How to Choose the Right Technology for Your Mobile App?

Choosing the right tech stack will determine whether your app delivers a seamless user experience for your clients, remains adaptable as your business grows, and stays within budget. The wrong choice? It can lead to performance bottlenecks, customer dissatisfaction, and costly overhauls.

The good news is that with the right insights, you can make an informed decision that meets your immediate needs and paves the way for long-term growth. Let's dive deep into why your choice of mobile technology matters – and how you can ensure it aligns with your business objectives.

The importance of choosing the right mobile app technology

When deciding on the technology that will power your mobile applications, you’re making a strategic investment that will affect everything from user engagement to your bottom line. Here’s why it matters.

1. Maximizing performance 

Mobile users want their apps to be fast and efficient. The speed and responsiveness of your app depend largely on the underlying technology; native stacks are typically optimized for performance on specific platforms (iOS or Android), while specific cross-platform tools can offer native-like performance at a lower cost.

2. Ensuring scalability

You’re not just building an app for now; you’re building for tomorrow. As your business grows, so should your digital product.

Choosing a mobile app technology stack that allows easy updates and the ability to add new features without disrupting user experience is crucial. Most importantly, making the right choice early on will allow for easier scaling without completely overhauling the app's architecture.

3. Five-star user experience 

Today's digital products need to be user-centric first and foremost. If an app doesn’t load quickly, feels sluggish, or lacks the expected functionality, users may quickly abandon it.   Native apps are often said to deliver the smoothest and most polished interactions; on the other hand, with the right cross-platform solution, you can get the native feel at a fraction of the cost.

4. Accelerating time to market

If creating a finished product quickly is your priority, then you need to consider it when choosing the tech stack. Some technologies offer faster development cycles than others. Cross-platform solutions allow you to build for multiple platforms simultaneously, speeding up time to market, while native solutions tend to be slower since you’ll be working with separate codebases. 

5. Cutting long-term costs

While initial development costs matter, ongoing maintenance, updates, and scaling shouldn’t be overlooked. Some stacks offer easier ways to update across platforms, while others might require separate updates for each platform, which can increase costs and complexity. If budget is a concern, evaluating the technology is crucial for ensuring your app delivers the results.

Things to consider when choosing your mobile app tech stack

Every project is unique, and the features you plan to have in your app will significantly influence your tech stack selection. Here, you need to answer the question: What does your app need to accomplish? Analyzing the most important factors is the first step to making the right decision.

1. Project complexity and feature requirements

The complexity of your app and its required features will heavily influence your choice of technology.

For highly complex apps, such as those that require extensive use of hardware features (e.g., AR, VR, advanced GPS), native code is necessary. Native technologies, like Swift and Kotlin, will give you great performance when interacting with device features at a deep level, but you don’t need to build the whole app using only native technologies and write the same code twice.

For most business features in the app that involve user interfaces, forms, and data management, cross-platform tools Flutter offer an ideal solution, providing near-native performance with faster development times at a lower cost and the ability to use the native code for hardware integration.

Not all cross-platform technologies allow for integrations like that – you need to look for further guidance to ensure that the technology of your choice can fulfill your native requirements.

To understand the particular needs of your project, it would be highly beneficial to partake in a project scoping workshop.

2. Budget 

Needless to say, cost is one of the top considerations in any development project. Native apps require separate development teams for iOS and Android, which can double the cost of development. Cross-platform frameworks allow you to build once and deploy on both platforms, significantly cutting development and maintenance expenses.

If your budget is limited, but you still want to deliver a strong user experience, a cross-platform solution will help you achieve both goals without the high price tag of native development. 

3. Scalability 

Are you building a minimum viable product (MVP) or a fully-featured app that you plan to scale over time? What are your long-term goals? How would you like your product to evolve? 

These are all the questions that you should answer before making your choice. Native apps give you flexibility and good support for future scalability, especially if your long-term goals include leveraging platform-specific features. On the other hand, cross-platform apps are easier to scale across devices and platforms, especially as cross-platform ecosystems continue to grow. 

Truly powerful cross-platform mobile development frameworks, such as Flutter, give you the ability to start with the mobile interface and scale to tablets, web portals, desktop apps for Windows, MacOS, and Linux, and other devices with CPU and GPU (including info/entertainment systems in cars, airplanes, cruises, etc.).

4. Team expertise

If you have an experienced IT Team already involved in building the backbone of your system with the backend technologies and web portals, you should choose the technology they can quickly master. 

While native technologies are hard to comprehend for typical full-stack, backend, and frontend developers, cross-platform frameworks like Flutter or React Native are more approachable and easier to learn. 

At LeanCode, we have several years of experience in teaching Flutter at the Warsaw University of Technology, and we have our commercial courses for in-house development teams, which help us to explain and introduce Flutter to new organizations in 3-6 weeks, depending on the level of the current expertise. If you have an internal IT Team, they should feel more comfortable with the decision to start creating your new mobile application in Flutter once they understand the Flutter fundamentals. 

