Category: Progressive Web Apps

When thinking about turning their website into a Progressive Web App, a lot of people are concerned about how it will affect their search engine rankings.

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) deliver an “app-like experience”, which is great for the look and feel of your website, but not so great if it means you risk losing all your organic search traffic because your site no longer shows up in Google.

So, what’s the answer? Are these fears legitimate, or can you still build a Progressive Web Application that ranks and draws SEO traffic? Read on and we’ll explain how to do SEO for Progressive Web Apps.

Unique Elements of PWAs

The first step to understanding PWA SEO is understanding what makes a Progressive Web App different from a standard website.

In truth, PWAs are not dramatically different from a standard website. They’re built with the typical web development stack of HTML, CSS and JavaScript, as a normal website is, and served in the browser, which fetches HTML content from your site’s web server and turns it into a visual website.

So how is a PWA different then?

There are four “core” elements that all PWAs have:

HTTPS means the website’s URL must begin with https:// – indicating that it uses a secure and encrypted communication channel with the web server where its content is hosted.

While HTTPS is a requirement for all PWAs, it’s not really different from a standard website, as most websites run on HTTPS today anyway.

A web app manifest is different. This is a JSON file that provides details about the website (such as its name, an app icon, and the website path where it can be accessed). A web app manifest is essential to allow users to download and install the PWA and add a launcher icon to their device’s home screen.

The web app manifest doesn’t affect SEO at all, though.

The third element does have an effect on SEO. A service work is a JavaScript file that perform actions in the background, independently of the website’s regular code.

Service workers handle caching, network requests, and enables some of the advanced functionality of PWAs, such as offline mode and push notifications.

The way it caches and handles data can potentially come into play with SEO.

The final element, your application shell, can also have an impact on SEO. An app shell is the minimum code needed to render your website UI, and is cached for fast loading on subsequent visits. 

Depending on how this is set up, it can present issues for Google’s (and other search engines’) crawler in terms of reading and understanding your content, which we’ll dive into in more detail shortly.

Does SEO Work for Progressive Web Apps?

Let’s get straight to the burning question: can PWAs be optimized for SEO traffic?

The answer is yes. SEO does work with PWAs; Google can crawl PWAs, and if set up correctly, turning your site into a PWA can actually have significant benefits for your SEO.

The main thing you need to understand to ensure your PWA is discoverable by search engine algorithms is the difference between Client-Side Rendering and Server-Side Rendering.

Let’s explore this in more detail now.

Client-Side Rendering vs Server-Side Rendering

Traditional websites use server-side rendering, or SSR.

What this means is that when a request is made (i.e. a user types in a URL), the web page is compiled on the server side, and delivered in one complete package to the browser, where it loads for the user.

This is the simplest way to render content. It’s a little slower, since the browser needs to load an entire HTML document at once, but it makes it easy for a search engine crawler (like Google’s) to understand what’s on the page (which is essential for SEO).

Most PWAs, however, use client-side rendering (CSR).

With CSR, upon request the server sends a minimal amount of code, which is the application shell we talked about earlier.

Along with that, it sends a little bit of JavaScript code, which the browser then uses to populate the app shell with the rest of the content.

CSR results in much faster loading speeds. However, it can be hard for crawlers to process JavaScript websites and understand what content is on the page, and thus can present problems for search engines.

Some search engines even ignore JavaScript completely, which is bad news if you want to show up in their search results.

Can Client-Side Rendered Sites Be Crawled by Google?

So does adopting a CSR approach mean that Google can’t crawl and rank your website?

Not exactly.

Google’s crawler can still read, render and index JavaScript content, but it takes a while, as you’ll need to wait for a second crawl for Google’s search engine to be able to fully interpret your site’s content.

An alternative option is to use Dynamic Rendering, which serves different content to real users and search engine crawlers.

Essentially, you’ll use fast, optimized CSR for people who visit your website, but for automated bots that crawl your site, you’ll show a fully rendered HTML page.

Dynamic Rendering seems like a perfect silver bullet, but it does add a lot of complexity, and can lead to issues where crawlers see different content to real users, which can create confusion and hurt SEO long-term.

One more option (which might be the best option for SEO and user experience) is to mix CSR with SSR, in a kind of hybrid rendering approach. This means loading a larger amount of content on the initial server request, rather than the bare minimum of your app shell followed by JavaScript to populate the rest.

With this approach, you would basically expand your application shell to include all the content the page needs to provide to search engine crawlers.

Additional design and functionality can then be rendered on the client side.

The user experience would not be as smooth and interactive as a fully client-side rendered application, but it would be much easier for Google to crawl and thus better for SEO.

Read more: Google Search Central on Dynamic Rendering, and Google’s documentation on different rendering techniques.

PWA SEO Tips

Summing up what we’ve discussed so far:

• PWAs can be optimized for SEO.
• PWAs can be crawled by Google.
• The way your content is rendered can have a big impact on your search engine optimization.
• Fully client-side rendered apps can be indexed and crawled by Google, but you may run into problems (and some search engines won’t crawl JavaScript content at all).
• The best way to approach it is either dynamically render different versions of your website for real users and for crawlers, or find a midpoint where you render some of the page on the server side and some on the client side.

With that in mind, here are some tips to follow to make sure your PWA SEO is up to scratch, and maximize the visibility of your app in search engines.

Make Sure Your Content is Crawlable

As we discussed above, the first priority for SEO is making sure that automated crawlers like Google’s Googlebot can crawl and understand your site’s content.

If all it sees is an empty shell with a little bit of JavaScript, it’ll be hard to know what keywords to rank your site for and whether you’re doing a good job of satisfying search queries (even if you are).

Avoid over-complicated UI

If you want to maximize the SEO performance of your PWA, you’ll want to tone down the fun and interactive elements of your website.

It doesn’t have to be boring, but you shouldn’t have every sentence be triggered by a JavaScript animation.

The fewer flashy UI elements you have, the easier it will be to ensure your website is crawlable.

Build a Fast, Responsive, Mobile-Friendly Website

One area where PWAs have an advantage for SEO is that they’re specifically designed to be fast, responsive and provide a great user experience on mobile devices.

All these things have become more of a priority for SEO in recent years. It won’t fly anymore if your site doesn’t work well on mobile, or loads too slowly.

So while you may need to rely on SSR to make sure your site is crawlable, utilize whatever other tricks you can to enhance your site’s speed and usability.

Use a Sitemap and an Intuitive Site Structure

Beyond server-side or client-side rendering, the structure of your site is essential for helping search engines crawl and understand your site.

This starts by providing an XML sitemap, which is a simple list of all the pages on your website.

You should also structure content and URLs on your website in an intuitive manner, using internal links and different URL paths to show crawlers which pages cover similar topics.

Optimize Metadata and Schema

The backend HTML that users don’t see is important for crawlers. Things like schema, meta titles and meta descriptions are specifically for sharing additional information about your page or your website for automated crawlers. Make sure you utilize these tools to the fullest extent.

Publish High-Quality, Helpful Content

Technical SEO aside, the most important thing for SEO is content.

That doesn’t change with PWAs. Your site still needs to meet the search intent for your target keywords with high-quality, original, and helpful content.

PWA SEO is essentially about making sure that the enhancements you do to make your site a PWA don’t hurt your SEO. But dynamic rendering or a smart mix of SSR and CSR won’t make your site rank if you don’t have the content to win the SERPs in the first place.

Build an Authoritative Brand

With each Google update, it’s become more and more important to have an authoritative, trustworthy brand.

SEO hacks and tricks won’t last, but a recognizable brand name with a strong authority signals, such as high-quality backlinks and mentions from well-known publications will.

Look for other signals of trust and authority you can show both Google and real users, such as user reviews, awards, App Store badges, contact information and “About” pages and social media profiles.

Getting into the app stores is an amazing way to display brand authority.
Learn how you can easily turn your PWA into a mobile app and enter the app stores in as little as two weeks.

Follow Basic SEO Best Practices

All in all, PWA SEO is not that much different from regular SEO.

Once you’ve made sure that Google can discover and crawl your site, it all comes down to the same basic principles.

Most of the tips above are not specific to PWAs. All websites need great content, some links to show authority, an intuitive structure, good technical SEO and a fast, mobile-friendly site.

Tools for SEO for Progressive Web Apps

These are some of the most useful tools to help maximize the SEO footprint for your PWA:

Google Search Console

Search console is a must for anyone doing SEO. It offers a ton of useful insights, all coming from first-party data; from Google itself. 

You can use it to see which queries you’re generating most of your clicks and impressions from, check the status of your pages, whether they’ve been crawled, whether they’ve been indexed, and get an update on any pages that are failing or need improvement in Google’s Core Web Vitals measurement.

Considering it’s free, there’s no reason not to utilize this tool for your business.

