App Development: one app for the web, iPhone and Android

A first version starts at £7,500, which covers logins, payments, emails, error reports and your core screens on the web, iPhone and Android. If you already have a working web app and only need it in the stores, the store wrapper on its own is £1,999. Anything beyond a first version is quoted in writing before work starts. App store fees are paid by you directly to Apple and Google.

The app is built once as a web app, then placed inside a native shell for each phone using a tool called Capacitor. The shell gives it the things a website cannot do on its own: push notifications, sharing, Sign in with Apple, a proper home-screen icon. Customers download it from the store like any other app. For most business apps - bookings, accounts, payments, messages - they cannot tell the difference.

A first version is the smallest app that does the one job your customers need, done properly. Usually that is signing in, doing the main thing - booking, ordering, managing an account - paying, and getting a confirmation. We write it down in week one as a short list, and anything not on it waits for version two. That list is what keeps the price fixed and the date honest.

The app is finished and submitted in week 8; after that, Apple and Google decide how long review takes. It is often a day or two, sometimes longer if they have questions. I prepare the submission against Apple's App Review Guidelines so it is not rejected for avoidable reasons. The web version goes live the day it is finished, so customers are not waiting on review.

Payments run through Stripe, so card details never touch your app or your database. Stripe handles the card, the bank and the fraud checks; your app records what was paid and for what. On GigXchange that is 9 separate payment functions - taking money, refunds, tips, releasing funds - each with checks that stop a payment being counted twice or lost.

Yes - each customer can only see their own data, and that rule lives in the database itself, not just in the screens. It is called row-level security: every table checks who is asking before it hands anything back. It is the same work as a Database Security Audit, done from day one. If you hold personal data, the GDPR Compliance Kit covers the paperwork side.

Web changes go live straight away; store changes need a new release and a fresh review. Because an installed app is a copy you cannot reach, I build so older versions keep working when the server side changes - customers who never update are not left with a broken app. For frequent changes, a Deployment Pipeline checks every update before it ships.

Yes. The code, the store accounts, the Stripe account and the database are all in your name from day one. Apple and Google require the developer account to belong to the business anyway, and I set it up that way. If you take the app to another developer, they get one tidy codebase, not three, with notes on how it is put together. Nothing about the app depends on me staying involved.