What do you do if you need a mobile app, but you don’t want to have to deal with limitations and restrictions imposed by App Store and Play Store?

Watts Up With That, a major climate website, wanted their own mobile app, but they were concerned their app might face app store approval difficulties due to the USA’s highly polarised political environment.

The solution was a progressive web app – an app which provides a similar user experience as an App Store or Play Store app, which can be installed just like a normal app on your mobile device home page, but which bypasses the normal mobile app store approval process.

If web apps are so fantastic, why not make every app a web app?

Progressive Web Apps are significantly slower than native apps, and have difficulty handling large amounts of data and processing images and sound – much like the limitations of an ordinary website.

If the purpose of your app is to provide an index to your website, or a brochure experience, as was the case with Watts Up With That, Progressive Web Apps are potentially a good solution. But if you your app needs to perform more complex actions, such as scrolling through a long social media feed, performing on device calculations, providing a real time game experience, image manipulation, or capturing and uploading large amounts of data, you will encounter the limitations of web apps pretty early in the development process.

If you are concerned your app may encounter publication difficulties, due to your politics or content matter, or if you simply want to explore whether web apps are the right solution for your business or organisation, click the link at the top of the page to get in touch. Desirable Apps does not judge. Providing your organisation is not engaged in illegal activity, we are happy to help you develop and publish your app.