We will explain the reasoning for your case rather than defaulting to one camp.

An app is a system, not just screens

The part you see on the phone is usually the smaller half of the work. Behind most apps there is:

• User accounts: sign-up, sign-in, password reset, and often sign in with Apple or Google.
• An API: the server the app talks to for its data. We design it so a website or a partner system can use the same API later.
• A database: where users, content and activity are stored securely.
• Push notifications: sent through Apple's and Google's notification services, triggered by events in your system.
• An admin dashboard: the web screens your team uses to manage content, users and orders without needing a developer.

We build these together with the app, so one team is responsible for the whole system and the pieces are designed to fit.

Features that shape the build

Some features change the size of a project more than they appear to. It helps to know early whether you need them:

• Offline mode: storing data on the device and syncing it later, including what happens when two people change the same thing.
• Payments: digital goods and subscriptions sold inside an app generally have to use Apple's and Google's in-app purchase systems, while physical goods and services can use a regular payment provider. The store rules decide which applies.
• Real-time features: chat, live tracking or live updates need a server connection designed for it.
• Hardware and connected devices: Bluetooth pairing with a product is a project of its own. See IoT product development.
• Several user types: customer and staff versions of the same app, with different permissions.

For what these choices mean for the budget, our guide How much does a website cost? explains how scope drives a quote; the same factors apply to apps.

Publishing to the App Store and Google Play

Both stores review apps before they appear, and both have rules about privacy, payments, content and user accounts. Apple's App Review Guidelines and Google's Developer Program Policies are the references. A few practical points:

• The apps should be published under your own developer accounts, so the listing and its reviews belong to your business.
• You need a privacy policy, and both stores ask you to declare what data the app collects and why.
• If users can create an account in the app, Apple requires that they can also delete it from within the app.
• Reviews usually take a short time but can take longer, and a rejection means a fix and a resubmission, so we plan launch dates with room for it.

How the project runs

1. Discovery: who the users are, what they need to do, and whether an app is the right answer.
2. Scope the first version: the smallest set of features that makes the app useful on its own.
3. Design: the key screens as a clickable prototype you can try on your own phone.
4. Build: the app, API and admin dashboard in short cycles, with test builds installed on your devices along the way.
5. Test: on a range of real iPhone and Android devices and screen sizes.
6. Publish: store listings, screenshots, privacy declarations and submission for review.

After launch

Apps need ongoing care. Apple and Google release new operating system versions every year, and the stores raise their minimum requirements over time, so an app that is never updated eventually stops being accepted or stops working well. Plan for regular updates, crash monitoring and keeping the backend's servers and dependencies up to date, just as you would for a website. We look after the backend on servers we manage, the same way we care for the websites we host.

Frequently asked questions

Should we build for iPhone or Android first?

Look at your own customers: which phones they use matters more than national averages. With a cross-platform toolkit the question mostly disappears, because both apps come from one codebase and can launch together.

Can our existing website and the app share data?

Yes, if they talk to the same backend. When we build an app for a business that already has a website or web application, we usually connect both to one API so customers see the same account and orders everywhere.

Can the app work without an internet connection?

It can, but offline support has to be designed in: deciding which data is stored on the device, and how changes are synced and merged when the connection returns. It is one of the features worth deciding on early.

Can you take over an app someone else built?

Yes. We start by reviewing the code, the backend, the store accounts and the build setup, then tell you plainly what is in good shape and what needs attention first, such as outdated dependencies or a build that no longer meets store requirements.

Who publishes the app in the stores?

We handle the submission, but the app should be listed under your own Apple and Google developer accounts. That way the app, its reviews and its download history belong to your business.