Since ancient times, a saying has been known: "Tell me who your friend is, and I will tell you who you are." Concerning the IT world, it can sound like: "Tell me which market leaders use this solution, and I will tell you whether it is worth continuing the conversation."

With this approach, the React Native Friends Club cannot fail to impress:

• Facebook and Facebook Analytics
• Instagram
• Pinterest
• Skype
• Uber eats
• Discord

Let's try to formulate in one sentence the main advantage of any React Native mobile app over a similar program developed on other platforms. If you do not go into details, you can get by with just one word: cross-platform.

The shortlist above shows how significant this advantage is. However, to better understand the differences between native applications, applications developed for a particular OS, and cross-platform solutions on React Native, it is worth considering the pros and cons in more detail.

Native or React Native?

To decide which of the two approaches outlined above to choose for your startup, you should decide which direction you plan to develop your business. To do this, you should dive deeply into both the opinions of reputable React Native experts and developers who create native applications. Fortunately, finding blogs that represent each of these points of view is not difficult. We offer just a short digest here.

So, first of all, decide whether you want to devote the efforts of your app developers team to create some software product focused on any one platform — Windows, Android, iOS, macOS, Linux. The specific choice, in this case, does not matter. It is important that if you decide to focus on a particular OS, then your choice is native applications. In this case, all further discussion of various aspects of React Native is irrelevant for you.

Of course, you may want to cover several operating systems, and at the same time, you have a separate development team for each direction. For sure, such a decision implies an average of $305,000 for each of the units of five people. Experts say that exactly this number of employees is optimal for the development of one application. The term for such a process ranges from three months to six months. Add to that the time and cost involved in testing before going to market.

If you decide that your application will work on all devices, regardless of platform, then React Native is definitely your choice.

In this case, one React Native software development team is enough for you. If you are not going to form a permanent team and act as a project manager, the best solution from all sides would be just to hire React Native developers with relevant experience in this field.

Consider your startup strategy seriously. Choosing the right path is essential to success. It is worth remembering that 20% of promising startups do not last even a year precisely because of mistakes made at the planning and risk assessment stages. On the other hand, successful startups in 2021 attracted investments from 10.5 to 34.1 million dollars. And the conversation with potential investors began not with studying the bright presentations, but with discussing the minimum viable product (MVP). But we'll talk about this in the next section.

Zooming the particularities

So let's take a closer look at the unique features of React Native that make it so attractive for fast and cost-effective cross-platform app development.

Of course, if you do not have the necessary programming skills, but you get an idea, concept, and business plan for the development and launch of a new promising application on the market, you should contact the specialists. In the complex process of creating a competitive application, every little thing matters. Let's say, focusing on safety but neglecting the UI design approach can lead to the collapse of even the most promising start-up.

In any case, React Native has an excellent set of features that allows you to launch your project in the shortest possible time, taking into account all the requirements of the modern market.

• Reduction of development costs by at least 50% due to cross-platform architecture.
• 40% time savings on application development and launch compared to native products.
• Flexible scaling of React Native applications due to multifunctional modules. Ease of making changes, high speed, and multitasking allow React Native developers to respond instantly to any challenge. So, the customer base of the Chingari application grew from 500 thousand to 10 million in about two months. Chingari's React Native mobile app has maintained stability and speed despite the dramatically increased load.
• High demand for React Native applications in e-commerce. For a detailed introduction to this aspect, we recommend that you read the e-commerce website development guide. Let's just note that the Shopify shopping portal with a capitalization of $10 billion in 2020 completely switched to React Native.
• All the above capabilities of React Native and the ability to work with third-party plugins allow you to create an MVP in the shortest possible time and with minimal cost to materialize your ideas and discuss them with a potential investor.

Let's summarize

Of course, none of the existing software solutions on the market are universal. However, the high compatibility of React Native with 3rd party modules, the relatively low development cost, flexible architecture, and fast MVP acquisition allow significant savings in time and money. And these two factors, along with skillful management and product reliability, are decisive in the fiercely competitive struggle in the modern IT market.