Native vs Hybrid eCommerce Apps: Choosing the Right Option for Your Business

For an eCommerce business, launching your own mobile app can have significant benefits.

With mobile commerce making up more than 50% of all eCommerce sales worldwide, launching an app is an opportunity to provide a better user experience for mobile shoppers, and boost conversion rates and AOV as a result.

Then there are the long-term benefits you get when someone downloads your app, as the stickiness of an app and access to mobile push notifications leads to much higher lifetime value.

Add in the authority and trust having an app gives your brand, and there are many reasons why you’d want to have an app.

The biggest issue for most brands is how to launch an app. Most eCommerce businesses are versed in web development, not mobile app development, and you might not be aware of the different avenues available to launch an app (and that you can save hundreds of thousands of dollars and months of development time depending on which option you choose).

Keep reading to get a deeper understanding between native and hybrid eCommerce apps.

What is Native vs Hybrid Development?

Let’s start by helping you understand what native development and hybrid development means.

Native development means building apps written in the native code of mobile operating systems (namely iOS and Android).

Generally, iOS (aka iPhone) apps are written in Swift or Objective-C code, and can only run on Apple operating systems.

Android apps are usually written in Kotlin and/or Java code, and can only run on Android phones.

This means you need to develop separate apps for each mobile operating system, as an iPhone app won’t work on an Android phone, and vice versa.

And, most importantly, these apps are completely separate from your website, which is likely written in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, coding languages that require the browser to work.

So what are hybrid apps?

Hybrid apps are apps that combine web code (i.e. HTML, CSS, JavaScript) with mobile code.

Hybrid development takes elements of both web and mobile, to allow you to share part of your website code with your mobile app.

People can still download the app and open it on their phone, but some of the functionality and design works the same as it does on your website.

Hybrid means you don’t need to build your entire app from scratch, instead you can reuse the parts of your website that work well on mobile already, to significantly decrease development time, as well as the workload required to maintain your app and website.

Today, many high-profile apps are made with hybrid development, as companies look to maximize efficiency in their tech stack.

Pros and Cons of Native eCommerce App Development

Now we’ll take a look at what native and hybrid development means in terms of pros and cons, to help you start to understand why a brand might opt for one development approach over another.

Let’s start with the pros and cons of building native eCommerce apps.

Pros

• Native apps generally perform better, and are faster and smoother to use.
• The user experience is better due to code being written specifically for the user’s device.
• No limits as to what the app can do; full access to device features and native APIs.
• Native apps can be built to work offline.
• Native apps generally have a higher level of security.

Cons

• The cost of native development is significantly higher; you can expect to pay around $50,000 at a minimum (multiplied by two, for separate Android and iOS apps).
• Native apps come with a high cost of maintenance as well (potentially five or six figures per year).
• Development can take months to complete (expect 6-9 months for an average native eCommerce app).
• You need to juggle multiple codebases (web, Android, iOS).
• It takes extra work and extra development to make sure your web and mobile platforms are connected (your developers will need to build custom APIs to sync data across each platform).
• You probably don’t have anyone with native development experience on your team; introducing the risk and expense that comes with hiring new staff or dealing with outside development agencies.

Pros and Cons of Hybrid eCommerce App Development

Now let’s dive into the advantages and disadvantages of hybrid app development for eCommerce stores.

Pros

• Significantly lower cost to build and launch your app.
• Much shorter development timeframe (you may be able to launch an app in less than a month).
• Cheaper and easier to maintain, with less unique code to manage.
• User experience and branding is easy to keep consistent across all your platforms.
• Since it’s quicker and more affordable to launch, you can gather feedback from users faster and accelerate the process of iterating and improving on the first version of your app.

Cons

• Hybrid apps’ performance can suffer compared to native apps.
• User experience may not be 100% optimal on each platform.
• You may not be able to use all device features (though hybrid apps can generally use some hardware features, such as camera, microphone and GPS, and hybrid technology is constantly improving).
• Bugs can show up on certain platforms, since code is not customized for each environment.

Choosing the Best Option for Your Store

Above, we ran through a summary of the pros and cons of native app development for eCommerce, as well as hybrid development.

So which is the best way to build an app for your store?

The answer might be different from brand to brand, since each business is unique, and certain pros or cons might hold different weight for your business, compared to another.

So it’s important to consider how important each area is for you. 

Is cost and time a priority? Do you need extensive use of native device features? Do you already have mobile developers on staff?

Though choosing your tech stack is certainly a complex decision, the most significant pros and cons of native vs hybrid app development center around the lower cost of hybrid vs the higher level of performance from native apps.

Just How Big Are the Differences in Cost and Performance?

So how significant is the gap in performance between native and hybrid apps? And how about the difference in cost?

Let’s examine this now.

Cost

Building native apps costs a lot of money.

This is because app development is time-intensive, and all this time, you need to pay high rates for specialized developers.

The average salary for mobile app developers is between $95,000 to $115,000 per year. With a six-month development timeframe (which is conservative), you could estimate that it will cost approximately $50,000.

Yet it’s likely to be more than that; you’ll likely need more than one developer to work on your project, as well as designers, project managers and QA testers, and a six month timeframe is really a best case scenario.

So don’t be surprised if building a native app costs $100,000+.

The cost of a hybrid app can vary as well, depending on how native you go, and the level of native features you build into your app.

But you can easily build high-quality hybrid apps (like high-revenue brands Tobi and Sleefs did) for around $1,000.

