Native, Cross-Platform or Web App: Which One Do You Need?

The three options, one sentence each

There are many names, but in practice there are three paths:

• Native app: built separately for iOS and for Android, each with Apple’s and Google’s own tools. That’s two apps, with two codebases.
• Cross-platform app: one codebase that produces both the iOS and the Android app. Both are published in the stores like any other app. React Native and Flutter are well-known examples.
• Web app (or PWA): runs in the browser, on phones and computers. A PWA is a web app that can be installed on the home screen and look like an app. It doesn’t go through the stores.

What about hybrid apps?

“Hybrid” usually means a web app wrapped inside an app, so it can be published in the stores. Tools like Ionic or Capacitor do this. It makes sense if you already have a web app and want to be in the stores quickly.

The catch is that inside, it’s still a website: you notice it in the smoothness and in how it responds to touch. Today, when someone says “hybrid”, they often mean cross-platform. It’s worth asking which of the two you’re being offered.

Performance and feel

This is the difference you notice most when using the app.

• Native: the smoothest. Animations, scrolling and gestures behave exactly like the rest of the phone.
• Cross-platform: in a business app (accounts, lists, forms, payments), most users can’t tell the difference. Where it can show is in apps with heavy animation or demanding graphics.
• Web: depends on the browser. For checking, booking or managing things it works well. For something used many times a day with gestures, it falls short.

Phone features

This is the most important difference, and usually the deciding one.

• Native: access to everything: Bluetooth, NFC, advanced camera, background location, widgets, Apple Watch, and every new iOS and Android feature on release day.
• Cross-platform: access to almost everything, through modules. If something is missing, that part can be written in native code. New system features sometimes take a while to arrive.
• Web: camera, location and notifications, yes. On iPhone, notifications only work if the user installs the web app on the home screen. Bluetooth, NFC and background work, generally no.

Cost and timeline

Without going into figures (they’re in how much it costs to build an app), the order is almost always the same:

• Web: the least expensive. One application for phones and computers, with no store review.
• Cross-platform: less than two native apps, because most of the code is written once.
• Native: the most expensive, because it’s two apps. If you only need one platform (say, iOS only for your team), the gap shrinks.

Maintenance and updates

An app isn’t finished when it’s published. New versions of iOS and Android come out every year, and the app has to keep up.

With two native apps, every change is made twice. With cross-platform, almost always once. With a web app, once, and it reaches every user immediately, without waiting for them to update from the store or for Apple or Google to review the new version.

Also ask who will maintain it. If your team already works with web technology, a web app or a cross-platform app will be closer to what they know than two native apps.

The app stores: visibility and rules

Being in the App Store and Google Play has advantages: people search there, trust what they install from there, and the icon stays on their phone.

It also has rules: every version goes through review, and if you sell digital content inside the app, Apple and Google take a percentage. A web app avoids all of that, but it doesn’t appear in the stores either: users have to reach it from your website, a link or a QR code.

Five questions to decide

Answer these before asking for quotes. They usually make the decision fairly clear:

1. What does it need from the phone? If the answer includes Bluetooth, NFC, background work or advanced camera, rule out the web.
2. Do your users expect to find it in the App Store or Google Play? For customers, almost always. For your own team, often it doesn’t matter.
3. How many times a day will it be used? A tool opened every day deserves to feel like an app. One checked now and then, less so.
4. Do you need iOS and Android from the start? If yes, cross-platform is usually the most efficient. If only one, native costs less than you’d think.
5. Who will maintain it in two years? Choose something that team can look after.

It isn’t forever

Many apps start as a web app to test the idea, and become an app once there are users. Others start cross-platform and write only the part that needs it in native code.

What matters is that the backend (accounts, data, payments) is designed to serve both. Then moving from web to app doesn’t mean starting over. For example, we built a private members’ platform as a native iOS and Android app in four weeks of work, on the same accounts and data as the web.

How we decide at SEIRO

We don’t have a favourite technology to recommend to everyone. We choose per app: what it needs from the phone, how fast it must feel and who will maintain it.

On the first call we recommend one option, with the reasons. And if a web app would do the job for less, we tell you, even if that means a smaller project.

See how we build iOS and Android apps →

Frequently asked questions