Lighthouse

Google’s Lighthouse tool is another must, especially for anyone building a PWA.

Lighthouse audits your site for categories such as Performance, Accessibility, SEO and whether it meets the criteria for a PWA. It’s another tool that’s completely free, and delivers valuable insights that you can use to improve your UX and SEO.

Ahrefs/Moz/Semrush

If you’re really serious about SEO, an SEO toolkit like Ahrefs, Moz Pro or Semrush is essential. 

These tools give you a depth of data on keyword search volume, keywords your site is ranking for, keywords that other sites are ranking for, backlinks, technical SEO issues and much more.

Publishing content to rank in search engines is almost impossible in any halfway-competitive industry without the help of one of these tools. The one you choose is up to you – I prefer Ahrefs, but Moz, Semrush, and a number of other tools do basically the same thing.

Detailed Chrome Extension

Finally, one little tool I really like (and which happens to be extremely useful for PWA SEO) is the Detailed SEO Extension for Google Chrome.

This extension gives you a snapshot of all the data that crawlers see on your page.

In just one click you can see the metadata of a page (such as title, meta description and canonical URL), the page’s word count, headings, internal and external links on the page, schema and more.

It’s particularly useful for PWAs, because it allows you to see how your page appears to crawlers, and whether the backend of your page matches what’s shown on the front end.

Final Thoughts: Building SEO-Optimized PWAs and Completing Your Omnichannel Presence

PWAs are a great way to build websites with an enhanced user experience and advanced features that elevate above what you see from stock-standard websites.

Many businesses, such as ecommerce stores, publishers and more, can benefit from making their site into a PWA. And the good news is, you don’t have to sacrifice SEO to do so.

As long as you have an understanding of how search engines crawl websites, and how PWAs work differently to normal websites, you can ensure your PWA is optimized for both real users and bots.

If you want to take your omnichannel presence one step further, convert your PWA into a mobile apps with Vendrux.

Launching a native app alongside your PWA is a great way to appeal to users no matter where they prefer to access your site, as well as a strong authority signal to boost your PWA’s SEO even further.

Get a free preview of your app, or book a demo to learn more about how Vendrux can help you make your PWA into a professional, high-quality mobile app in as little as two weeks.

Progressive web app push notifications have come a long way. Five years ago, they were Android-only. Today, they work across most modern browsers, desktop operating systems, and (with caveats) iPhones and iPads.

But “supported” and “practical” aren’t the same thing. The gap between what’s technically possible with web push notifications and what actually reaches your users is one of the most misunderstood topics in mobile strategy.

This guide covers the current state of PWA push notifications: which platforms support them, how to set them up, which services to use, and the real-world opt-in and delivery numbers you should expect. If you’re deciding between investing in web push or going native, you’ll find the data you need here.

The most effective way to use push notifications is to turn your site into a mobile app. Converting your site to apps is easy (and affordable) with Vendrux. Click here to learn more about how Vendrux works and what we can do for you.

Push Notifications for PWA: Broad Overview

Let’s start with the key things you need to know about PWA push notifications:

• A PWA is essentially just an enhanced website, which users can “install” on their device.
• PWAs feature three core components: a service worker, a web app manifest and a secure HTTPS server.
• Though you can send web push notifications from regular websites on Android devices, you need a PWA (and the user needs to install it on their home screen) to do so on iOS.
• Sending push notifications requires integration with a push notification provider, and a service worker to handle user permissions and push functionality.

Bottom line? You can send push notifications from a PWA, but your capabilities are limited.

Crucially, these are web push notifications, rather than native, which is not ideal (and another reason why PWAs aren’t effective substitutes for native apps).

We’re going to look a little deeper at the technical ins and outs of PWA push notifications, then explain how you can start sending more powerful native push notifications.

The Role of Service Workers for Push Notifications

For a PWA to be a PWA, it needs a service worker file.

A service worker is a JavaScript file that handles background operations for a website, and generally acts as a bridge between your web server and the browser.

This service worker does a variety of jobs, such as caching web content to enable fast loading and offline functionality, synchronizing data between the server and the website even while the website is closed, and – importantly – handling push notifications.

Service workers essentially do all the work required to use push notifications.

• The service worker sends a request to the user for permission to send push notifications.
• Once received, it’s registered on the user’s device and logs the user’s permission status.
• In the background, independently from your website, it listens for a specific “push” event, which signals that you want to send a push notification to the device.
• Assuming the correct permissions are logged, it then fetches the push notification content and displays it for the user.

You don’t need to necessarily know what each line of code in a service worker does, and while it might seem complex, it’s basically all automated and quite straightforward.

Your push notification provider will likely have this file ready to go for you, but it’s good to know a little about how push notifications work under the hood in your PWA.

Step-By-Step Guide to Enabling Push Notifications on a PWA

Now let’s have a look at how to start sending push notifications from your Progressive Web App, step by step.

1. Install a Push Service SDK

While it’s possible to set up your service worker and fully configure everything to do with push notifications on your own, using JavaScript, we’re going to assume you’re not going to do that.

Even if you’re a proficient web developer and have developed the bulk of your PWA yourself, it still makes sense to use a push notification service.

This service should have its own SDK that contains all the code necessary for your push notifications, including a service worker file.

To get an idea of what this will look like, this is OneSignal’s article on setting up their web push SDK.

You’re going to need to add the SDK to your server, as well as pasting a code snippet into your site’s header.

2. Ask the User for Permission

Users need to agree to allow your PWA to contact them with push notifications.

How this works is, the user will get a popup saying that the website wants their permission to send notifications. They can then choose to either allow or deny the request.

Browsers have a default permission prompt, which is shown to the user straight away when they first visit your site.

Through your push notification service, however, you’ll be able to delay this prompt, and set up a custom prompt that comes before the browser’s native prompt, explaining the value that the user will get by enabling notifications.

It’s advisable to do this, as most people won’t choose to allow notifications straight away.

At the very least, it’s a good idea to delay your permission prompt until the user has been on your site for a little while longer, thus giving them a better idea of whether they want to allow further contact from your site.

One caveat to mention is that iOS users need to “install” your PWA by adding it to their home screen first, before they can subscribe to push notifications.

So you may want to set up a prompt just for iPhone users that asks them to install your PWA (as iOS also doesn’t have an automatic install prompt for PWAs, as Android does).

3. Configure Your Service Worker to Listen for Push Events

Once your service worker is installed, and you’ve logged permission from users to send push notifications, your service worker will need to “listen” for incoming push notifications.

The code will look something like this:

This means the service worker will constantly scan to see if a “push” event has been triggered, indicating that the push notification service wants to send a notification to the user’s device.

Once it picks up a push event, it’ll take the data from the push notification and display it on the user’s device.

This push event is part of the Push API, which is the API that your website users to communicate with push providers in the background of the user’s device.

Learn more about the Push API via Mozilla’s documentation here.

If you’ve used a push notification service’s SDK to set up your push notifications, there is likely nothing more you need to do at this point, as the service worker should already be configured to listen for events and serve notifications.

4. Send Notifications from Your Push Provider

Once everything is set up, use your push notification provider to start sending notifications.

We advise you to run a couple of test notifications first, to ensure that they work as intended. Then as long as you’re confident it’s been set up correctly, you can start sending push messages for things like:

• New product releases and promotions for ecommerce stores.
• Abandoned cart reminders.
• Shipping updates.
• New content.
• Re-engagement prompts for inactive users.

Don’t want to wrangle service workers? Ship a store-ready app with native push in 30 days, with Vendrux. Get a free preview to see what’s possible.

Best Push Notification Services

The push service you choose will have a significant effect on your experience setting up and using push notifications with your PWA.

Some popular push notification services include:

We encourage you to do your own research on push notification providers, as each has their own feature sets and requires different levels of technical ability to set up.

For most people, we recommend OneSignal for their ease of use (even if you have little technical knowledge), and how easy they make it to segment and set up custom notification triggers.

You can also manage push notifications via your own push notification server and configure all of this manually. Though there’s not a lot of upside to doing this when there are so many sophisticated and easy to use tools on the market to do it for you.

How to Enable Native Mobile Push Notifications for Your PWA

PWA push notifications are powerful, but they have some limitations, as they rely on the web browser to serve notifications to the user.

The alternative is native push notifications, which are sent through the device’s operating system.

The good thing – if you’ve built a PWA (or you have any website that works well on mobile), you already have most of what you need for a native app.

Vendrux turns your existing website into native iOS and Android apps.

Everything you’ve built, your design, checkout, integrations, loyalty programs, all of it carries over. You get native push notifications that reach 10x more users, App Store and Google Play distribution, and the performance and trust that come with a native app.

There’s no rebuild. Your website is the app. When you update your site, the app updates automatically. Every third-party tool, every custom feature, every integration works from day one.