That’s a big difference - and there’s also the difference in recurring maintenance costs, which is even steeper considering native apps require more work to keep up to date and in sync with your website.

“If we had unlimited time and money, we would probably go for a custom native app, but that is half a million to a million a year to maintain.”

- David Cost, Rainbow Shops

Learn more about the cost of building an app here.

Performance

The area in which native apps have the edge is performance.

Native apps are faster, smoother, generally easier to use, and have a more natural integration with the user’s device.

It’s easier for native apps to tap into device features, such as the GPS and biometric features.

It’s difficult to quantify just how large the difference in performance is. But we can say that hybrid technology has improved greatly over the last ten years, and depending on the type of app, the difference can be negligible.

For apps with a high level of interactivity - like TikTok, Snapchat, for example - there may be a noticeable difference in using native or hybrid technology.

But for an eCommerce app, the difference will be a lot less significant.

Shopping apps generally don’t need any overly complex features, or even anything drastically different to what the website does.

There may be incremental improvements in load speed, and the UI and UX may be slightly more optimized with a native app.

You will need to decide whether this difference is enough to justify the difference in cost, time to market, and ongoing complexity from building native apps.

Other Options (PWA, Cross-Platform)

Briefly, before we give our verdict on how we recommend you build your app, we’ll touch on two other ways to build an eCommerce app: Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and cross-platform mobile apps.

Progressive Web Apps

Progressive Web Apps are mobile websites that are “supercharged” to provide something closer to an app-like experience.

They still run via the browser, but users can download an icon to their home screen and launch your site with one tap, rather than by typing in the URL.

The user experience inside of the PWA is designed to feel more like using an app, though it’s not quite the same level (you’ll notice the difference if you switch between a PWA and a native app).

Ultimately, PWAs are much cheaper and easier to build than either hybrid or native apps, but they’re not a worthy replacement for actual mobile apps. The user experience is not as good, you can’t get your PWA into the app store, and it doesn’t carry the same authority for your brand.

Learn more about the difference between Progressive Web Apps and Native Apps here.

Cross-Platform Mobile Apps

Cross-platform apps are apps built with frameworks like React Native or Flutter, which can use much of the same code to run on multiple operating systems (iOS and Android).

They’re a lot closer to native apps. Indeed, there’s not too much difference these days between a cross-platform app built with React Native, for example, and fully native apps.

The advantage with cross-platform is that it’s cheaper and more straightforward than building natively, as you don’t have so much unique code to juggle.

However, cross-platform development is still expensive. You might save 20-50% of the cost of native development, but you’re still looking at a $50,000+ price tag to build an eCommerce app.

Learn more about cross-platform mobile apps here.

Why We Recommend Hybrid eCommerce Apps

In most cases, we recommend eCommerce brands to build hybrid mobile apps over native (or cross-platform).

It comes down to the lopsided differences in cost and performance, and what you ultimately want from an eCommerce mobile app.

All eCommerce brands today should know the importance of having a mobile-optimized website, and if you’re generating steady revenue, you’ve probably already put work into making your mobile UX as good as it can be.

You just need to translate that same experience into the app, with a few app-specific additions, such as a tab menu, native navigation, and mobile push notifications, all of which you can do with hybrid apps.

Any flashy or complicated features, which are only possible with native development, are likely overkill for an eCommerce store.

It’s just not worth paying tens or hundreds of thousands more for a complicated, expensive, native app, just for minor improvements that most customers won’t notice.

Hybrid development lets you launch an app that’s 99% as good as what a native app would be, for less than 5% of the cost, and even less hassle moving forward.

How to Build a Hybrid App with MobiLoud

MobiLoud lets you launch amazing eCommerce apps, for a manageable cost, without the stress of hiring new staff or managing developers.

MobiLoud is a full-service platform that does all the heavy lifting to turn your eCommerce store into a mobile app.

We’ll take everything from your website and have it work just as well in the apps – all the plugins, integrations and custom features and optimizations you’ve made to your website will work the same.

And everything is fully synchronized between your website and apps.

It doesn’t matter what platform your site is built on, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, BigCommerce, and even custom-built websites.

All this happens with zero work on your part. We build your apps, test them, submit them to the app stores for publishing, and handle technical maintenance and updates after launch, for a fraction of the cost of paying developers to do it.

This is the easiest and most effective way to get your store into the app stores, and sell more and grow your brand with mobile apps.

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Ready to Launch Your App?

Start now, and you could enter the app stores and start getting app users in less than a month.

We’ve helped huge brands launch mobile apps, including Rainbow Shops, John Varvatos and Jack & Jones, and all have raved at how much easier and more affordable it is than native development, without sacrificing anything important from their apps.

“We couldn’t find another company that could offer the same features at the same price point, same time to market, and make it as easy as MobiLoud could.”

- Svend Hansen, Bestseller

"I expected the app to be somewhat functional, but I thought it wouldn't be as high quality as some of the apps I've seen that have been built from scratch. But I was incredibly surprised. I saw no difference in terms of quality or functionality in our app and an app that could have cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars."

- Gavin McGarry, Gear2Go

As long as you already have a working, mobile-optimized website, it takes virtually nothing at all for us to turn it into amazing mobile apps, which your customers will think you spend hundreds of thousands to build.

Just book a free demo now to get started, or simply to learn more about what’s possible with MobiLoud.