That said, if you don’t have a team proficient in a given technology, you can always look for an experienced custom mobile app development company.

Native or cross-platform: which should you choose?

Let’s dive deeper into the specifics of the topic and explore when it’s best to choose native vs cross-platform technologies.

When native development is better

Native development, with Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android, is an excellent choice when:

1. You are building Gaming apps: if your app demands high-performance graphics, real-time processing, or advanced animations, native mobile app development allows you to build an app optimized for each platform.

2. Your target is only One Platform: native apps make perfect sense if you are targeting only one platform for a specific reason, such as when you have a B2B application for your staff that is only used by Android/Apple devices as firmware.

3. Your app is already built native, and you have a native team: when you have a solid, well-trained mobile development team, you don’t experience churn, and you have no budget limitations to keep both teams separate, then it makes perfect sense to keep that strategy and postpone the migration to Flutter or other modern cross-platform solutions.

However, these benefits come at a cost. Native development is more expensive and time-consuming, and maintaining separate codebases for iOS and Android can be resource-intensive.

When cross-platform development is ideal

Cross-platform technologies have evolved rapidly in recent years, and they’re now often the preferred option for businesses looking to launch apps faster and more cost-effectively. A cross-platform solution will be best when:

1. You want faster development and reduced costs: Cross-platform tools like Flutter and React Native allow you to use a single codebase for iOS, Android, and desktop, slashing development times and reducing costs. If time to market is critical, cross-platform is a strong contender.

2. You value consistent UX: With a unified codebase, cross-platform frameworks help deliver a consistent look and feel across both iOS and Android, which is important for maintaining brand consistency.

3. You are looking for high ROI: For businesses building standard apps (like eCommerce or content management apps), cross-platform solutions offer more than enough flexibility and power to meet user needs. Technologies like Flutter offer performance on par with native experience, making them robust options for most business use cases.

If you’re still unsure which would be best for you, it might be a good option to use IT consultancy services and ask experts for their opinions.

Tech stack for native mobile apps 

Set on building native mobile applications? Here’s what you need to know about the technology.

Swift (iOS)

Swift is Apple’s powerful programming language designed for iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS app development. Regarding native app development, it’s the best choice for creating high-performance applications within the Apple ecosystem.

Pros of Swift

• Optimized for the iOS ecosystem: Swift offers tight integration with Apple’s ecosystem, allowing apps to fully utilize system-level optimizations.
• High performance: Swift enables the creation of smooth, responsive apps with little to no lag, making it an ideal choice for performance-intensive applications.
• Long-term viability: Swift is Apple’s preferred language; it will continue to receive updates and support, ensuring your app stays future-proof.

Cons of Swift

• Apple-centric: Swift is designed exclusively for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and related ecosystems, making it not flexible for multi-platform projects. 
• Learning curve: Developers new to the Apple ecosystem may find Swift’s conventions and ecosystem challenging compared to more widely used languages like JavaScript.

Kotlin (Android)

Kotlin is a modern programming language developed by JetBrains, designed to be fully interoperable with Java (the previous preferred language for Android) while providing enhanced features and improved syntax. It’s the official language for Android development.

Pros of Kotlin

• The official Android Language: Kotlin has been Google’s preferred language for Android development since 2017, which means it’s optimized for Android apps and integrates seamlessly with the Android SDK.
• Interoperable with Java: Kotlin is a very easy transition for teams already using Java. It allows for gradual migration and ensures that legacy projects are not rewritten from scratch.
• Less boilerplate code: Kotlin is designed to be concise and expressive, which means developers can write less code and achieve the same results. This makes development faster and code easier to maintain.

Cons of Kotlin

• Android-centric: Like Swift for iOS, Kotlin is tailored specifically for Android development. If you plan to launch an iOS version later, you’ll need to start from scratch or use a cross-platform solution. 
• Limited senior talent pool: The pool of experienced Kotlin developers is still smaller than that of Java developers, potentially leading to higher hiring costs or longer search times for qualified experts.

Tech stack for cross-platform mobile apps

Cross-platform development has come a long way in recent years, with lots of technologies to choose from for your mobile project. Here’s all you need to know about each one of them. 

Flutter

Flutter is Google’s open-source UI toolkit that enables developers to build natively compiled mobile, web, and desktop applications from a single codebase. It’s known for enabling native-like performance and stunning visuals.

Pros of Flutter

• High-performance and custom UIs: Flutter excels in creating highly performant apps with rich, customizable user interfaces. Its engine allows for smooth, fast-rendering apps that feel native, providing a significant advantage over other technologies.
• Single codebase across platforms: With Flutter, businesses can deploy apps across multiple platforms (iOS, Android, web, and desktop) from a unified codebase, significantly reducing development time and costs.
• Growing ecosystem and community support: Flutter’s ecosystem is expanding rapidly, providing mobile app developers with a robust toolkit of libraries and integrations, ensuring that Flutter continues to improve and adapt to industry needs.
• Fast iteration: Flutter’s hot reload feature allows developers to see the results of code changes instantly, speeding up the development process and enabling faster feedback cycles between designers and developers.

