Native App, Hybrid App, or Progressive Web App: Which Should You Build?

"We need an app" is a common request, but the right kind of app depends heavily on what the app needs to do and who's using it.

A native app (built separately for Android and iOS) gives you the best performance and the deepest access to device features -- camera, notifications, offline storage, background processing. This is the right choice for apps with heavy functionality, frequent use, or a need to feel completely seamless, like a delivery app or a banking app. The trade-off is cost and time: you're effectively building two applications, or one using a cross-platform framework that still needs platform-specific testing.

A hybrid app, built with a single codebase that runs on both platforms, is faster and cheaper to build and maintain, and is a good fit for most business apps that don't need extreme performance or deep device integration -- a loyalty app, a booking app, an internal tool for your team.

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a website that behaves like an app -- it can be added to a home screen, work offline to some extent, and send notifications, without needing an app store listing at all. For many small and mid-sized businesses, a PWA delivers 80% of what an app "feels like" to a customer at a fraction of the cost, with no app store approval process to navigate.

The honest first question isn't "native or hybrid" -- it's whether you need an app at all, or whether a fast, mobile-optimised website would achieve the same business goal without the ongoing cost of app store maintenance and updates.