Power Apps or a native mobile app? An honest guide
Native apps are exciting. They’re also not always necessary. Here’s how we decide — even when the answer is the smaller project.
We build both, so we have no reason to push either. The right answer depends on who uses the app and what it has to do.
When Power Apps is enough
- Internal users with Microsoft 365 accounts
- Forms, approvals, checklists and lookups
- Data already in SharePoint, Dataverse or SQL
- You want it live quickly, at a fraction of the cost
When you need a native app
- Customers download it from the App Store or Google Play
- Your brand experience matters on every screen
- Heavy offline use, background sync or fast barcode scanning
- Push notifications and biometric login
When a Power Apps mobile app is enough, we’ll tell you.
For native apps we use one React Native codebase for iPhone and Android, published under your own developer accounts — so the listing, the reviews and the users stay yours.
