The first platform you ship on shapes the next year of your product — what you build, who finds you, what you measure, and how much it costs to course-correct. Pick it for the right reasons, not because of a stock photo of a phone.
The default answer
Start on the web.It's cheaper to build, faster to iterate, free to deploy, and indexable by search engines. You can ship a fix in fifteen minutes instead of waiting for app store review. You can analytics-instrument it without a tracking SDK review.
Most B2B products, most internal tools, most data-heavy products, and most early-stage marketplaces are web-first. The phone is the wrong tool for entering long forms, comparing tables, and doing work.
When to start mobile-first
- Camera or sensor is the product. AR, scan-the- receipt, fitness tracking, photo apps.
- Push notifications are the engagement model. Messaging, alerts, location-aware reminders.
- Offline use matters.Field workers, travellers, anything where the network can't be assumed.
- The audience lives on the phone. Consumer in emerging markets, where desktop is rare.
If you're in one of these buckets, mobile-first is correct even if it's more expensive. The platform fit is doing real work.
When to ship both
If you do need both, ship the web first, then the mobile app against the same API. The reverse path — building mobile first and retro-fitting a web client — is consistently the slower one.
The PWA middle ground
Progressive web apps are a real option for the middle of the market. Installable, push-capable on Android, no app store review. They're weaker on iOS — Apple deliberately keeps PWA support shallow — but for an Android-leaning audience, a PWA can buy you a year of iteration before a native app pays off.
We've shipped PWAs for clients who couldn't justify two mobile builds. See the case studies for what that looks like, or tell us what you're building.
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