How it works

1. Book a strategy call. Share your website URL. We’ll walk through your goals, answer questions, and see if it’s a fit.
2. See your app in action. Our team builds a working preview of your native app so you can see exactly how it looks and performs before committing.
3. Go live in 30 days. We handle the build, store submissions, and launch. Your app goes live on the App Store and Google Play while you focus on your business.

We’ve built 2,000+ apps for ecommerce brands across every platform. Predictable pricing, no revenue share, fully managed from start to finish.

Ready to see what’s possible?

Book a free consultation now to discuss whether Vendrux is right for you.

You built a Progressive Web App. Now you want it in the App Store and Google Play. Is this possible?

The short answer: Google Play will let you in (with some work), but Apple won’t; at least not as a PWA.

That’s been true for years, and it’s still true in 2026. Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines explicitly reject apps that are “repackaged websites,” and PWAs fall squarely into that category. Google Play is more accommodating through a technology called Trusted Web Activity, but the process isn’t as simple as uploading a URL.

This guide breaks down what each app store actually allows, what the official policies say, and what your real options are if you want your web app in front of users who search the App Store and Google Play.

Vendrux can help you get your PWA into the app store in just a couple of weeks, by converting it into native apps that sync completely with your website. Book a free consultation with one of our app experts to learn more.

Can You Publish a PWA to the Apple App Store?

No. Apple does not accept PWAs in the App Store. 

The App Store requires native binaries compiled through Xcode. A PWA runs in a browser engine – it’s a web app, not a native binary, and Apple draws a hard line between the two.

What Apple’s Guidelines Say

The relevant policy is Guideline 4.2 — Minimum Functionality in Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines:

“Your app should include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. If your app is not particularly useful, unique, or ‘app-like,’ it doesn’t belong on the App Store.”

Guideline 4.2.2 goes further:

“Other than catalogs, apps shouldn’t primarily be marketing materials, advertisements, web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links.”

“Web clippings” is Apple’s term for a website packaged inside a web view – which is exactly what a PWA wrapper is.

When Apple rejects these apps, the review team typically responds with something along the lines of: “Your app is not sufficiently different from a mobile web browsing experience.”

What About Wrapping a PWA in a Native Shell?

Technically, you can embed a PWA inside a WKWebView and submit that to the App Store. But the app still has to pass Guideline 4.2. 

If Apple’s reviewers determine that it’s essentially a website in a thin native wrapper, it gets rejected.

The apps that do pass review are the ones that genuinely add native functionality: push notifications that work through Apple’s own notification system, native navigation, deep linking, and other features that make the experience feel like a native app rather than a browser window without an address bar.

Learn more: Native Apps vs WebView Apps

The EU PWA Controversy

In February 2024, Apple attempted to remove Home Screen web app functionality entirely for users in the EU, as part of their Digital Markets Act (DMA) compliance changes for iOS 17.4. Their stated reasoning:

“Addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture that does not currently exist in iOS.”

After significant backlash from developers, the Open Web Advocacy group, and the European Commission, Apple reversed the decision in March 2024:

“We have received requests to continue to offer support for Home Screen web apps in iOS and iPadOS, therefore we will continue to offer the existing Home Screen web apps capability in the EU.”

The incident highlighted how fragile PWA support is on Apple’s platforms; the company was willing to remove it entirely, and only public pressure brought it back.

Can You Publish a PWA to Google Play?

Yes, through Trusted Web Activity (TWA). Google has officially supported this since Chrome 72 in February 2019.

What Is Trusted Web Activity?

From Google’s Android developer documentation:

“Trusted Web Activity is a new way to open your web-app content such as your Progressive Web App (PWA) from your Android app using a protocol based on Custom Tabs.”

TWA is not a WebView. It uses the actual Chrome browser engine and renders your site exactly the way users see it in Chrome, but without any browser UI.

The key characteristics, per Google’s documentation:

• Trust: The app and website must be verified as coming from the same developer, through Digital Asset Links.
• Web rendering: Content is rendered by the user’s browser, in the same way a user would see it in Chrome.
• Independent updates: The browser is updated independently of your app – you don’t need to ship app updates when you change your website.

Google’s Quality Requirements

Getting into Google Play via TWA isn’t just a packaging exercise. Google enforces real quality standards:

• Your PWA must meet installability criteria (manifest with proper icons, HTTPS, service worker with a fetch handler)
• Minimum Lighthouse performance score of 80/100
• Digital Asset Links must verify your domain ownership
• You need a Google Play Developer account ($25 one-time fee)

Since Chrome 86, Google has also enforced stricter quality checks. Three conditions are treated as application crashes in Android Vitals:

1. Failure to verify Digital Asset Links at launch
2. Failure to return an HTTP 200 for an offline network resource request
3. An HTTP 404 or 5xx error in the app

From the Chromium blog:

“Apps which fail to meet TWA quality requirements or Play store policy may be denied entry or delisted.”

Tools for Packaging Your PWA for Google Play

You don’t build a TWA from scratch. You use a tool that takes your PWA’s URL and generates the Android app package with the TWA configuration baked in. 

There are two main options:

Bubblewrap

Google Chrome Labs’ official CLI tool. It generates Android App Bundles (AAB) from your PWA, handles JDK and Android SDK setup, and supports features like push notification delegation and geolocation. It’s free, but requires comfort with command-line tools.

PWABuilder

Microsoft’s GUI-based tool. It uses Bubblewrap under the hood but provides a visual interface. 

You enter your PWA’s URL, configure options, and it generates your Android package. It also supports iOS and Windows packaging, though the iOS output faces the same App Store approval challenges described above.

The Catch

Even though Google Play accepts PWAs, the resulting app is still fundamentally a web app. 

You’re limited to what the browser engine supports. That means the features you can offer (and the experience users get) depend on the browser, not on your code.

Why Publishing a PWA to App Stores Is Only Half the Problem

Getting listed is one thing. Delivering an experience that keeps users coming back, and that competes with truly native apps, is another. 

PWAs have real limitations that don’t go away just because the app is distributed through a store.

Push Notification Limitations

Push notifications are the single biggest reason ecommerce brands want an app in the first place.

PWAs technically support push notifications on both platforms now (iOS added support in iOS 16.4), but the real-world performance gap is significant.

On iOS:

• Push only works if the user has manually installed the PWA to their Home Screen via Share > Add to Home Screen
• There is no automatic install prompt. Users have to know how to do this themselves
• Opt-in rates for PWA push notifications are 10 to 15x lower than for native app push notifications, largely because of this multi-step process
• Silent or data-only push (for pre-fetching content in the background) isn’t supported

On Android, PWA push works well and the gap with native is smaller, but there are still differences in reliability and the ability to reach users with their device locked or in power-saving mode.

iOS Data Eviction

This one surprises a lot of people. On iOS, Safari can evict all cached PWA data, including saved carts, offline content, and user preferences, after just 7 days of inactivity. 

There’s no workaround on the web side. If a customer doesn’t open your PWA for a week, they may come back to a blank slate.

Native apps don’t have this problem.

No App Store Discovery (Even on Google Play)

A PWA published via TWA shows up in Google Play search results, but it doesn’t benefit from the same discovery mechanisms as native apps. 

There are no ratings or reviews tied to the app store listing in the same way, no featured placement, and the app’s credibility signals are limited compared to a fully native app.

On iOS, there’s no app store presence at all. Your PWA is invisible to anyone searching the App Store.

Limited Payment Integration

On iOS Safari, the Payment Request API only supports Apple Pay. There’s no native in-app purchase integration, and checkout flows tend to be less seamless than what native SDKs provide.

The trade-off: you also avoid the 15-30% app store commission on transactions. For some businesses, that math works out. For others, the friction in checkout conversion outweighs the savings.

What Actually Works: Your Real Options

If you want your web-based business in both app stores with an experience that actually performs, here are the practical paths.

1. Publish to Google Play via TWA (Android Only)

Use Bubblewrap or PWABuilder to package your PWA for Google Play. This is a viable, Google-supported approach, and it’s free aside from the $25 developer account fee.

It works well for brands that only need Android coverage, have technical resources to handle the packaging and maintenance, and are comfortable with the limitations of browser-based features.

But keep in mind this doesn’t solve iOS at all. And you’re still delivering a web experience – you don’t get native push notification performance, background processing, or the other capabilities that make native apps stickier.

2. Use PWABuilder for Both Platforms

PWABuilder can generate packages for both Android (via TWA) and iOS (via a WebView wrapper). 

The Android side works well. The iOS side is where things get complicated – the output may not pass Apple’s Guideline 4.2 review without additional native functionality.

It can be viable for technical teams willing to iterate on the iOS submission and potentially add native features to pass review.

However, Apple rejections are common with this approach, and each rejection-resubmission cycle takes days to weeks.

