Today, React Native is no longer just a budget-saving solution. It's also a great option that provides an opportunity to bring a product to market ASAP, test its hypotheses on real users, and ultimately, reach the widest possible audience at once. Overall, because this framework combines the flexibility of a cross-platform approach with characteristics as close to native as possible, it's often becoming a top choice for businesses of any size. Below, we'll share our insights on working with this tool to help you understand why to choose React Native, or whether it’s better to consider other tech stacks.
What Is React Native?
In a nutshell, it is an open-source mobile development framework, a proprietary product of the Facebook team, whose goal was to combine the capabilities of React and JavaScript/TypeScript. Its history began in 2015, and, thanks to constant updates and contributions from the global community, today, it allows developers to reuse up to 80-99% of their code in apps with standard functionality.
Over the past 10 years, RN has evolved from an experimental tool to a top choice in cross-platform development (particularly thanks to cutting-edge architectural solutions like Fabric and TurboModules) – actually, that’s why it’s actively used by many digital giants such as Airbnb and Walmart.
The main feature of this framework is its bridge between JS/TS code and native modules. In other words, developers can build business logic in JavaScript/TypeScript, while the user interface will be rendered through native iOS and Android components. This means the app's end user will deal with a native-like UI, while its owners will achieve significant time and cost savings thanks to a unified codebase. Furthermore, if platform-specific features (such as those interacting with the camera, smartphone sensors, or Bluetooth) need to be implemented, developers can easily integrate native modules, thereby achieving Swift/Kotlin-level performance.
In summary, the primary business value of RN is that it ensures rapid ROI and accelerates business profitability by minimizing technical challenges.
Key Benefits of React Native
As for the benefits of React Native, it boasts development speed, cross-platform capabilities, and integration flexibility, allowing businesses to focus on the product itself rather than maintaining two separate codebases. So, let's consider its pros in more detail:
- Code reusability across iOS and Android. This is perhaps the key advantage of this tool, which, in practice, saves about 70% of the entire development process. Specifically, if the differences in the user interface are minimal (which is typical, for example, for online stores), the software logic, including authorization, catalog, cart, payment, etc., can be implemented only once. In practice, this not only reduces the effort of developers but also of testers and designers. And, most importantly, you’ll have a single technical team instead of two parallel ones (as is the case with the simultaneous development of two native apps, for example, for iOS and Android).
- Faster development cycles. RN is characterized by a hot reload feature that allows you to make changes to the code and immediately see the results without rebuilding. This shortens the feedback loop between analysts, designers, and developers, ensuring rapid hypothesis testing and faster time to market.
- Strong community and plugin ecosystem. React Native has a huge global community support that ensures thousands of ready-made libraries and plugins. This minimizes the need for development from scratch, even for sophisticated features. For example, Stripe and PayPal already have ready-made SDKs for React Native, thereby saving tech teams weeks of work and reducing project costs.
- Native-like performance. With the right approach, the performance of React Native software can rival that of native one. In particular, thanks to its updated architecture and optimized bridge between JavaScript and native code, the framework seamlessly handles high-load tasks, including complex animations, real-time video streaming, and interaction with sensors.
- Cost-effectiveness for businesses. Saving money by using React Native is achieved through several factors: firstly, you'll need fewer developers, secondly, releases will be faster, and thirdly, maintenance efficiency will be higher (compared to two native apps). This allows you to invest more actively in marketing and/or new features without compromising the product's quality.
If you'd like to implement all of the above and many other React Native advantages in 2025 in your project, feel free to contact us.
React Native vs Other Cross-Platform Frameworks
RN differs from other cross-platform frameworks in its architectural approach: it renders native components and connects JavaScript business logic to native code via a bridge (or, in the updated architecture, via JSI/TurboModules/Fabric). The result is a native UI with high performance (thanks to Hermes, JSI, and Reanimated 2), while a codebase remains shared, meaning a product gets to market faster, but with a saved native feel.
As for its main competitor, Flutter, this framework uses Dart and its own Skia-based renderer, meaning the entire UI is implemented through a single engine and doesn't depend on native widgets. This ensures predictable and very smooth rendering, but increases the binary size. Xamarin/.NET (and its successor, .NET MAUI) is characterized by a strong C# binding to native APIs. This often becomes an advantage in enterprise projects, primarily due to the existing .NET ecosystem.
