Tech2 min read
Choosing the right tech for your product.
Five questions to pick tech that fits your product, budget and team.
There is no best stack
Developers can argue about frameworks for hours. For a founder, the question is simpler: will this choice let us launch, change things quickly and find people to maintain it later?
You don't need to understand the technology to judge that. You need to ask the right questions and listen to how they're answered.
Where will people use it?
If your users sit at a desk (an accounts team, a clinic receptionist, a warehouse manager), start with a web app. It's quicker to build and update, and nobody has to install anything.
If they're on the move (delivery staff, field sales, customers on their phones), mobile matters more. But that doesn't automatically mean an app store app.
Do you need an app in the Play Store?
A real mobile app earns its place when you need things a website can't do well: working without internet, push notifications, the camera, location tracking in the background.
If you don't need those, a web app that works well on phones gets you to users faster. There's no store review, and every update reaches everyone at once.
One codebase or two?
If you need both Android and iOS, tools like Flutter or Kotlin Multiplatform let one team build for both. That usually means less to build and less to maintain.
Fully native apps for each platform make sense when performance or deep device features really matter. For most first versions, they don't.
Don't build what you can plug in
Payments, login with OTP, email, SMS, maps and file storage all have reliable services you can connect to. Building them yourself costs time and adds risk.
Spend your budget on the part of the product that's actually yours.
Could someone else pick this up?
This one matters more than founders expect. If your developer leaves, can you hire someone who knows this stack? Popular tools have more developers, better documentation and fewer surprises.
Be wary when someone recommends a rare or brand-new tool for a first product, unless they can explain clearly why you need it.
Questions to ask whoever builds it
- Why this stack for my product specifically?
- Will the code and all accounts (hosting, domain, app store) be in my name?
- If you stopped working with us, how easily could another team take over?
- What will hosting and third-party services cost per month, roughly, at launch?
- How do updates and bug fixes work after launch?
A good team answers these plainly. If the answers are full of jargon, ask again.