3. Convert Your Website Into a Native App

Instead of trying to squeeze a PWA through app store gates, smart businesses take a different approach: they turn their existing website into a full native app that uses their site as the foundation while adding genuine native capabilities.

This is what Vendrux does. 

Rather than wrapping a PWA in a thin shell and hoping it passes review, Vendrux extends your existing website into native iOS and Android apps with real native features – push notifications through Apple and Google’s native systems, deep linking, native navigation, and the full app store presence that comes with a genuine native binary.

The key difference from a PWA wrapper: the apps Vendrux builds actually pass App Store review because they include the native functionality Apple requires. 

Your website’s content and functionality carry over, but the delivery mechanism is native.

Vendrux handles the entire build and submission process, including app store approval. For ecommerce brands that have already invested in their website and don’t want to rebuild from scratch on a separate platform, this tends to be the most direct path to both app stores.

Want to see what’s possible? Get a free preview of your PWA as a mobile app.

Summary: PWA App Store Compatibility at a Glance

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Apple allow PWAs in the App Store?

No. Apple’s Guideline 4.2 requires apps to “include features, content, and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website.” PWAs wrapped in a WebView are routinely rejected. To get into the Apple App Store, you need a native app binary with genuine native functionality.

Can I publish a PWA to Google Play?

Yes. Google supports PWAs in the Play Store through Trusted Web Activity (TWA). You’ll need to package your PWA using a tool like Bubblewrap or PWABuilder, meet a minimum Lighthouse score of 80, and set up Digital Asset Links to verify domain ownership.

What is Trusted Web Activity (TWA)?

TWA is a Google-supported protocol that lets you display your PWA content inside an Android app without browser UI. Unlike a WebView, TWA uses the full Chrome rendering engine. The app and website must be verified as coming from the same developer.

Do PWA push notifications work on iOS?

Push notifications were added to PWAs on iOS in version 16.4 (March 2023), but they only work if the user has manually installed the PWA to their Home Screen. There’s no install prompt, and opt-in rates are significantly lower than native app push notifications.

What’s the cheapest way to get my web app in both app stores?

For Google Play, packaging your PWA via TWA using Bubblewrap is free (beyond the $25 developer account). For the Apple App Store, there’s no free path — you need a native app that passes Apple’s review guidelines. Services like Vendrux handle both stores by converting your website into native apps.

Will Apple ever accept PWAs in the App Store?

There’s no indication that Apple plans to change Guideline 4.2. The 2024 EU controversy, where Apple tried to remove even Home Screen PWA support before reversing course, suggests the company views PWAs and the App Store as fundamentally separate. The most reliable path to the App Store remains building or converting to a native app.

Get Your PWA in the App Stores

Vendrux is the most effective way to get your PWA in the app stores, while also building upon your PWA to provide a more complete mobile user experience.

You’re more assured to get your apps approved, because you’ll get an app that’s more than just a repackaged website (which is exactly what Apple, in particular, wants from apps on their app store).

With more than 2,000 successful apps built over the course of 10 years, we’ve got the experience to know what needs to be done to give your app a native experience.

You can go live in a number of weeks. It does come with a cost, unlike the free options provided by Google and Microsoft, but you get all the work done for you, including ongoing technical support for your mobile apps.

If you’re looking for a way to get in the app stores that’s more than just a workaround, Vendrux is for you.

To learn more, book a free consultation now. We’ll walk you through the process step-by-step, show you a preview of your mobile apps, and help you to understand if Vendrux is the right option for you to get your PWA in the app store.

Trying to decide between building a progressive web app or a native app? The right choice depends on what you’re aiming for.

If your priority is getting to market fast and reaching the widest possible audience, a PWA makes sense as a starting point. If you’re focused on customer retention, engagement, and building a direct relationship with your best buyers, a native app is hard to beat. And if you’re an ecommerce business that already has meaningful traffic and revenue, you probably should have both.

Mobile accounts for roughly 60% of all internet traffic, and the PWA market is projected to grow from $3.53 billion in 2024 to over $21 billion by 2033. At the same time, consumers still spend 90% of their mobile time in native apps, not browsers (and a PWA runs in the browser).

Keep reading and we’ll explain all you need to know about PWAs and native apps, how they differ, and which direction is the right choice for your business.

What is a Progressive Web App?

Progressive Web Apps are something between a responsive website and a mobile app.

They are mobile sites built with modern JavaScript frameworks, designed to give an app-like experience. They can be added to a mobile device’s home screen with an icon. Like apps, they offer a full-screen experience to engage users. However, they are still just a website when opened. 

With the development of Service Workers, PWAs do get some more benefits that native apps have. However, these benefits are still limited (particularly on iOS).

Google defines PWAs as web experiences that are:

• Reliable – Load instantly and never show a website as being down, even in uncertain network conditions.
• Fast – Respond quickly to user interactions with silky smooth animations and no janky scrolling.
• Engaging – Feel like a natural app on the device, with an immersive user experience.

SD Times reported that Todd Anglin, VP of Product and Developer Relations at Progress believes “PWAs are about making the web a more reliable, enjoyable experience, but there will always be a category of apps best served by native“.

This leads us to some questions for business owners trying to decide:

• “What’s best for my company”.
• “How do progressive web apps really compare to native apps?”
• “Can progressive web apps replace native apps?”

We’ll answer all these questions below.

What Is a Native App?

A native app is a mobile application built specifically for a single platform, typically iOS or Android, using platform-native languages like Swift or Kotlin. Native apps are distributed through the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, have full access to device hardware (camera, GPS, Bluetooth, NFC), and can run entirely offline.

Because native apps are compiled for a specific operating system, they typically deliver the best performance, smoothest animations, and deepest integration with the device. The tradeoff is higher development cost and longer timelines: you’re building and maintaining a separate codebase for each platform.

PWA vs Native App: The Key Differences at a Glance

Here’s a quick summary of the differences between Progressive Web Apps and native apps:

Now let’s look at each of these in more detail.

10 Key Differences Between PWAs and Native Apps

1. Installation and Distribution

Native apps are discovered and installed through app stores: Google Play and Apple’s App Store. One tap to install, and the app sits on the user’s home screen with a recognizable icon. App stores also act as a discovery channel, where users browse categories, read reviews, and search for solutions. If you do App Store Optimization well, your app can surface for relevant keywords and attract users who don’t already know your brand.

PWAs run in the browser. Users access them by visiting a URL, just like any website. They can then be added to the home screen, but the process isn’t intuitive for most people, especially on iOS, where the user must tap Share, then scroll down to “Add to Home Screen” with no visual prompt that the site is a PWA.

Android has made this easier with automatic install prompts. And starting with iOS 26 (Fall 2025), Apple defaults every website added to the home screen to open as a standalone web app. That’s a meaningful shift, but users still need to initiate the add-to-home-screen step manually. There’s no equivalent of the App Store’s one-tap install.

This distinction matters. Customers expect to find your brand in the App Store. Having an app listed there signals legitimacy, and it gives you a storefront that lives on their phone alongside Amazon, Instagram, and every other app they use daily.

2. Cross-Platform Development

Native apps are built for a specific platform. An iOS app is typically written in Swift; an Android app in Kotlin. This means two separate codebases, two development tracks, and two sets of platform-specific requirements.

Cross-platform frameworks like React Native and Flutter can reduce that duplication, but they introduce their own tradeoffs around performance and native API access.

PWAs take a fundamentally different approach. One responsive web codebase works across all platforms and browsers. Build it once, deploy everywhere. That’s a significant cost and time advantage, especially for teams without dedicated mobile developers.

The tradeoff is that a single responsive design can’t be tailored to each platform’s UX conventions the way a native app can. iOS and Android users have different expectations around navigation, gestures, and interaction patterns, and a PWA has to compromise between them.

3. Offline Capability

Native apps can store data locally and function fully without an internet connection. An ecommerce app can let users browse a cached product catalog, manage their wishlist, or review past orders, all while offline.

PWAs use Service Workers to cache resources and serve cached content when the device is disconnected. This works well for static content (articles, product images, basic page layouts), but falls short for anything dynamic. A user can’t submit a form, complete a checkout, or load real-time inventory data in a PWA when offline.

The gap is especially pronounced on iOS. Safari doesn’t support Background Sync, which means PWAs can’t sync data in the background or pre-fetch content before the user opens the app. And Safari’s storage eviction policy can delete cached PWA data after periods of inactivity, meaning a customer who hasn’t visited your PWA in a while may find their saved cart or preferences wiped.

4. Storage, Data, and Power

Both PWAs and native apps consume device resources: battery, storage, and data. The actual impact depends more on how the app is built and how often it’s used than on whether it’s a PWA or native.

