Mobile App Development Agency

Mobile apps that users keep on their home screen.

We design and build iOS and Android apps that feel native on both platforms. From concept to App Store, we handle the entire lifecycle — including the updates that keep users engaged.

App Store 4.9★
Downloads 100K+

Mobile apps that earn their place on the home screen.

We've been building mobile products long enough to know that a beautiful UI is table stakes. What separates the apps people keep from the ones they delete in a week is the invisible work — performance budgets, offline resilience, push notification strategy, and obsessive attention to the 200-millisecond interactions that define perceived quality.

Cross-Platform Efficiency

One codebase, two platforms. We build in React Native and Flutter to ship iOS and Android simultaneously — cutting your timeline in half without compromising native feel.

60fps or Nothing

Smooth animations, instant transitions, and sub-second load times. We optimise every render cycle and memory allocation because users can feel the difference even if they can't articulate it.

App Store Ready

We handle the entire submission process — from ASO (App Store Optimisation) to compliance review, screenshot generation, and metadata strategy. Your app launches without a single rejection.

iOS & Android Development

Native performance meets cross-platform pragmatism.

The "native vs. cross-platform" debate is dead. Modern frameworks like React Native and Flutter deliver native-compiled performance while letting you ship to both platforms from a single codebase. We choose the right approach based on your product requirements, not dogma.

  • React Native for products with heavy web-to-mobile code sharing
  • Flutter for pixel-perfect custom UI and animation-heavy experiences
  • Swift and Kotlin for performance-critical native modules
  • Shared backend APIs that serve web, iOS, and Android simultaneously
  • Push notifications, deep linking, and in-app purchase integration
React Native Flutter Swift Kotlin Firebase GraphQL
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2,400
Active Users
↑ 18%
Growth
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Sarah Johnson
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Mobile UX Design

Designed for thumbs, built for humans.

Mobile UX is a fundamentally different discipline to web design. Smaller screens demand ruthless prioritisation. Touch targets need to be forgiving. Navigation must be discoverable without a tutorial. We design every interaction for the context people actually use their phones — one-handed on the tube, glancing between meetings, or killing time in a queue.

  • Gesture-based navigation patterns that feel intuitive
  • Offline-first architecture for unreliable connectivity
  • Adaptive layouts across phone sizes and foldable devices
  • Micro-animations that provide feedback and delight
  • Accessibility compliance for VoiceOver and TalkBack
Discuss Your App
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Detail
Backend & Infrastructure

The backend your app deserves.

A beautiful frontend is worthless without a backend that can keep up. We build the server-side infrastructure that powers your app — real-time sync, user authentication, media processing, payment handling, and the API layer that ties it all together.

  • Real-time data sync across devices with conflict resolution
  • Secure authentication with biometrics, SSO, and MFA support
  • Media pipelines for image/video upload, compression, and CDN delivery
  • Background job processing for notifications, emails, and reports
  • Crash reporting, performance monitoring, and remote config
Client Apps
iOS Android Web
↓ REST / GraphQL ↓
API Gateway
Auth Router Rate Limit
Services
PostgreSQL Redis S3 Queue
8+
Apps Delivered
4.9★
Avg. Store Rating
0
Store Rejections
60fps
Performance Target
99.99%
Client Satisfaction

From concept to the App Store in six phases.

01
Discovery

Market analysis, user personas, feature prioritisation.

02
UX Design

Wireframes, user flows, interactive prototypes.

03
UI Design

Visual design, component library, platform conventions.

04
Development

Sprint-based builds, automated testing, CI/CD pipeline.

05
QA & Launch

Device testing, store submission, phased rollout.

06
Iterate

Analytics review, user feedback loops, feature updates.

The First Real Decision

Native, cross-platform, or not an app at all.

Before anything else, it is worth establishing that you need an app. A great many products that were built as apps should have been responsive websites, and discovered it after paying for two codebases and an app store presence nobody downloaded.

You probably do not need an app if the value is content or transactions people access occasionally, there is no offline requirement, and you do not need push notifications, the camera or device sensors. Users install very few apps and abandon most of them quickly. A fast mobile site has no install friction at all.

Cross-platform — React Native or Flutter — is the right default when you do need an app. One codebase, both platforms, roughly 70% of the cost of building twice, and for the overwhelming majority of products the user cannot tell. This is what we recommend most often.

Native earns its cost when performance or platform integration is the product: heavy graphics, real-time media, complex background behaviour, or deep use of platform-specific capabilities. If that is you, building twice is the honest answer and we will say so.

Our app development lifecycle guide walks through the whole sequence.

Platform fitWe build all three
NeedHostedSelf-hosted
Standard retailBestWorks
Trade & tiered pricingLimitedBest
Configurable productsLimitedBest
ERP as source of truthVia appsNative
Checkout controlFixedFull
You maintain itNoYes

App pricing, and the part nobody quotes.

The build is the smaller half of the lifetime cost. Plan for the rest before you start.

Focused app — from £20,000

Cross-platform, one core workflow, both stores. Enough to put something real in users' hands and learn from it.

Full product — £35,000+

Accounts, payments, notifications, offline handling, analytics and the backend underneath. Most commercial apps land here.

Complex & native — up to £90,000

Two native codebases, hardware or media integration, or regulated data. Our largest mobile engagements.

The ongoing cost

iOS and Android ship breaking changes annually. An app with no maintenance budget stops working within about two years — budget for it at the outset rather than discovering it later.

Store submission is a phase, not an afterthought.

