Why We Chose React Native for Cross-Platform Development

When you're a small studio shipping eight apps across two platforms, your technology choices matter. Here's why React Native has been the right call for Belivio.

The Cross-Platform Advantage

Building native apps for iOS and Android separately means maintaining two codebases, two sets of tests, and two deployment pipelines. For a lean team, that's a recipe for slow iteration.

React Native lets us write once and deploy everywhere — with native performance where it counts. Our apps aren't web views wrapped in a shell. They use native components, native animations, and native APIs.

Where We Go Native

Not everything belongs in React Native. For performance-critical features like audio playback in our Taoist Buddhist Audio Classics app, or complex game mechanics in Hangul Frenzy, we drop down to native Swift and Kotlin modules.

The beauty of React Native is that it doesn't force you to choose. You can mix and match.

The Developer Experience

Hot reloading alone saves us hours every week. Being able to see changes instantly — on both platforms — transforms how we iterate on designs and fix bugs.

Combined with TypeScript for type safety and our component library for consistency, React Native gives us the speed of a web team with the polish of a native team.

Our Recommendation

If you're building a mobile app and wondering about the tech stack, consider what matters most: time to market, team size, and performance requirements. For most apps, React Native hits the sweet spot.