Where PWAs have a real advantage is data efficiency. When Konga, a Nigerian ecommerce platform, converted their mobile site to a PWA, they reduced data usage by 92%, a critical improvement for a market where most users rely on expensive 2G connections.

For brands serving customers in developed markets, this difference is less significant. Both approaches will perform similarly in terms of resource usage if well-built.

5. Updates

PWAs update automatically whenever a page refreshes or a new session begins. There’s no app store review process, no waiting for approval, and no relying on users to update manually. Changes go live the moment you deploy them.

Native apps update through the app stores. Most devices handle this automatically in the background, so the experience is mostly seamless. But there is a delay: you submit your update, it goes through review (typically 24-48 hours for Apple, faster for Google Play), and then it rolls out to users. For urgent fixes, that delay can matter.

In practice, the update experience feels similar for users of either approach. The difference is mainly on the developer side, where PWAs offer a faster iteration cycle.

6. Discoverability and SEO

This is one area where PWAs have a clear structural advantage. Because a PWA is just a website, its pages are indexed by Google, Bing, and other search engines. Every product page, category page, and blog post can rank in organic search results and drive traffic directly to the app experience. Standard SEO practices apply.

Native app content, by contrast, isn’t indexed by search engines. Discoverability depends on App Store Optimization (ASO): keywords in your app title and description, positive ratings and reviews, download volume, and category placement. App store search is a meaningful channel, but it’s a separate discipline from web SEO and reaches a different audience.

The strongest approach combines both. A PWA (or responsive website) captures search traffic and brings new customers in through the front door. A native app gives existing customers a reason to come back and builds a direct retention channel outside of search.

For more on this topic, see our comparison of turning your website into a native app vs a PWA.

7. Push Notifications

Progressive Web Apps can send push notifications – but with a crucial difference.

PWA push notifications are web push; not native push notifications.

Native push offers richer functionality: action buttons, rich media, deep linking into specific screens, and 95%+ delivery rates compared to roughly 33% for web push.

They land directly on the user’s lock screen, whatever they’re doing – while web push notifications use the browser to send, so can only be sent while the browser is running.

Up until recently, PWA push notifications didn’t work on iOS either.

Apple added Web Push support for PWAs on iOS in March 2023 with iOS 16.4. Safari 18.4 (March 2025) introduced Declarative Web Push, which simplifies implementation by allowing notifications without a Service Worker.

But there are meaningful constraints here:

• Home screen install required. Push only works for PWAs that have been manually added to the home screen. Browser-based push still doesn’t work in Safari on iOS.
• Multi-step opt-in. The user must first discover your PWA, then add it to their home screen, then grant notification permission. Compare that to a native app, where a single permission dialog appears on first launch.
• No background sync. When a push notification arrives, the PWA can’t pre-fetch content before the user opens it. Native apps can.
• No silent push. You can’t send data-only push notifications to update the app in the background.
• Reliability issues. Developers have reported that service worker push listeners don’t always trigger after device restarts, and users can become unsubscribed without clear cause.

The core factor still at play: push notifications sent from PWAs are web push, not native.

For a deep dive, see our comparison of web vs native app push notifications for ecommerce and our guide to PWAs on iOS.

8. Security

Both PWAs and native apps can be built securely. PWAs are served over HTTPS, which provides encryption between the browser and server. Native apps can go further with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), certificate pinning, and device-level security features.

There’s also a distribution gatekeeping difference. To publish a native app on the Apple App Store or Google Play, it must pass a review process. Apps with obvious security flaws get rejected. PWAs, like any website, have no such review process, which places the security burden entirely on the developer.

For businesses handling payment data, customer accounts, or sensitive personal information, native apps offer more security tools out of the box. That said, a well-built PWA with proper HTTPS, authentication, and GDPR compliance can be just as secure in practice. Security depends more on implementation than on whether the app is “native” or “web.”

9. Device Feature Access

Native apps have full access to device hardware and OS features:

• Camera (including advanced controls)
• GPS and background location
• Geofencing (for proximity-based marketing)
• Bluetooth and NFC (for in-store payments and hardware integrations)
• Contacts, calendar, and system notifications
• Biometric authentication for payment confirmation (Face ID, Touch ID)

PWAs can access some device features through web APIs, including the camera, geolocation (foreground only), and motion sensors. But Apple has explicitly declined to implement 16 web APIs in Safari due to privacy and fingerprinting concerns, including Web Bluetooth, NFC, USB, and several sensor APIs.

Because all browsers on iOS still use Apple’s WebKit rendering engine, these limitations apply to every browser on iPhone, not just Safari. This means PWAs on iOS are significantly more limited than PWAs on Android, where Chrome supports a broader set of web APIs.

For most ecommerce brands, the features that matter are push notifications, home screen presence, and a smooth checkout experience, not NFC or Bluetooth. But if your business relies on in-store hardware integration, contactless payments, or location-based triggers, native is the only option.

10. Development Cost and Time to Market

This is often the deciding factor, and PWAs have a clear advantage.

PWA development typically costs 30-75% less than building separate native apps for iOS and Android. You’re writing one web codebase instead of two platform-specific ones. Updates are instant (no app store review), and maintenance is simpler because there’s only one codebase to manage.

Custom native app development, on the other hand, typically runs $50,000 to $100,000+ for initial iOS and Android versions, plus roughly 20% of that annually for ongoing maintenance. Development timelines are usually 3-6 months at a minimum, and you need developers skilled in Swift/Xcode (iOS) and Kotlin/Android Studio.

Cross-platform frameworks like React Native and Flutter can bring those costs down by sharing code between platforms, but they still require specialized mobile development expertise.

There is a third option that most brands overlook. Services like Vendrux let you extend your existing website into native iOS and Android apps without rebuilding anything, for a fraction of the cost of custom development. More on that below.

How to Choose Between a PWA and a Native App

The right choice depends on where your business is and what you’re trying to achieve.

A PWA makes sense if you’re:

• Early-stage or budget-constrained. You need a mobile presence fast and can’t afford $50K+ for native development.
• Content-first. Your business is driven by SEO and organic traffic, and discoverability matters more than retention features.
• Serving markets with limited connectivity. PWAs shine in regions with expensive data or slow networks.
• Testing mobile demand. You want to see whether your audience engages on mobile before committing to a native app.

A native app makes sense if you’re:

• Focused on retention and repeat purchases. Push notifications, home screen presence, and a dedicated app experience drive repeat visits from your best customers.
• Building a direct channel. You want to own the customer relationship outside of search, social, and paid ads.
• Selling through app stores. Your customers expect to find you there, or you want to acquire users through App Store search.
• Using device features. Your product requires access to GPS, camera, Bluetooth, or other hardware that PWAs can’t reliably access on iOS.

Most established ecommerce brands should have both.

A PWA improves the mobile web experience for customers who discover you through search, social, or ads. It loads fast, works well on any device, and supports SEO-driven acquisition.

A native app gives your most engaged customers a reason to keep coming back. It sits on their home screen, sends reliable push notifications, and creates a shopping experience that feels like it was built just for them. These are typically your highest-LTV customers, the ones worth investing in.

This isn’t a fringe recommendation. Brands like Starbucks, Pinterest, and Twitter/X all maintain both a PWA and native apps. They’re complementary strategies, not competing ones.

Vendrux: Get the Best of Both Without Building From Scratch

For ecommerce brands that want native app benefits without the $50K-$100K price tag and 6-month timeline, there’s a more practical path: extending your existing website into native iOS and Android apps.

That’s what Vendrux does. Your website, with all its existing functionality (checkout, search, account management, loyalty programs, third-party integrations), becomes a native app on both the App Store and Google Play. No rebuilding. No maintaining a separate codebase. No losing feature parity.

You get the native app advantages that PWAs can’t deliver: full push notification support on iOS and Android, one-tap app store installation, a home screen icon, and the credibility that comes with being listed in the stores. And because everything is powered by your existing website, any change you make to your site is automatically reflected in the app.

“Nothing out there provided us with the ease and accessibility that Vendrux did to our team. Lots of companies we reached out to wanted a lot of time, money, and resources.”
— Nick Barbarise, Director of IT, John Varvatos

The results speak for themselves. John Varvatos sees 10x revenue per app user compared to mobile web. Tadashi Shoji generates 18% of total online revenue from their app. Rainbow Shops reports 7x mobile customer lifetime value for app users.

You can still maintain a PWA alongside your Vendrux app. The PWA handles web-based acquisition. The native app handles retention and engagement. Together, they cover the full customer journey.

How It Works

1. Book a strategy call. Share your website URL. We’ll discuss your goals, assess fit, and answer your questions.
2. Get a custom app preview. Our team builds a personalized preview so you can see exactly how your app looks and performs.
3. Launch in 30 days. We handle the build, submission, and approval process. Your app goes live on both stores while you focus on your business.