Therefore, we never rely solely on one technology and consider the requirements and specifics of each individual project. Regarding the subject of our discussion, it is a winner where iteration speed and logic reuse are priorities. It also makes sense where performance-critical blocks can be transferred into native modules.
Use Cases Ideal for React Native
We typically choose this framework for projects where logic is their primary USP, while the user interface doesn't require too complex rendering graphics. This category includes most of the eCommerce solutions, CRM systems, management tools, and B2C applications with typical functionality and navigation.
This is why RN is a standard choice for startups, as prototyping in these cases takes only a few weeks. We also use this framework for apps with frequent releases, where it's critical to enable OTA updates without having to rely on the store for fixes and A/B testing. However, there are limitations, too, as changes to native modules or the manifest still require updates through the store. Finally, this framework makes sense for medium-complexity business apps with a modular architecture. In such situations, we build the core using TypeScript and shared packages, while using RN for the UI and native languages for critical integrations.
All in all, all these cases ultimately guarantee the lowest possible long-term TCO and the ease of scaling the mobile app.
Limitations to Consider
Now, let's delve deeper into the technical limitations of this framework: they lie in the bridge itself and the quality of third-party native UI component libraries. For example, many technical teams frequently encounter heavy bridge traffic; they also sometimes have to deal with outdated community modules, grapple with incompatibilities with the latest iOS/Android versions, and spend extreme effort debugging at the JS/Native boundary. For businesses, this translates into risks of delays and additional costs – particularly for hiring software engineers with native expertise and introducing dependency management disciplines.
Furthermore, if a mobile app requires real-time rendering, complex GPU-level animations, AR/VR, 3D graphics, or sophisticated audio/video processing, RN may be significantly inferior to native SDKs or Flutter. If the choice ultimately remains in favor of RN, we address this issue in the following way: we move complex and resource-intensive logic to a native C++/Kotlin/Swift module via JSI and/or choose a microfrontend architecture.
And, of course, before choosing this framework, it's worth properly assessing the number of native integrations, as the resources spent on building native modules can sometimes negate the potential benefit of a cross-platform approach implemented through RN. Therefore, you should always consult with teams whose experience isn’t limited to this framework only – this will provide you with the most transparent assessment of the scope of work and, therefore, minimize your application’s TCO over the long term.
How WEZOM Uses React Native to Deliver Business Value
In this paragraph, we would like to talk about our approach to React Native mobile development.
Specifically, WEZOM always begins interaction with clients by assessing their business goals, whether that's speed to market, effective audience retention, budget reduction, or rapid scalability. This allows us to build an application architecture not just for the sake of simple code, but to maximize ROI for the client. For example, if a business needs to quickly validate a hypothesis, we launch an MVP at Expo with minimal investment. However, if we talk about using React Native for business apps, it's wiser to design a modular architecture with native elements from the start – this will allow the software to withstand increased load.
As for our teams, they typically include both RN developers and native iOS/Android, backend, DevOps, and QA specialists. This approach allows us to create products where RN bottlenecks are eliminated through native expertise.
It's also worth noting that we always build our development process on Agile and CI/CD principles, allowing each feature to undergo a rapid cycle (development -> testing -> OTA release). This means updates can be released even weekly, without waiting for App Store or Google Play approval for minor bug fixes.
Finally, a few words about the support for React Native apps – our approach includes regular framework and dependency updates, automated testing, and performance monitoring. We also create an SLA and update plan for enterprise clients to prevent their apps from accumulating significant technical debt in a couple of years. Ultimately, this ensures predictable costs and guaranteed product uptime.
By the way, if you'd like to learn more about cross-platform development (particularly, on React Native), you can visit our page dedicated to this type of service.
Conclusion
In summary, React Native has become the first player in the cross-platform development market to offer the ability to write code once and use it on both iOS and Android. At the same time, it has overcome the challenges of low performance and limited access to native APIs (which were typical of the once-popular Cordova and Ionic), making it an excellent choice for apps with complex business logic. Overall, if you're inspired by the examples of Facebook, Instagram, and Tesla, who have chosen RN, it may become the optimal solution for your project as well.
If you'd like to know for sure whether React Native is right for you, please contact our experts individually.
