"We need an app" usually means "we need to be excellent on phones," and those are different projects with different budgets. Before hiring mobile developers, it is worth being precise about what an app store presence buys you and what it costs.
What each path actually offers
- Progressive web app: your website, installable, offline-capable, and push-enabled (now on iOS too, with caveats). One codebase, instant updates, no store review, and no thirty percent platform fee on payments.
- Native apps: full hardware access, the best performance and platform feel, store discoverability, and the deepest integration with notifications, widgets, and OS features, at the price of two codebases or one cross-platform layer, store review cycles, and ongoing platform churn.
- Cross-platform frameworks: React Native, Flutter, and friends split the difference: mostly one codebase, near-native experience, with occasional platform-specific work when you hit the edges.
The questions that decide it
Does your product need hardware the web cannot reach, or does it live in users' daily habits where a home-screen icon and rich notifications genuinely matter? Retail, media, and occasional-use services often serve users better with an excellent PWA than a mediocre native app that gets deleted in a week. Products with daily engagement, camera-heavy or sensor-heavy workflows, or a business model built on app-store discovery lean native or cross-platform.
A sequencing most teams should steal
Make the mobile web experience excellent first; it is the front door everyone hits from search and social regardless of your app strategy. Ship a PWA on top of it, measure installation and re-engagement, and let real usage justify a native investment. An app built because usage demanded it launches with an audience; an app built because a competitor has one launches with a maintenance bill.