A mobile app development company that will tell you when you do not need an app.
Most businesses asking for an app want something a good mobile website would do better and cheaper. An app earns its place when it needs the device: push notifications people will actually enable, offline use, the camera, background location, or a payment flow that benefits from being native. If your app is a wrapper around pages a browser could show, it will cost more to build, more to maintain, and it starts with the requirement that someone install it first. We will say so on the first call.
When an app is the right answer
Four honest tests. If none apply, we will recommend a mobile site and save you the budget.
Does it need the device?
- App justified
- Camera, offline, background location, push
- Website is enough
- None of these
How often will it be used?
- App justified
- Weekly or more
- Website is enough
- Occasionally
Who installs it?
- App justified
- Existing customers with a reason
- Website is enough
- New visitors who have never heard of you
What does it replace?
- App justified
- A slow manual process
- Website is enough
- A page they could just visit
How we build
Flutter, one codebase
Android and iOS from a single codebase. Roughly 60 per cent of the cost of building both natively, and a single place to fix a bug rather than two that drift apart.
Built for real network conditions
Tested on throttled connections and mid-range Android devices, not on flagship phones on office wifi. That is what most of your users actually have.
Offline behaviour decided deliberately
What works with no signal, what queues, and what fails with a clear message. Apps that simply spin forever on a bad connection are the most common complaint in store reviews.
Store submission handled
Play Store and App Store listings, screenshots, privacy declarations and the review process. First submissions are commonly rejected for reasons nobody warns you about; we deal with that.
Analytics from day one
Which screens people reach, where they drop out, which version they are running. Without this you are guessing about your own product.
A maintenance plan, agreed upfront
Both platforms change every year and an unmaintained app breaks. We tell you what ongoing costs look like before you commit, rather than after.
We build cross-platform apps in Flutter or React Native, and native apps in Swift and Kotlin when a project needs deeper access to the device. Back ends usually run on Node.js or Firebase. Store listings are written for App Store and Google Play search as part of the launch, because an app nobody can find in the store has not really launched.
How an app gets built
Shipped in slices. An app built for nine months before anyone outside the team opens it is a bet, not a project.
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Scope the first version
The smallest app worth putting in a store. Everything else goes on a list for later, which is how a first release happens at all.
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Design the flows
Screens and states, including the ones nobody enjoys designing: empty, offline, loading and error.
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Build and test on real devices
One codebase for Android and iOS, tested on the hardware and the network conditions your users actually have.
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A closed beta before the store sees it
TestFlight on iOS and an internal track on Android, with real users on their own devices and their own connections. Crashes that never appear in testing appear here, which is a much cheaper place to find them than in a public review.
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Store submission
Listing, screenshots, privacy declarations and review. Rejections are normal, handled rather than treated as a surprise.
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After launch
Crash reporting and the first round of fixes, because the first real week always finds something testing did not.
App questions
How much does an app cost?
Quoted per project, because the range is genuinely enormous. A simple app with a handful of screens and a login is a very different job from something with payments, real-time data and offline sync. We scope it properly and give you one number before development starts.
How long does it take?
A straightforward app is typically twelve to sixteen weeks including store submission. The review process alone can take one to two weeks per platform, and a rejection restarts that clock, so plan launch dates with slack.
Flutter or native?
Flutter for almost everything, because one codebase for both platforms is a large saving in build and maintenance. Native is worth it when you need deep platform integration, heavy graphics, or the last few per cent of performance. We will tell you which case you are in.
Do I need to maintain it after launch?
Yes, and anyone who says otherwise is setting you up. Android and iOS both ship breaking changes annually, and stores enforce new requirements on a schedule. Budget for maintenance from the start rather than discovering it when the app stops working.
Related services
Tell us what the app would do
We will tell you honestly whether it needs to be an app, and what it would cost either way.