What Most Developers Will Never Tell Their Clients
Developers like to build native Apps for their clients. And websites. And back end stuff. Then charge lots to maintain all these different things. They have done it that way for ages and they have the skills and experience to do it, plus the ongoing support and development is a big part of their business model, often wrapped up in a Software As a Service agreement (SaaS).
But.
Right now it is business suicide to build Apps. You will lose your audience and be bled dry keeping the multiple code bases up to date. The only way to survive and thrive is to build cross platform Web Apps using a single code base. Here’s why:
•Users don’t like downloading native Apps — the average smartphone user now downloads zero Apps per month
•A good Web App replaces your website which you need to develop anyhow
•The less code the better. Over 5 years, the cost of maintaining digital services typically exceeds the initial development
•There are 5 versions of Android in regular use and 3 of iOS, when you include your website you’ll have 9 code bases to maintain!
•If you must have native Apps, we’ll write them using React Native and share over 95% of the code with the Web App, written using React
•These days, a good Web App is indistinguishable from a native App
- The world lives and breathes Javascript which is the coding language of Web Apps, but with Node.js it can also be used for all the back end stuff
If your current developer disagrees, fire them and go for a more agile developer. The software industry is being disrupted but many developers are hanging on to their old practices and treating clients like cash machines. Needless to say, we don’t do that at Six Trends.
