The Best Tech Stack For Mobile App Development
A solid tech stack forms the foundation of any successful mobile app development project. It's a crucial stage that can greatly influence the final outcome. However, while developers understand the importance of a tech stack, business owners who ultimately own the app may not be familiar with its components.
Therefore, it's vital that agencies possess a comprehensive understanding of what constitutes an ideal tech stack. In this article, we'll explore the factors we always consider for our projects and share our recommendation for the best tech stack for mobile app development. Whether you're a coder or a potential client, this guide will help you make informed decisions for your next mobile app project.
Why does every mobile app development project start with defining a tech stack?
When it comes to building a mobile app, the tech stack serves as the project's foundation, providing the necessary support and structure for the app to function efficiently. A tech stack is a collection of carefully selected frameworks, programming languages, and cloud services that work together to create an app built for scalability. The tech stack is so important that it can determine the long-term success and sustainability of your app.
Selecting the appropriate tech stack is a critical aspect of the planning stage for any project. Failing to choose the right components can result in costly strategy changes and fixes down the road. For instance, selecting the wrong programming language can make it challenging to make changes to the app after it has already been built, potentially resulting in additional development costs and delays. Therefore, it's crucial to work with experienced mobile app developers who can help you select the best tech stack for your project and avoid these potential pitfalls.
The tech stack is also essential when it comes to scalability, security, and maintenance, all of which can have a significant impact on your business's bottom line. Additionally, the tech stack can influence how your app is perceived by users, which can be an extension of your brand.
As a client, it's important to understand the significance of the tech stack and work closely with your development team to choose the right tools for your app. By doing so, you can ensure that your app is not only functional and secure but also capable of growing and adapting to meet the needs of your users over time.
Read our guides and resources for developers and business owners who want to know more about mobile app development, all from the tech experts at Myth Digital.
Questions to Ask a Mobile App Developer Before Working With Them
What You Need to Know About Mobile App Development Outsourcing
What We Consider When Choosing a Mobile App Tech Stack
We look at a few different factors when deciding on full-stack mobile app development and consider not just how your mobile app project will look but how your app will perform over time. Let’s break it down.
Requirements and Business Goals
Budget and Resource Constraints
Community Support and Resources
Native, Cross-Platform, or Hybrid
App Requirements and Business Goals
Choosing the right tech stack for your mobile app project requires a deep understanding of the app's requirements and the business goals it aims to achieve. At our mobile app development agency, we carefully consider your needs and goals, including app functionality, target audience, scalability, and budget, when selecting the appropriate tech stack for your project.
Mobile app development for start-ups and transforming businesses with smaller budgets sometimes means putting off certain features in favour of higher-priority ones while they focus on increasing brand awareness and revenue. Horizontal and vertical growth depends on the way your app is built, so we need to know what you plan to do later down the line.
Budget and Resource Constraints
Cost and resource constraints are important considerations when selecting a tech stack for your mobile app project. We understand that budgets and resources can be limited, which is why we take a careful approach to choose the right tech stack that balances functionality, performance, and cost-effectiveness.
For example, developing a native mobile app for both iOS and Android platforms will cost more than using a cross-platform framework such as React Native or Flutter. With native development, two separate apps need to be developed, which can significantly increase development costs and time.
However, we also understand that cross-platform development may not be the best fit for every project. In cases where cost and resource constraints are a top priority, we may recommend using a hybrid solution such as Ionic or building a Progressive Web App (PWA). PWAs usually take less time to develop and are easier to get off the ground, which can result in lower development costs.
By keeping your cost and resource constraints in mind when selecting a tech stack for your mobile app project, we can ensure that your project stays within budget and is completed on time while still meeting your business goals and delivering a high-quality user experience.
Community Support and Resources
Community support and resources are important factors when choosing a tech stack for your mobile app project. We understand the value of working with mobile app frameworks that have an active and engaged community of developers who can provide valuable resources and support during the development process.
This is why we often recommend using React Native or Flutter as the tech stack for app development. Both frameworks have very active communities and extensive support channels, which can help reduce development time and increase efficiency. Additionally, these frameworks are well-documented and have a wealth of tutorials, libraries, and third-party tools available, making it easier to create high-quality mobile apps quickly.
