App, web app or PWA: which one do you need?

Web Application (WebAPP)

Type of applications that do not need an operating system to work, but instead live without problems in an internet browser. Likewise, it is not necessary to make any kind of download, just to have a connection and browse the web. The Twitter and Facebook web pages are a good example; WebApps do everything an Android or Apple iOS application does. Without downloading anything, all from the web.

Native Application (APP)

These are the applications that are downloaded from virtual stores and are developed specifically for the operating systems they run on. Android from Google, IOS or MACOS from Apple,
Windows 10, etc. As they are developed for specific devices, they are optimized to take advantage of every aspect of the device and their operation is smoother since they do not need to access the web, but they also take up much more memory space on the device.

Progressive Web Application (PWA)

These are in the middle of the two, they are downloaded but the download file is very small since they are basically web pages but with the help of some services they work with all the capabilities of a native application. They can also be in the background without needing to live inside a browser. In general, PWAs break the barrier between WebApps and Native Apps. Being capable of doing functions that only native ones could do, such as notifications, working offline, using the phone’s gyroscope, among others.

This article is a machine translation of the Spanish original.

• Web Development
• Mobile
• Product