Why is React Native a good choice for Startups?

Small audience. Hassles of navigation. An MVP that requires releasing. A team under 10 members who stay with the highs and the lows. Fast competition.

If all these sound familiar, then you’re probably in a startup ecosystem.

It's a race that favours the faster and the smarter ones, and for your venture to be both, it's all about the choices. Mistakes are a given, but it is smarter to avoid ones that can be a barrier to your business.

So how do you make choices that propel your business forward? As a startup who wants to put their application out, it may seem a daunting task, given the number of tech giants and startups in the ecosystem.

But, look at the bright side of the competition. There's so much market research to look out for, communities to discuss with and case studies to learn from. In the world of mobile application development, there are reputable experts and developers who specialize in Native and React Native applications.

If you’re on the way to launch a promising new application in the market, making the right choices might just propel your business forward. If you decide to focus on a particular operating system only, then native may be the way to go. But if you’re going for an application that is cross-platform, aims at gaining an audience and has a seamless user experience, then regardless of platform React Native is the best choice.

Did you know that React Native was a framework developed during one of Facebook’s hackathons? Inspired by their own practices of web development, Facebook incorporated these practices into designing web-based concepts as mobile applications.

In simple terms, React Native is what developers and companies look to, for incredible user experience, cross-platform framework, and faster development among other features. React Native is an open-source framework created by Facebook that uses Javascript. With the idea to combine the experience with web development and the user experience of native mobile platforms, React Native was introduced to the developer community.

From tech giants to young startups, the IT industry of this age is teeming with choices of tech stacks to utilize. But as a startup, navigating that journey can be challenging. Startups often juggle numerous things such as lack of funding, tight deadlines, lack of market research, expansion of target audience and so on. With an MVP and often, a small team in hand, here’s a glimpse into the questions behind any startup’s strategy:

What could be the best framework for my application? Will my team be able to handle it? Do I follow the startups who have successfully implemented React Native? How will the challenges affect my business?

To drive that question cloud away, here are some factors to consider and to determine if React Native perfectly fits your needs:

1. When you have tight deadlines for your projects

As a startup, speed to market is of utmost importance and to get your product up and running faster than other technologies, React Native is the technology to go for, as more than 90% of the codebase is shared between iOS and Android. As React Native uses Javascript, freelance or outsourced developers are easier to find.

2. Your app need not include platform-specific design elements

In case your application needs access to specific elements such as location, animation, navigation patterns and so on, React Native may be a challenge. This is a rare situation, but what react-native does offer, is a UI library filled with features and third party elements that also include certain native elements.

3. If your budget is limited

As a bootstrapped or an investor-backed startup, funding is a critical and rather, limited aspect. Sitting around an idea may not be effective for investors or your inhouse team. With a smaller or dedicated budget, React Native is one such technology that offers an array of features in a cost-effective manner to create an MVP on a tighter budget.

4. If your app would require regular updates

From a native developer’s perspective, moving a button or changing the animation on a page requires 3 doses of caffeine and the task of recompiling the whole application. The more complicated it gets, the more time it requires. But in React Native, with the advantage of over the air updates, any changes in the Javascript code is automatically reflected in the application, due to hot reloading.

5. If you already have a native application

If you already have an iOS or an Android application and are looking to scale up, gather a bigger audience and switch to a cross-platform, this translates to a hassle-free job for your developer team. Developers don't have to rewrite the entire coding, which makes the migration process faster and more efficient.

In a startup, it's natural to be monitoring the market trends to keep up with competition and to scale up the success ladder. Besides being a trending development framework in recent years, the reason for its preference lies in cross-platform quality maintenance.

So what does React native bring to the table in terms of features and capabilities?

1. Cross-platform development

Ever wondered why tech giants are able to cater to a diverse audience across all platforms? The key to reaching a wider audience lies in providing accessibility through different platforms. As a startup, reaching out can help filter your target audience and acquire more customers. In this category, React Native is undoubtedly a saviour.

