A satellite view of PWAs and why you should build them instead of an app
A progressive web app — Cheap to develop, tiny file size, no app stores
The problems of Native apps
App stores
They take a percentage cut (15% typically), can have questionable ranking and reviews, and can require users to jump through multiple hoops to download the app.
PWAs are websites that work on mobile and can be downloaded from that website on the users browser — in one click on Android.
File size
Users will review and uninstall the largest apps on their phone. Native apps are always large as they have to have someway of executing code. PWAs instead just use the users browser instead.
Development costs — THE REAL ONE
Typically if you are building an app you need 3 teams — web, android and iOS. Hence a large cost.
They typically are using different languages and hence you don’t have flexibility in your teams to react to workloads.
Not only that, but effort is regularly duplicated as you are design for mobile on the native app and the website.
And in 99% of cases, the native app you build doesn’t do anything that couldn’t also be done on a website.
PWAs are one code base, one language, one team and suitable for most applications.
Best use case of PWAs
If you have a website or webapp and you plan to build an app that will do the same things — you should stop now and use a PWA.
Pinterest, Uber, Trivago are just some name that use PWAs in this way.
Just to drill the point home, I am not going to mention any more. This alone should convince you!
To see more examples of PWAs in the wild click below
Or check out my PWA: everyhour.xyz