Cons of Flutter

• Only recently have there been a few experienced senior Flutter developers. That said, as of 2024, this situation has changed in favor of Flutter, as it is becoming a top-of-the-mind choice for mobile developers migrating to Flutter from Swift, Kotlin, and web technologies.

For a closer look at the pros and cons of Flutter, don’t miss our comprehensive guide.

React Native

React Native is a popular open-source framework developed by Facebook that allows developers to build cross-platform applications using JavaScript and React. Alongside Flutter, it’s currently the most popular cross-platform app development solution. 

Pros of React Native

• Strong community and popularity: React Native boasts a large community and wide adoption, making it easy to find third-party libraries and resources for most common development needs.
• Single codebase across platforms: Like Flutter, React Native allows you to build iOS and Android apps from a single codebase, reducing development time and costs.

Cons of React Native

• Performance limitations: While React Native performs well for many applications, it can struggle with highly complex animations or resource-heavy tasks. Flutter outshines React Native performance, particularly when dealing with advanced UI components or graphical rendering.
• Heavier reliance on third-party libraries: React Native depends more heavily on third-party libraries for accessing native features, which can sometimes lead to compatibility issues or a lack of support for newer device features.

For a detailed comparison between the technologies, check out our article on how to choose between Flutter or React Native. 

MAUI (Multiplatform App UI)

MAUI is a cross-platform framework developed by Microsoft that allows developers to create applications for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows with a single codebase.

Pros of MAUI

• Integration with Microsoft ecosystem: MAUI is part of the .NET ecosystem, making it an attractive choice for developers familiar with Microsoft technologies.
• Broad cross-platform capability: MAUI allows developers to share code across Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows, making it an attractive option for businesses that cover mobile and desktop environments with a single tech stack.

Cons of MAUI

• Relatively New: MAUI is still a relatively young framework, and as such, its ecosystem is not as mature as Flutter’s or React Native’s, with fewer resources and libraries being available.
• Performance variability: While MAUI aims to provide a smooth experience across platforms, performance can be inconsistent depending on the complexity of the app and the platforms targeted.

Kotlin Multiplatform

Kotlin Multiplatform is a flexible mobile app development framework that enables developers to share code across multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and desktop while allowing platform-specific code.

Pros of Kotlin Multiplatform

• Code sharing: Kotlin Multiplatform stands out with its flexibility in code sharing. Development teams can selectively create a shared codebase for specific features or modules.
• Native-like performance: Since Kotlin Multiplatform doesn’t aim to replace native development, it leverages the full power of native platforms where necessary while still allowing shared logic between platforms.

Cons of Kotlin Multiplatform

• Complex to implement: Despite its potential, Kotlin Multiplatform can be complex to implement, requiring in-depth knowledge of both Android and iOS ecosystems.
• Smaller ecosystem: Kotlin Multiplatform is growing in popularity but is still relatively niche compared to Flutter or React Native. Fewer libraries and community resources may result in longer development times for complex projects.
• Early version: Without official Swift UI support, Kotlin Multiplatform is a relatively new framework, and its implementation is still several years behind that of more mature solutions like React Native or Flutter. 

PWA (Progressive Web Apps)

Progressive Web Apps are web applications that use modern web technologies to deliver a platform-specific app-like experience.

Pros of PWA

• Cross-platform compatibility: PWAs run on any device with a web browser, eliminating the need for separate development for different platforms and reducing overall development costs.
• Automatic updates: PWAs don’t require manual downloads, ensuring that users always have access to the latest version of the app.

Cons of PWA

• Performance Variability: While PWAs are improving, they may not always match the performance and responsiveness of native applications, particularly for complex or resource-intensive tasks.
• User Engagement Challenges: While PWAs can send push notifications, they may not achieve the same level of user engagement and retention as native apps, which are often more deeply integrated into users' devices.

Choosing mobile app development technologies: Final words

Selecting the right mobile app development technology for your project is a decision that will impact your project’s success. While native development technologies used to be the gold standard for apps requiring complex functionalities and platform-specific features, they always come at a higher cost and longer development time.

In the meantime, the cross-platform technology stack has evolved dramatically, with Flutter leading the charge. Its ability to deliver high-performance apps with stunning UIs from a single codebase makes it a compelling choice for businesses seeking efficiency and versatility. 

Ultimately, the choice between native and cross-platform depends on your project requirements. Those looking to quickly enter the market with a functional app that works across multiple mobile platforms will find cross-platform solutions more attractive. 

By carefully evaluating your project's needs, budget, and long-term goals, you can choose the right mobile tech stack that ensures both short-term success and long-term sustainability.