For startups that plan on releasing their pre-MVP or MVP to an Android and iOS audience, React Native can enable your team to write a single script and reuse it for cross-platform usage. Rather than deploy and monitor results from a single platform, React Native lets you use your funding in a cost-effective manner.

2. Faster development and deployment with hot reloading

Compared to other approaches, React Native can get your application up and running in the market, faster than other development methods. In the era of faster development cycles and the race towards user feedback, spending years on an MVP to create an application may not work out in the case of startups. With competition around, features of React Native such as code reusability makes the development process seamless and cost-effective.

An additional feature that supports the maintenance of the application, as well as a seamless user experience, is hot reloading. It enables developers to make instant changes in the application code even when it's running. With the option of tracking a history of changes, React Native automatically reloads the application whenever the code changes.

3. Stability of the framework

The fact that React Native is an open-source, Javascript-based framework contributes to its widespread usage and a huge community of users. There is zero risk of currently using the application framework given its scope and momentum of growth, with tech giants such as Pinterest and Wix among others using the platform.

4. User Experience

Did you know that around 50% of installers make their decision based on the first impression of your application? Whenever an application is launched in the market, user impressions matter the most. React Native not only offers a seamless user experience, but keeps the experience consistent across Android and iOS platforms, mimicking the look and feel of a Native app, but with lesser cost and development efforts. With a fully responsive mobile User Interface with a good user experience, React Native can be a worthy investment for your startup.

5. Compatibility with third-party plugins

While creating an application designed exclusively for a platform, adding specific functionalities later on in the development process can prove to be a hassle for native developers. Being an open-source platform, React Native supports the integration of third-party plugins for application development to create a scalable, reliable and feature-rich solution at a lower cost and minimized hassle.

Like every other framework, using React Native comes with its own set of pros and cons. Knowing the challenges that other startups or tech giants have faced helps understand and navigate challenges that your own startup may face. Some challenges that startups can navigate include,

1. A requirement of native developers

Even though react-native works on a common framework such as JavaScript, more than often, native developers are needed to understand the framework. React native also depends on third-party libraries in order to keep the framework updated. Hence, having professional native or React Native developers can help understand and solve issues or roadblocks during development and maintenance.

2. Performance and technical hiccups

React native allows the execution of only one JavaScript thread at a time which can reduce processing speed while running multiple functions. One can hire a React Native company or a React Native developer to reduce the hassle while developing complex apps. React native has the option of abstract layers to add robustness to the application, but the bugs that pop up in these layers are hard to debug and resolve in the absence of an expert React Native developer. Another tip to detect bugs easier is maintaining console log statements without leaving them in the code to make the apps glitch-free during the execution process.

3. Chances of inaccurate project estimation

While starting out with React Native, there are chances of inaccurate estimation of layout and structure for iOS and Android app pages. Even though elements are interchangeable among platforms, in most cases the design differs. Project estimates such as data structure, connecting entities, handling logic and so on must be researched and communicated to the project developers.

4. Lack of custom modules and security risks

As React Native heavily depends on third-party libraries, there may be some rare components that these libraries may lack. While such circumstances are rare, building a native application is the best solution when required custom elements are not available. Due to the volatility of JavaScript, security can be often low for React Native applications. We recommend to hire a dedicated React Native app developer in such cases to add additional layers of security to avoid any threat and to protect the features of the application.

Rather than consider these as the cons of React Native development, they can be assessed as challenges that can be learnt from, and ones that can help streamline work better. Not only will they save time, but will also help your startup mitigate risks or bugs faster.

As a React Native development company, Toobler’s had its fair share of experiences with tight deadlines, projects that started from scratch and the hustle behind startups.

We offer a complete evaluation of your business and offer the best strategies and React Native features that make your mobile application a soaring success.

With great technology, comes the benefits of great business, and we at Toobler help you hire a dedicated React Native developer to make that journey happen for your startup.

If you are looking forward to building your mobile application, we recommend you to book a free consultation with one of our experts today!