One of the benefits of using React Native or Flutter is that they are widely known and used, which means that should our clients wish to move to another development agency in the future (which would be silly), they can continue to receive support and access to resources from the broader community of developers working with these frameworks.
Native, Cross-Platform, or Hybrid
The choice of coding language and framework will be affected by whether you want a completely native app or cross-platform and hybrid because not all tools allow apps to be deployed to app operating systems.
Whether you decide on an app for iOS, Android, or both depends on what you want as a brand. Some brands wish to have the rich functionalist and performance that can only be delivered by a native app, and others want their app to be available to everything regardless of the operating system on their device.
We always recommend cross-platform app development unless there are certain circumstances. This means we can create an app for all devices and allow you to cast a much wider net in your audience. Using frameworks like React Native in our tech stack for cross-platform app development means we can create apps that deploy to both OS but have the look and feel of a native app on each.
The Best Tech Stack for Mobile App Development
Technology stack for mobile app development is generally split up into front-end (or client-side) and back-end (or server-side). As leading mobile app developers, here are our recommendations for both.
Front-End Tech Stacks
Front-end tech stacks for mobile app development are critical for creating a reliable and high-quality mobile app user interface. A front-end tech stack typically includes frameworks, libraries, and programming languages that are used to create the user interface and user experience of the mobile app. In order of our preference, below are some front-end tech stacks for mobile app development:
- React Native: Developed by Facebook, React Native is a popular open-source framework for building cross-platform mobile apps for iOS and Android platforms. It allows developers to build mobile apps using JavaScript, providing a fast and efficient development experience. Key benefits of React Native include a strong community of developers, high performance, and support for hot reloading and live updates.
- Flutter: Developed by Google, Flutter is an open-source mobile app development framework that allows developers to build high-performance native apps for both iOS and Android platforms using a single codebase. Flutter uses the Dart programming language, providing a fast and efficient development experience. Key benefits of Flutter include a modern and easy-to-learn language, fast development cycles, and a flexible and customizable UI framework.
- Ionic: Ionic is an open-source framework that allows developers to build high-performance mobile apps using web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Ionic provides a fast and efficient development experience, with support for a wide range of plugins and integrations. Key benefits of Ionic include the ability to build Progressive Web Apps (PWAs), cross-platform compatibility, and a strong community of developers.
- Xamarin: Xamarin is a mobile app development platform that allows developers to build native apps for both iOS and Android platforms using a single codebase. It provides a fast and efficient development experience, with support for a wide range of programming languages and frameworks. Key benefits of Xamarin include a wide range of native APIs and controls, support for hot reloading, and a large community of developers.
By choosing the right front-end tech stack for your mobile app project, you can ensure that your app delivers a high-quality user experience while being reliable, efficient, and cost-effective to develop.
Back-End Tech Stacks
A back-end tech stack for mobile app development is responsible for powering the server side of the mobile app and managing data and business logic. A typical back-end tech stack includes frameworks, databases, cloud services, and other tools used to build and deploy the server side of a mobile app. Our preferred back-end tech stack for app development is:
.NET Core and Azure: We use .NET Core and Azure cloud services as our back-end tech stack for mobile app development. .NET Core is a cross-platform, open-source framework for building high-performance web applications and services using C# or F# programming languages. Azure provides a wide range of cloud services, including app services, SQL databases, blob storage, and more, that can be used to build, deploy, and manage cloud-based applications and services.
Other popular elements of a back-end tech stack for app development include:
- Databases: Databases are used to store and manage data for mobile apps. Popular databases used in mobile app development include Azure SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
- RESTful APIs: RESTful APIs are used to communicate between the front-end and back-end of a mobile app, allowing for data exchange and interaction. We use ASP.NET Core to write our APIs.
- Blob storage: Blob storage is used to store unstructured data, such as images or videos, for mobile apps. Azure provides Blob storage as a cloud-based solution for storing and managing large amounts of unstructured data.
By using a back-end tech stack that includes .NET Core and Azure cloud services, we can ensure that your mobile app is reliable, efficient, and cost-effective to develop. Additionally, by using popular frameworks and tools for back-end development, we can ensure that your mobile app is built using best practices and standards for server-side development.
Get in touch to find out which tech stack we’d use for your mobile app.
