It is undoubtedly that the number of mobile users has been increasing dramatically in the last few years, leading to the shift in online shopping from desktops to mobile devices. As a Magento store owner, you might have already known about this tendency and are finding how to adapt to it. In general, there are 4 solutions that are building a Magento Hybrid App, Magento Native App, Magento Progressive Web App, and Magento Web App.
Not only the beginners but even some “tech-nerds” might also be confused about the difference among these technologies. What are they? Which should we choose? What are the pros and cons of each type? Do we have enough budget to build it?
Don’t worry, we will help you to be released from this mess by giving a detailed comparison of the 4 types of Magento mobile app development. After that, you can easily decide the most ideal option for your e-commerce store. Let’s get started!
| Web App | Progressive Web App | Native App | Hybrid App | |
| What is this? | Building a web app might be the easiest solution to implement. In fact, the web app is not an application but a website.
However, it can provide us with a “look and feel” like a native app in some ways (since the web apps are written in web code but more interactive). | It seems that the Progressive Web App is the advanced version of the web app plus some significant characteristics of the native app.
It can be downloaded to users’ home screens (but from browsers) and provide an app-like experience. | This might be the most familiar type among these 4 options.
When it comes to user experience, the native app is always the top of choice. | Another result from the combination of the web app and the native app is the Magento hybrid app. However, while PWA can be downloaded from browsers only, the hybrid app can be downloaded from the app store like a native app and are more “native” than PWA. As a user, you even can’t distinguish between a native app and a hybrid app. |
| Foundations | JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5 | JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5, Firebase Google | Java (Android) or Objective-C (iOS), … | Javascript, HTML, CSS |
| Run on | All browsers | Chrome, Opera, … (except Safari) | iOs/ Android/… | All operating systems (Cross-platform) |
| Download | No | From browsers | From app stores | From app stores |
| Page speed | Slow | Fast | Very fast | Fast |
| Updates | Simple | Simple | Complicated | Simple |
| Time to build | Short | Short | Long | Moderate |
| Development & Maintenance Cost | Low | No cost (Download Free Progressive Web App Extension here) | Very Expensive | Moderate – mainly for customization cost (Download Free Magento 2 Mobile App here) |
| For SEO | Can be searched by searched engines | Can be searched by searched engines | Cannot be searched | Cannot be searched |
| Example | Facebook, Safari | Alibaba, AliExpress, Flipkart, Lancome | Twitter, Pokemon Go, Waze | Walgreen, Banana Republic |
| Other things to consider | We can neither download the web app to the home screen nor send notifications to remind the customers to use the app.
The web app can be interpreted differently on each browser so it can have a negative impact on user experience. | Since the progressive web app is useless on Safari, it might lose a lot of potential users using iPhone. | Every Native app is optimized for a single platform so that an iOS app cannot run on Android and vice versa.
If you want to satisfy both iOS and Android users you must create 2 separate apps with doubled cost. | The hybrid app works well with medium requirements for features and design.
If you need a very complicated app, it’s better to go with the native apps. |
Now, you might have a clear understanding of Magento Web App, Magento Progressive Web App, Magento Native App, and Magento Hybrid App and can tell the differences among them.
It’s obvious that each type of mobile app development has both advantages and disadvantages.
In terms of the user experience, no one can beat the Magento native app.
However, it also takes the largest amount of time, money and effort to develop as well as maintain the app performance.
Therefore, if you just have a moderate budget, there are still 2 alternatives – Magento Hybrid App and Magento Progressive Web App.
First, let’s talk about the Magento Hybrid App, which is the best option when you cannot afford a native app. Your customer experience when using a hybrid app will be nearly the same as using a native app and the users even cannot tell any difference between them.
At Tigren, we have developed a Magento Hybrid App that is full of necessary features for your e-commerce store.
What you need to do is just download the module and make some basic settings and you will immediately possess a complete app. If you want, we can help to customize some parts of the app to make it suit your business better.
By this way, you can save a great amount of time for developing the hybrid app from the beginning.
Second, let’s move on to the Magento Progressive Web App, a very hot technology from Google. In spite of being less “native” than the Magento Hybrid App, the PWA is still able to deliver an app-like experience with a shortcut on the home screen, full-screen and offline mode, push notifications, and fast page load speed.
Besides, the way to download a PWA is different from the native app and hybrid app, which is both a pro and con of PWA. When the users open your website on their browser, they will be invited to add the PWA to their home screen.
Like the hybrid app, you can download the free Magento Progressive Web App extension at the Tigren store and install it at your store with ease.
You might probably wonder why we haven’t told you about the Magento Web App. The reason is that we don’t recommend you to build a web app while we have already had 2 better options.
Compared to the Magento Hybrid App and Magento Progressive Web App, it’s not cheaper to build a web app and what you will get is a much worse version of the app.
In conclusion, if you have a great budget and can wait a long time to build an app, don’t hesitate to go with Magento 2 Mobile App. On the other hand, if you are looking for an alternative for the native app because of the limited budget, let’s take Magento Hybrid App and Magento Progressive Web App into consideration.
