Progressive Web Apps: The Middle Ground Between a Website and a Native App

After the conversation about whether a native app is worth building, the next question is usually whether there's a middle option — and there is. A progressive web app runs in the browser but can be installed to a home screen, work offline for cached content, and send push notifications on most platforms, without an app store review process standing between you and shipping an update.

What a PWA actually solves

• You want an app-like presence — an icon, a full-screen experience — without committing to two native codebases.
• Your update cycle needs to be fast, and waiting on app store review for every fix isn't acceptable.
• Your budget covers one well-built experience, not three (iOS, Android, and web).

Where a PWA still falls short of native

iOS support for PWA features has historically lagged Android's, particularly around push notifications and background processing — this gap has narrowed but hasn't closed completely. Deep hardware access, the same category we flagged in what makes a mobile app worth building, is still a native-only conversation.

Who we actually recommend this to

Content-driven products, tools people use occasionally rather than daily, and teams who want to test whether an app-like experience actually increases engagement before committing to native development costs. It's a genuinely underused option — most founders don't know it's on the table until we bring it up.

We'd rather ship a PWA in a few weeks, learn whether people actually want an app-like version of your product, and use that evidence to decide whether native is worth the bigger investment — instead of guessing upfront.