Peter, finally getting down with developing the web app for his project, was frustrated and a bit confused for the choice of platform for his mobile app development. As a startup founder, he knew that he doesn’t have the luxury of time, money, and available resources to make any mistake.

His team was divided. Few wanted to pursue native platforms for app development. Peter knew that following this path will cost him money. He was of the opinion to pursue a simpler and cheaper approach to building the first versions of his platform.

The matter was further complicated by the lack of availability of developers of each platform. Either the resources were too expensive or simply not available.

So he turned to the option of hiring a consultant to help him with the process. He talked to us with three months left to the launch of his platform. He was divided over the cross-platform development or the native one. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to hire a big team. He was also wary of the fact that in case of a failure he will have to let go of the resources.

Web vs Hybrid vs Native Mobile App Development

When we talked, he sounded worried and vented out his frustration with his team and the situation he is in. We had a lengthy discussion about the pros of cons of each approach — web app vs native vs hybrid. Follow the link to read more about each approach. 

After all the discussion, we presented to him with the option of utilizing platforms like React Native or Xamarin to build the apps for both iOS and Android stores. Such platforms have the ability to build best in class and performing native app.

Since his backend was in C# and his existing resources were much comfortable with it, we opted for Xamarin.

He listened and agreed.

The project was completed with 3 months, delivering both versions of apps. The saving of just managing one code base and hiring one set of skills was immense. This approach resulted in 65% saving over the native development.

More Benefits

The biggest saving came in terms of working in the same tech stack and evolving the product without worrying much about the apps. The major releases were easily handled by just updating one code base and fixing the user interfaces. This resulted in a seamless evolution of web and apps simultaneously.

Later once the project was handed over to him, he appreciated the fact that he only had to hire two resources to evolve and maintain the project. That too was a 100% reduction in future costs of maintaining a single code base and the need to hire fewer resources.

Summing Up:

Peter, did manage to get almost the same performance from using this approach to app development. Minimal to almost negligible performance was offset by the huge cost savings of time and Human Resources.

I had a call with him a few days back and he was super happy about his choice. He also remarked that with the evolution of framework (Xamarin), he keeps on adding more capabilities to his apps.

To find me, visit. App2Dev.com