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Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

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Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#21

Post by brokenbyclouds »

floomk wrote: post #19
keltex wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My only concern with Expo is once you're using it, you're going to get charged per user and per update. It's $0.005 per user per update (plus additional bandwidth and storage charges). So if you have 100K users, that's $500 per update. One update per month would be $6K per year. So you have to factor in the economics of your app.

I have no idea why you would pay that. Just eject.

Ejecting is an outdated concept when it comes to Expo for the past two years or so. The eject command in the cli is just an alias for the prebuild command even.

The way Expo builds your app these days let's you add native code as you want, modify your Gradle and pods files as needed, and you can still be on their managed workflow where you don't ever need to have Android and iOS folders in your repo. It's a really great time to be using Expo.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#23

Post by ledauphin »

joshuawright11 wrote: post #6

Purely curious; why not start natively with iOS or Droid (depending on which one your target audience uses more)? You'd have the easiest native API access and fewer headaches. Once you hit PMF & have proven the idea, add the second platform. Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? Unless perhaps there are specific React web assets you'd like to reuse to get up and running faster via React n…

this downplays the possibility of having competitors. if your idea either already exists or can be cloned quickly, being stuck on one platform while somebody else hoovers up the broader userbase can absolutely kill you.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#24

Post by rvz »

joshuawright11 wrote: post #6

Purely curious; why not start natively with iOS or Droid (depending on which one your target audience uses more)? You'd have the easiest native API access and fewer headaches. Once you hit PMF & have proven the idea, add the second platform. Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? Unless perhaps there are specific React web assets you'd like to reuse to get up and running faster via React n…

> Purely curious; why not start natively with iOS or Droid (depending on which one your target audience uses more)?

That did not go well with Clubhouse. Started with iOS only and a year and a half later they added Android support after getting cloned by everyone else. Especially Discord (which is in React Native).

Today, more people use Discord Stages and almost no-one uses Clubhouse, despite Clubhouse being a native app from the start.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#25

Post by thih9 »

joshuawright11 wrote: post #20
thih9 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? I guess the benefit is access to larger audience, and as a result easier growth; this could be especially important in the context of a startup.

Yeah - however IMO large growth isn't as important until some semblance of PMF is hit with a few core users. Then can treat the other platform as a marketing cost - i.e. if you're making 75k on iOS and predict a similar revenue for Android it's worth it to hire an Android developer for to build it out. But if one hasn't yet found a few hundred quality users on one platform why build the other one.

For some apps, cross platform mobile development and finding core users across larger audience can be easier than going native and finding core users on a single platform.

There can be probably other reasons too.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#26

Post by [deleted] »

thih9 wrote: post #16
joshuawright11 wrote: post #6

Purely curious; why not start natively with iOS or Droid (depending on which one your target audience uses more)? You'd have the easiest native API access and fewer headaches. Once you hit PMF & have proven the idea, add the second platform. Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? Unless perhaps there are specific React web assets you'd like to reuse to get up and running faster via React n…

> Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? I guess the benefit is access to larger audience, and as a result easier growth; this could be especially important in the context of a startup.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#27

Post by artifabrian »

joshuawright11 wrote: post #20
thih9 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? I guess the benefit is access to larger audience, and as a result easier growth; this could be especially important in the context of a startup.

Yeah - however IMO large growth isn't as important until some semblance of PMF is hit with a few core users. Then can treat the other platform as a marketing cost - i.e. if you're making 75k on iOS and predict a similar revenue for Android it's worth it to hire an Android developer for to build it out. But if one hasn't yet found a few hundred quality users on one platform why build the other one.

I agree with this and reflects my personal experience.

While potencial of a large audience is great, if you don't even have users to start with, the choice should be the response to "what gets PMF faster" and not "what do I need to take me from 500k ARR to +2M ARR".

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#28

Post by joshuawright11 »

rvz wrote: post #24
joshuawright11 wrote: post #6

Purely curious; why not start natively with iOS or Droid (depending on which one your target audience uses more)? You'd have the easiest native API access and fewer headaches. Once you hit PMF & have proven the idea, add the second platform. Is there a benefit to launching on both platforms out of the gate? Unless perhaps there are specific React web assets you'd like to reuse to get up and running faster via React n…

> Purely curious; why not start natively with iOS or Droid (depending on which one your target audience uses more)? That did not go well with Clubhouse. Started with iOS only and a year and a half later they added Android support after getting cloned by everyone else. Especially Discord (which is in React Native). Today, more people use Discord Stages and almost no-one uses Clubhouse, despite Clubhouse being a native…

That's a good point - if the success of the product relies on a critical mass of adoption (social networks, marketplaces) then missing one platform would exponentially hurt that.

But IMHO for apps where that isn't the case starting with a single platform is a good bet.

Re: Ask HN: React Native or Flutter for a new app in 2023?

#30

Post by Barrin92 »

dvh wrote: post #17

I really don't see flutter surviving long term. As it matures it will accumulate hard to solve issues and making shiny new thing will be easier. Does Google have track record of maintaining these kind of projects?

Several large Chinese companies are quite heavily invested in the ecosystem. Alibaba, Baidu and Bytedance use it extensively. Nubank's using Flutter too I think. That one is like 50 million users alone? So even if Google let it die given that Flutter is open source I don't see it going away any more.
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