Book a free strategy call to see how your website looks as a native app.

We’ve built 2,000+ apps for brands like yours, from Shopify and WooCommerce stores to custom platforms running on Salesforce Commerce Cloud and Magento. We’ll be able to tell you whether your business is at the right stage to be thinking about a native app, and the best way for you to build it.

Progressive Web Apps promise the best of both worlds: build one web experience and have it work like an app on every device. 

On Android, that promise largely holds up. On iPhone, it’s a different story.

Apple has made progress. Push notifications arrived in iOS 16.4. Storage policies improved in Safari 17. Safari 18.4 added Declarative Web Push and Screen Wake Lock. And with iOS 26, every site added to the Home Screen now defaults to opening as a web app.

But there are still significant gaps – especially for ecommerce brands that depend on their iPhone customers. 

No App Store distribution. No background sync. Limited push notification reach. And Apple still forces every browser on iOS to use its own WebKit engine, which means PWA capabilities are entirely at Apple’s discretion.

This guide covers exactly what PWAs can and can’t do on iOS in 2026, what it means for your business, and what your options are.

What Is a Progressive Web App?

A Progressive Web App is a website that uses modern browser APIs to deliver an app-like experience. 

The key technologies are service workers (for offline caching and push notifications), a web app manifest (which tells the browser how the app should look and behave when installed), and HTTPS.

When a user “installs” a PWA, they’re adding a shortcut to their home screen that opens the site in a standalone window, without browser UI. 

There’s no app store involved. The app loads from the web, and updates happen automatically whenever the developer pushes changes to the site.

PWAs work across platforms by default. The same codebase runs on Android, iOS, and desktop. That’s the appeal: one build, every device.

What PWAs Can Do on iOS in 2026

Before getting into limitations, it’s worth acknowledging what actually works. PWAs on iOS have come a long way, particularly over the last two years.

Home screen installation

Users can add any website to their iPhone home screen. It shows up as an icon, opens in standalone mode (no Safari toolbar), and appears in the app switcher. As of iOS 26, every site added to the Home Screen defaults to opening as a web app, even without a manifest file.

Push notifications

Since iOS 16.4 (March 2023), PWAs added to the Home Screen can send push notifications. Safari 18.4 introduced Declarative Web Push, a simplified mechanism that doesn’t require a service worker.

App icon badges

The Badge API has been supported since iOS 16.4, letting PWAs display notification counts on their home screen icon (requires notification permission).

Offline caching

Service workers can cache assets and data for offline access. This works reliably for returning visitors, though storage policies apply (more on that below).

Screen Wake Lock

Since Safari 18.4, Home Screen web apps can prevent the device from dimming and locking the screen. Useful for recipe apps, dashboards, or any hands-free use case.

Improved storage

Safari 17 increased storage quotas to up to 60% of total disk space per origin (80% overall) and added support for the Persistent Storage API, which lets developers request protection from automatic eviction (though it requires notification permission to work).

Other capabilities

PWAs on iOS also support geolocation, camera/microphone access, WebAuthn for passwordless authentication, the Web Share API, and Canvas/WebGL for graphics.

What PWAs Still Can’t Do on iOS

This is where the gaps become significant, particularly for ecommerce brands.

No App Store Distribution

You cannot list a PWA in the Apple App Store. Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines require native binaries compiled in Xcode. Guideline 4.2 (Minimum Functionality) explicitly rejects “repackaged websites,” and sub-guideline 4.2.2 targets “web clippings” specifically.

There’s no official workaround. Google has Trusted Web Activity (TWA), which lets you publish a PWA to the Google Play Store. Apple has no equivalent.

This matters because App Store presence is a discovery channel. Without it, there are no ratings, no reviews, no search visibility, and no appearing in category rankings. 

For ecommerce brands, that’s a significant miss, especially considering iOS captures 67% of global app spending despite holding only about 28% market share.

No Automatic Install Prompt

On Android, Chrome can show an automatic “Add to Home Screen” banner using the beforeinstallprompt event. Safari on iOS does not support this.

Instead, users have to know to tap the Share icon, scroll through the share sheet, find “Add to Home Screen,” and confirm. 

Most people don’t know this option exists, and even fewer will go through the steps. Developers can build custom banners to educate users, but the conversion rate on those instructions is low compared to a native install prompt.

Push Notifications Work, but Reach Is Limited

Push notifications technically work on iOS PWAs since iOS 16.4, but the practical reach is much smaller than native push.

Here’s why:

• Home Screen only. Push only works when the PWA has been added to the Home Screen. Notifications don’t work from Safari tabs.
• No silent push. You can’t send data-only notifications that update content in the background, a common pattern in native apps.
• No background wake. Push notifications can’t trigger background code execution the way they do in native apps.
• Reliability issues. Service worker push listeners may not trigger reliably after device restarts. Unexpected unsubscriptions can also occur.
• Multi-step opt-in. Users must first install the PWA to their Home Screen, then grant notification permission. Each step loses a chunk of your audience.

The numbers tell the story. When prompted, only about 16% of mobile users accept web push notifications, compared to 40-70% for native apps. But the real gap is bigger than that: most PWA users on iOS never get to the prompt in the first place because they haven’t added the app to their Home Screen. 

When you factor in the full funnel (discovery, Home Screen installation, then permission grant), the reachable audience for PWA push is roughly 10-15x smaller than native push.

Native apps also get features PWAs can’t access: Time Sensitive notifications that break through Focus Mode, Live Activities for real-time order tracking on the Lock Screen, and provisional notifications that deliver silently without requiring a permission prompt upfront.

No Background Sync

iOS does not support the Background Sync API, Periodic Background Sync, or Background Fetch for PWAs. None of these have a timeline for implementation.

In practice, this means your PWA can’t update content in the background. When a user taps your app icon, they see whatever was cached the last time they had it open. 

A native app, by contrast, can pre-fetch fresh product data, update prices, and sync cart contents before the user even sees the screen.

No Bluetooth, NFC, or Hardware Access

In June 2020, Apple declined to implement 16 web APIs in Safari, citing fingerprinting and privacy concerns. 

The blocked list includes Web Bluetooth, Web NFC, WebUSB, Web Serial, Web MIDI, the Battery Status API, and several sensor APIs.

Apple’s position hasn’t changed as of 2026. While Chrome on Android supports many of these, PWAs on iPhone have no access to Bluetooth peripherals, NFC tags, USB accessories, or most device sensors beyond basic accelerometer and gyroscope.

For most ecommerce brands, this is a minor issue. But if your product involves connected hardware, in-store NFC, or peripheral devices, PWAs on iOS are a non-starter.

Storage Can Be Wiped

While Safari’s storage quotas have improved, PWA data on iOS is still more fragile than native app data.

Safari uses a “least-recently-used” eviction policy. If the device is under storage pressure, cached data from less-frequently-visited origins gets deleted first. 

The Persistent Storage API (available since Safari 17) lets developers request protection from automatic eviction, but it requires notification permission to work.

What does this mean practically? If a customer adds items to their cart through your PWA but doesn’t come back for a while, that saved cart could be gone when they return. 

A native app’s storage persists until the user manually deletes the app.

No Geofencing or Background Location

PWAs can access the user’s location in the foreground, but neither iOS nor Android supports geofencing or background location tracking in web apps. The W3C Geofencing API proposal has been abandoned.

For brands that use location-based triggers (store proximity alerts, local offers, location-aware marketing), a native app is required.

Apple Controls Everything Through WebKit

Here’s the fundamental structural issue: every browser on iOS uses Apple’s WebKit engine. Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Brave – they’re all running WebKit under the hood on iPhone. That means PWA capabilities on iOS are entirely determined by what Apple’s WebKit team chooses to support.

Despite the EU’s Digital Markets Act and the UK CMA designating Apple with Strategic Market Status in October 2025, this hasn’t changed in practice. 

iOS 18.2 technically allows third-party browser engines in the EU, but Apple’s implementation through BrowserEngineKit creates so much friction that zero browsers have adopted it as of early 2026.

In other words, there’s no competitive pressure pushing PWA capabilities forward on iOS. Apple decides the roadmap.

The EU Tried to Fix This. It Hasn’t Worked Yet.

The regulatory story around PWAs on iOS has been dramatic but, so far, largely symbolic in its impact.

In February 2024, developers discovered that Apple had quietly removed PWA support in the EU in the iOS 17.4 beta. PWAs added to the Home Screen would open as regular Safari tabs instead of standalone apps. 

Apple said the change was necessary because “addressing the complex security and privacy concerns associated with web apps using alternative browser engines would require building an entirely new integration architecture.”

About three weeks later, after intense backlash from developers, Open Web Advocacy, and the European Commission, Apple reversed the decision. PWA support was restored.