Most delays in app projects happen after the build is finished. We plan for review, rejection and phased rollout from the start.

01
Product definition

What the app does that a website could not. If we cannot answer that clearly, we say so before you spend money.

02
Design

Flows and interface for both platforms, respecting the conventions each one's users already expect.

03
Build

Sprint-based on your chosen stack, with TestFlight and internal test tracks from early on.

04
Backend & integration

API, accounts, payments, notifications and analytics. Usually shared with your web platform.

05
QA

Real devices, not just simulators. Poor connections, interrupted sessions, low battery and permission refusals.

06
Submission & rollout

Store listings, privacy declarations, review responses and a phased release rather than everyone at once.

Before You Build

Do you actually need an app?

This is the question worth answering honestly before anything else, because the cost of getting it wrong is two codebases and a store listing nobody downloads.

You are probably a good fit if:

  • Repeated use. People will open it weekly or more. Apps earn their install through habit; occasional use belongs on the web.
  • Device capabilities. Camera, location, sensors, Bluetooth or genuine background behaviour.
  • Offline requirement. Users work where signal is unreliable — sites, warehouses, transit, aircraft.
  • Notifications matter. Push is genuinely central to the product rather than a marketing afterthought.
  • Performance is the product. Real-time media, heavy graphics or interaction the web cannot match.

We are probably the wrong choice if:

  • It is content or occasional transactions. A fast mobile site has no install friction and reaches everyone.
  • The reason is credibility. “Serious companies have apps” is an expensive way to buy reassurance. An unused app in a store is worse than no app.
  • There is no maintenance budget. iOS and Android ship breaking changes annually; an unmaintained app stops working within about two years.
  • Nobody knows how users will find it. App stores are not a distribution strategy. Downloads need driving, and that budget is usually forgotten.

We will work through this properly on the first call. If the answer is that you need a better mobile site rather than an app, that is what we will say — and it is work we would rather do well than an app we do not believe in.

Do you actually need it?
Repeated weekly use Yes
Camera, sensors, offline Yes
Occasional content access No — use the web
“Serious brands have one” No
We will tell you which line you are on.

Questions about mobile app development.

Unless you have a specific reason to launch on one platform first (e.g., your target audience skews 80%+ iOS), we recommend building for both simultaneously using React Native or Flutter. The cost difference between one platform and two is typically only 15–20% with cross-platform frameworks, and you avoid the technical debt of maintaining two separate codebases later.
A focused MVP typically starts from £20,000 and scales based on complexity. A full-featured app with authentication, payments, real-time features, and backend infrastructure usually falls in the £35,000–£90,000 range. We provide a detailed breakdown during our discovery phase.
Our typical timeline is 10–16 weeks for an MVP, including design, development, testing, and store submission. More complex applications with custom backends, real-time features, or hardware integrations can take 16–24 weeks. We provide a detailed sprint plan after discovery.
Yes — end to end. We handle all aspects of store submission including screenshots, app descriptions, metadata, privacy policy compliance, content rating questionnaires, and review responses. We also implement ASO best practices to maximise your organic discoverability from day one.
Absolutely. Whether you need to connect to an existing API, CRM, payment system, ERP, or legacy database, we build the integration layer that connects your mobile app to your existing infrastructure. We have extensive experience with REST, GraphQL, SOAP, and webhook-based integrations.
Mobile apps require regular updates for OS compatibility, security patches, and feature improvements. We offer ongoing maintenance plans that cover everything from critical bug fixes and OS update compatibility to new feature development and performance optimisation.
Three to four months for a focused cross-platform app, five to eight for a full product with accounts, payments and a backend. Add one to two weeks for store review, which is unpredictable — Apple's process is stricter than Google's and rejections on a first submission are common enough that we plan for one rather than treating it as a failure.
End to end: developer accounts, listings, screenshots, privacy declarations, age ratings, review responses and phased rollout. Apple's App Tracking Transparency and Google's data safety declarations both need answering accurately, and getting them wrong is a common cause of rejection or, worse, later removal.
You do, and this matters more than people realise at signing. The apps are published under your developer accounts, not ours, so you are never in a position where leaving your agency means losing your listing, your reviews and your install base. Any agency that publishes client apps under its own account has created a dependency, whether or not that was the intention.
Usually yes, and it is normally the right architecture — one API serving web and mobile means one source of truth for business logic and no drift between platforms. If your existing backend was built without an API layer, adding one is real work, but it is work that pays back the moment you have a second client consuming it.
Worth deciding early, because retrofitting offline support is genuinely difficult. It means local storage, sync logic and conflict resolution when the same record changes in two places — the last of which is a product decision as much as a technical one. If your users work in warehouses, on sites, on aircraft or anywhere with unreliable signal, raise it in the first conversation.
Developer accounts (Apple charges annually, Google once), backend hosting, push notification and analytics services, and — the item most often forgotten — engineering time. Both platforms ship breaking changes every year, and an app receiving no maintenance typically stops working within about two years. As a rough planning figure, budget 15–20% of the original build cost annually to keep an app healthy.
Yes, starting with a paid audit rather than a quote. Inherited mobile codebases carry particular risks: unmaintained dependencies, SDKs that no longer meet store requirements, and signing certificates or accounts nobody can locate. That last one causes more genuine emergencies than any code problem — if you are inheriting an app, secure the developer account access before anything else.

Let's build your next growth engine.

Every great digital product starts with a conversation. Tell us what you're building — we'll show you how to get there faster. Free discovery call. No commitment.

JC BU MS
65+ projects delivered since 2012