Building Bridges: Choosing the Right Framework for Your React / React Native App
- Çağla Karadağ
- Sep 17
- 4 min read
So, you're embarking on the exciting journey of building a mobile application with React Native. Now comes a crucial decision that can shape your development experience and the long-term success of your project: choosing the right framework or package.
This isn't just about picking a tool, it's about understanding your project's needs, your team's expertise, and your desired development velocity. Today, we'll explore the main contenders: Expo and the "bare" React Native workflow, with a quick look at Capacitor as an alternative for web-first approaches.
Let's dive in!
1. Expo: The Developer's Friendly Co-Pilot
Imagine building a house without worrying about laying the foundation, plumbing, or electrical wiring. That's essentially what Expo offers to React Native developers. It's a fantastic framework built on top of React Native, designed to simplify the entire development process.
Why Expo Might Be Your Best Friend:
Simplified Workflow: Expo abstracts away the complexities of native development. Say goodbye to directly managing Xcode or Android Studio projects, fiddling with native dependencies, or wrestling with build systems. You get to focus almost entirely on your JavaScript/TypeScript code.
Rapid Development & Prototyping: This is where Expo truly shines. With the Expo Go app, you can instantly run your project on a physical device by simply scanning a QR code. No need for lengthy compile times – just code, save, and see the changes! This dramatically accelerates your development and testing cycles.
Rich API Access: Expo comes packed with a comprehensive SDK that provides easy access to almost every native device feature you could want: camera, location services, push notifications, file system, and much more, all through straightforward JavaScript APIs.
Over-the-Air (OTA) Updates: Imagine pushing a bug fix or a small feature update to your app without requiring users to download a new version from the app stores. Expo's EAS Update service makes this a reality, allowing you to update your app's JavaScript and assets instantly.
Expo is best for: Startups, smaller teams, and most projects that don't require highly specialized native modules. If you're building a content-heavy app, a social networking platform, or an e-commerce solution, Expo provides an incredibly efficient and powerful starting point.
2. “Bare” React Native: When You Need Full Control
Sometimes the comfort of Expo isn’t enough, and you need deeper access to the native projects. That’s where the “bare” workflow comes into play.
When Bare makes sense:
Custom Native Modules: Need to work with special hardware (e.g., a Bluetooth library, custom payment gateway, or proprietary device APIs)? With Bare, you can directly develop in Swift/Objective-C (iOS) or Java/Kotlin (Android).
Maximum Performance & Control: Expo is highly optimized, but Bare gives you complete control. That’s essential when you want to fine-tune app size, performance, or build highly complex animations and gestures.
Specific Third-Party Libraries: Some libraries with deep native integrations don’t work well with Expo. Bare provides the right environment for them.
A real-world example from our work: In one industrial project, we faced a clear challenge: the app had to render highly complex 3D models of machinery and allow users to interact with them in real time. While frameworks like Capacitor and Expo are excellent for many cases, they rely on pre-built modules and can reach their limits when it comes to building truly custom, high-performance native UI.
With Bare React Native, we developed a fully custom native UI component and built a deep bridge to a high-performance 3D rendering engine. This enabled us to deliver a seamless and responsive user experience that felt genuinely native – with performance that would have been hard to achieve otherwise.
This project showed us just how powerful Bare React Native can be when creating tailor-made, high-performance applications with unique UI requirements. It also confirmed that in industrial contexts, we can craft the right solutions to intelligently connect the web and the machine world.
3. Capacitor: The Native Bridge for Web Developers
Capacitor takes a different approach: instead of building native UI components like React Native, your web app (React, Vue, Angular, etc.) runs inside a native shell.
Why Capacitor is exciting:
Web-First Approach: Already have a web app or a strong web development team? Perfect. With Capacitor, you can leverage your existing HTML, CSS, and JavaScript skills to quickly publish a mobile app.
Maximum Code Reuse: Your web app runs in a WebView – which means you can reuse almost all of your code across web and mobile, saving time and effort.
Access to Native APIs: With its plugin system, Capacitor gives you access to device features like camera, GPS, and more. Plus, it supports many existing Cordova plugins, giving you even more flexibility.
Our experience at Defia: For example, we developed an app that communicates directly with an OPC server. To achieve this, we built our own Capacitor plugin, resulting in a solution that allowed fast and easy access to the machine. This project showed us how powerful Capacitor can be when it comes to bridging web technologies with native device capabilities.
Best for: Teams with a web focus, projects that need a mobile presence quickly, or apps that are primarily content-driven and don’t require highly complex native UI components.
Making Your Choice
The best framework isn't a one-size-fits-all solution; it's the one that aligns perfectly with your project's unique requirements:
For Speed and Simplicity: Expo is your go-to. It's incredibly efficient for rapid development and is suitable for most applications.
For Ultimate Control and Customization: A bare React Native workflow provides the flexibility needed for highly specialized or performance-critical apps.
For Web-First Development: Capacitor is an excellent bridge to bring your existing web application to mobile platforms.
Consider your team's skills, your project's complexity, and your desired development pace. By carefully weighing these factors, you'll be well-equipped to choose the framework that sets your mobile application up for success!
About Author
Çağla Karadağ is a Frontend Developer with over 5 years of experience in building scalable and responsive web applications. She worked in international agile teams in Germany and Austria, using modern frameworks such as Angular and React. In addition, she delivered cross-platform mobile apps with Ionic, Cordova, and Capacitor. At Defia Software Engineering, she contributed to various industrial and digitalization projects and also took on responsibilities in code reviews, knowledge sharing, and mentoring junior developers. Her focus today is on high-performance user interfaces, modern frontend architectures, and the digitalization of industrial processes.