In April 2025, the EU fined Apple 500 million euros for DMA non-compliance related to browser engine restrictions. The UK CMA followed in October 2025 by designating Apple with Strategic Market Status and finding that Apple’s browser engine requirements harm web app competition on iOS.

The regulatory pressure is real. But in terms of what you can actually build with a PWA on an iPhone today, nothing has materially changed. All browsers still use WebKit. The same limitations that existed before the DMA exist now.

PWA on iOS vs. Android: A Quick Comparison

If you’re evaluating PWAs, the platform gap matters. Here’s how iOS and Android compare:

The gap is clear: Android treats PWAs as first-class citizens with broad API support. iOS treats them as a limited subset of what the web can do, and Apple controls the boundaries.

What This Means for Ecommerce Brands

Technical limitations are only useful context if you understand the business impact. Here’s how these gaps translate to real outcomes for ecommerce:

Fewer customers get your push notifications

The multi-step install-then-permit process on iOS means your push audience will be a fraction of what a native app delivers. For brands that rely on push for abandoned cart recovery, flash sale alerts, and restock notifications, that’s a direct hit to re-engagement revenue.

You’re invisible in the App Store

iOS users account for 67% of global app spending. If your brand isn’t in the App Store, you’re missing the primary way these high-value customers discover and install apps. There’s no organic search visibility, no category ranking, no review-driven social proof.

Returning customers may find a blank slate

If a shopper doesn’t visit your PWA for a stretch and the device is under storage pressure, their saved cart, browsing history, and preferences can get wiped. When they come back, it’s like starting over. A native app’s data persists until the user explicitly uninstalls.

Your app can’t stay current in the background

Without background sync, a PWA can’t update product listings, prices, or inventory while the user isn’t looking at it. Native apps can pre-fetch content so the experience is fresh the moment the user opens the app.

Deep linking is typically less reliable

Driving users from an email, SMS, or social ad directly into a specific product page is harder with a PWA than a native app. Universal links and App Links in native apps typically handle this more consistently.

When a PWA Makes Sense (and When It Doesn’t)

PWAs aren’t bad. They’re a legitimate technology with real strengths. The question is whether they’re the right fit for your specific situation.

A PWA can work well if:

• You’re running a content-heavy site (blog, news, documentation) where offline reading is the main value-add
• Your audience is primarily on Android, where PWA capabilities are strong
• You have a limited budget and need to improve your mobile experience quickly
• You want to test whether an app-like experience resonates with your audience before investing in a native build

A PWA falls short if:

• You’re an ecommerce brand with high-value iOS customers who drive a meaningful share of your revenue
• Push notifications are central to your retention strategy (abandoned carts, restock alerts, loyalty programs)
• App Store presence matters for your brand credibility and customer acquisition
• You need reliable offline functionality for shoppers who browse intermittently
• You’ve built a complex storefront with integrations and customizations that you don’t want to rebuild

The Better Path: Turn Your Website (or PWA) Into a Native App

For brands that have already invested in building a strong website or online store, there’s a middle ground between building a PWA and paying for a custom native app from scratch.

Vendrux takes your existing website and extends it into a native iOS and Android app. 

Everything on your site, including all your features, integrations, and customizations, works inside the app without any rebuilding. When you update your site, the app updates too.

What that gets you:

• App Store distribution. Your app is listed on the Apple App Store and Google Play, with full search visibility, ratings, and reviews.
• Native push notifications. With native opt-in flows, you get the full reach that PWA push can’t deliver. Time Sensitive notifications, Live Activities for order tracking, and rich media support are all available.
• Persistent data and sessions. No storage eviction. Your customers’ carts, preferences, and login sessions stay put.
• Full website parity. Every feature on your site works in the app. New site updates go live in the app automatically, without app store resubmission.
• Done-for-you service. Vendrux handles the build, submission, and ongoing maintenance. You don’t need a mobile development team.

How It Works

1. Book your strategy call. We’ll discuss your goals, answer your questions, and assess fit.
2. Get your custom app preview. Our team builds a personalized preview of your native app. You’ll see exactly how it looks, feels, and performs.
3. Launch in 30 days. We handle everything. Your app goes live on the App Store and Google Play while you focus on your business.

We’ve built 2,000+ apps for brands like yours.

Curious whether a native app makes sense for your brand? Book a free 30-minute strategy call to see a preview of your app. No commitment. Just see if it’s the right fit for you.

FAQs: iOS PWAs

Do PWAs work on iPhone?

Yes. PWAs can be installed to the iPhone Home Screen, run in standalone mode, send push notifications (since iOS 16.4), cache content for offline use, and display app icon badges. However, they have significant limitations compared to native apps and compared to PWAs on Android, including no App Store distribution, no background sync, and no automatic install prompt.

Can you put a PWA in the Apple App Store?

No. Apple does not allow PWAs to be submitted to the App Store. The App Store Review Guidelines require native binaries, and Guideline 4.2.2 specifically blocks “web clippings.” Google Play does allow PWA submissions via Trusted Web Activity (TWA), but Apple has no equivalent.

Do PWAs support push notifications on iOS?

Yes, but with limitations. Push notifications work for PWAs that have been added to the Home Screen (not from Safari tabs). They require explicit user permission, don’t support silent push or background wake, and the reachable audience is roughly 10-15x smaller than native app push once you factor in the multi-step install process. Apple added Declarative Web Push in Safari 18.4, which simplifies the implementation but doesn’t change these fundamental reach limitations.

Are PWAs as good as native apps on iPhone?

For basic content delivery, PWAs can be close. But for ecommerce and any use case that depends on push notifications, App Store visibility, background data sync, or hardware access, native apps are substantially more capable on iOS. The PWA capability gap between Safari (86/100) and Chrome on Android (97/100) reflects iOS-specific constraints that Apple has not addressed.

Will Apple improve PWA support on iOS?

Apple has made incremental improvements (push in iOS 16.4, Declarative Web Push in Safari 18.4, default web app mode in iOS 26), but the pace is slow and the most impactful gaps, like background sync, hardware APIs, and automatic install prompts, remain unaddressed. Regulatory pressure from the EU and UK hasn’t yet translated into meaningful capability changes. Apple’s WebKit monopoly on iOS means the company controls the timeline entirely.

Progressive web apps sit in an interesting middle ground in the website vs app debate. They’re websites that behave like apps: they load fast, work offline (or at least try to), send push notifications, and can be installed on a home screen without going through an app store.

The appeal is obvious. You get a lot of native app functionality without the cost of building and maintaining a separate iOS and Android app. For many brands, that’s enough. For others, it’s a starting point.

Whether you’re thinking of launching a PWA, or just curious about the technology, we put together a list of notable examples to show you what’s possible.

Below is a list of 30+ PWA examples you can visit today on your phone, test for yourself, and install to your home screen.

Progressive Web Apps are a great way to improve mobile UX – but they’re not a true substitute for a real mobile app. Luckily, there’s an easy way to turn your PWA into a native app: Vendrux.

What Is a Progressive Web App?

A progressive web app is a website built with modern web technologies that delivers an app-like experience.

PWAs can:

• Load instantly, even on slow or unreliable networks
• Work offline, using cached content when there’s no connection
• Send push notifications to re-engage users without an app install
• Be installed on the home screen, without going through an app store

The term “progressive” refers to how these apps work for every user, regardless of browser or device, while progressively enhancing the experience for users with modern browsers.

Major brands use PWAs to reduce load times, increase engagement, and reach users who won’t download a native app. The examples below show how different industries apply PWA technology.

Quick Reference: Top PWAs (And Results)

Ecommerce and Retail PWAs

Ecommerce is where PWAs have had the most measurable impact.

Faster load times translate directly to lower bounce rates and higher conversion. For brands serving customers on slow connections or older devices, the difference can be dramatic.

Learn more: all you need to know about Ecommerce PWAs

Starbucks

Starbucks built one of the most cited PWAs in existence, and for good reason. Their progressive web app lets customers browse the full menu, customize drinks, and add items to their cart, all while offline. When connectivity returns, the order goes through.

The PWA is 99.84% smaller than the native iOS app (233KB vs. 148MB), which matters a lot for users on limited storage or slower networks. Starbucks reported doubling daily active web users after launching the PWA, with web-based orders reaching near-parity with mobile app orders.

Alibaba

Alibaba’s PWA was one of the earliest high-profile implementations, and the results set the benchmark for the industry. After launching their progressive web app, Alibaba saw a 76% increase in conversion rates across browsers. The PWA focused on fast load times and re-engagement through push notifications and home screen installation prompts, targeting the massive segment of users in markets where app downloads are a barrier.

AliExpress

AliExpress took a similar approach and saw even more granular results: a 104% increase in conversion rates for new users, with iOS conversions specifically rising 82%. Users viewed twice as many pages per session and spent 74% more time on site. For a marketplace handling millions of SKUs across global markets, the PWA’s fast loading on slow connections was a major driver.

Flipkart

India’s largest ecommerce platform went all-in on PWA with Flipkart Lite, effectively replacing their mobile website entirely. The results: 70% increase in conversions and a 40% higher re-engagement rate. Push notifications drove a significant share of return visits. For a market where data costs and storage space matter, the lightweight PWA was a better entry point than asking users to download a 50MB+ app.

Lancome

Luxury beauty brand Lancome rebuilt their mobile experience as a PWA and saw push notifications contribute to a 12% lift in conversions. Page load times dropped by 84%, and mobile sessions increased 53%. The case is notable because luxury brands typically resist anything that doesn’t feel premium, but the PWA delivered a fast, polished experience that matched the brand.

Debenhams

UK retailer Debenhams implemented a PWA that made their mobile shopping journey 2-4x faster, leading to a 40% increase in mobile revenue and 20% higher conversion rates. The speed improvement alone, cutting seconds off every page load for millions of mobile visitors, drove the revenue uplift.

Kaporal

French fashion brand Kaporal’s PWA (built on a headless commerce architecture) delivered a 60% reduction in bounce rate, 15% increase in desktop conversions, and 40% longer visit duration. It’s a good example of a mid-market brand getting outsized results from the technology.

Butcher of Blue

Dutch fashion label Butcher of Blue saw some of the most dramatic PWA results in ecommerce: 169% increase in conversion rate, 154% more monthly active users, and pages loading 85% faster. Proof that PWA benefits aren’t limited to enterprise-scale brands.

Lilly Pulitzer

The American fashion brand’s PWA delivers a fast, image-heavy shopping experience optimized for mobile browsing. Product pages load quickly with high-resolution imagery, and the site supports home screen installation. It’s a strong example of a fashion brand that prioritized mobile performance without sacrificing visual richness.

News, Media, and Publishing PWAs

News sites were early PWA adopters because their core challenge is speed. Readers abandon slow-loading articles, and the difference between a 2-second and 6-second load can cut an audience in half.

Financial Times

The Financial Times was one of the very first major publishers to ship a PWA, and they did it to get away from Apple’s App Store revenue sharing. Their PWA offers offline reading, push notifications for breaking news, and a fast, clean reading experience. The FT has maintained and iterated on their PWA for years, making it one of the most mature implementations in any industry.

The Washington Post

The Washington Post’s PWA loads 88% faster than their previous mobile site. Content starts rendering almost immediately, with articles loading in under a second on repeat visits thanks to aggressive service worker caching. For a publication that publishes hundreds of articles daily, the performance gain compounds across millions of page views.

Forbes

Forbes rebuilt their mobile experience as a PWA and reported a 50% increase in session completions and a 3x increase in scroll depth. The faster loading times meant readers actually stayed long enough to engage with content rather than bouncing on a slow initial load. Ad viewability improved as a direct result.

Telegram

Telegram’s web client is a full-featured PWA that handles real-time messaging, file sharing, group chats, and voice messages in the browser. It supports offline message queuing and push notifications. Telegram reported 50% more sessions per user after launching their PWA. The web version is functionally close to the native app, which is rare for messaging platforms.

Social, Community, and Communication PWAs

Pinterest

Pinterest’s PWA was a response to a specific problem: their old mobile web experience had terrible engagement in emerging markets. The rebuild delivered a 40% increase in time spent, 44% more ad revenue from those users, and a 60% increase in core engagement metrics. The PWA loads in under 5 seconds on 3G connections, compared to 23 seconds for the previous site.

X (formerly Twitter)

Twitter Lite launched as a PWA specifically for markets with slow connectivity. It uses less than 3% of the data of the native app, loads in under 5 seconds on 3G, and saw 65% more pages per session, 75% more tweets sent, and a 20% drop in bounce rate. X has continued to maintain the progressive web app, and it remains one of the most feature-complete social PWAs available.

Tinder

Tinder’s PWA cut load times dramatically while delivering the core swiping experience in a fraction of the size. The PWA is just 2.8MB compared to the native app’s 30MB+. The lightweight approach made Tinder accessible in markets where app downloads are a barrier, expanding their user base into regions with limited bandwidth and storage.

Travel, Transportation, and Booking PWAs

Uber

Uber’s PWA was built to work on 2G networks and low-end devices. The core ride-hailing flow (set pickup, choose destination, request ride) works in a 50KB initial payload. It’s engineered for the absolute worst-case connectivity scenario, which makes it useful in markets where the native app is too heavy. The PWA supports location services, real-time driver tracking, and push notifications for ride updates.

Trivago

Hotel search engine Trivago rebuilt their mobile experience as a PWA and saw 150% more engagement from users who added it to their home screen. Push notification opt-ins increased significantly, giving Trivago a direct re-engagement channel that bypassed email and paid ads.

MakeMyTrip

India’s largest travel company reported 160% increase in shopper sessions and a 3x improvement in conversion rate after implementing their PWA. The offline-capable booking flow was particularly impactful for users in areas with intermittent connectivity, which describes much of India’s mobile user base.

Tajawal

Middle Eastern travel platform Tajawal saw their conversion rate triple (from 0.3% to 1.2%) after launching a PWA that cut time-to-interactive from 13 seconds down to 3.6. In markets where mobile web is the primary shopping channel, those seconds matter enormously.

Automotive and Lifestyle PWAs

BMW

BMW rebuilt their mobile presence using a PWA approach (combining AMP content with a progressive web app shell) and the results were significant: the site loads 4x faster than the previous version, mobile visitors grew 50%, and click-throughs from BMW.com to sales sites jumped from 8% to 30%. That last number is the standout. A 4x increase in sales-qualified traffic, driven primarily by faster page loads.

Entertainment and Productivity PWAs

Spotify

Spotify’s web player is a fully functional PWA that mirrors most of the native app’s features: streaming, playlists, search, recommendations, and offline playback for Premium subscribers. It’s installable to the home screen and runs in its own window without browser chrome. The main advantage is accessibility. No download required, works on any device with a modern browser, and it’s significantly lighter than the native client.

Hulu

Hulu’s PWA delivers their streaming catalog through the browser with support for installability and push notifications for new releases. The progressive web app approach lets Hulu reach users on devices where a native app isn’t practical (older smart TVs, Chromebooks, Linux machines) while maintaining a consistent viewing experience.

Photopea

Photopea deserves a spot on this list because it demonstrates what’s technically possible with PWA technology. It’s a full Photoshop-alternative image editor that runs entirely in the browser, supports PSD/AI/Sketch files, and works offline. The fact that professional-grade image editing runs as a progressive web app would have been science fiction a few years ago.

Food Delivery and Marketplace PWAs

Swiggy

India’s food delivery giant built a PWA to address the same challenge Flipkart faced: millions of potential users on low-end devices and slow connections. The PWA delivers the full ordering flow (browse restaurants, customize orders, track delivery) at a fraction of the size and data cost of the native app.

OLX

Classifieds marketplace OLX saw an 80% reduction in bounce rate after launching their PWA. The combination of faster loading, push notification re-engagement, and offline browsing of saved listings transformed their mobile metrics in markets across India, Brazil, and Southeast Asia.

Jumia

Africa’s largest ecommerce platform built their PWA for a user base where data is expensive and smartphones have limited storage. The results: 33% higher conversion rates, 50% lower bounce rates, and 12x more users compared to their native app in key markets. Jumia’s PWA is a textbook example of the technology solving a real distribution problem.

What PWAs Can (and Can’t) Do

PWAs have come a long way, but they still have limitations compared to native apps:

PWAs can:

• Load instantly and work offline
• Send push notifications (on Android; limited on iOS)
• Be installed on the home screen
• Access camera, location, and other device features
• Work across all browsers and devices

PWAs can’t (or struggle to):

• Access all native device APIs (Bluetooth, NFC, etc.)
• Send push notifications reliably on iOS
• Appear in app store search results
• Achieve the same performance as native apps for complex interactions
• Leverage platform-specific features (widgets, Siri, etc.)

The bottom line: PWAs have limitations, and while they’re an excellent improvement on regular mobile websites, having a PWA isn’t a reason to say no to launching a “real” mobile app.

For many brands, the answer is both: use a PWA for broad reach and low friction, and a native app for your most engaged users who want the full experience.

Turning Your Website Into a Native App (Without Rebuilding)

The brands in this list invested in PWA technology and saw measurable results: faster load times, higher engagement, and better conversion rates.

But PWAs have limits. They can’t access all native device features, and many users still prefer apps they can find in the App Store or Google Play. Push notifications – one of the most powerful engagement tools – remain limited on iOS for PWAs.

If you already have a website that works well on mobile, or if you’ve invested in a PWA, you don’t have to start from scratch to get a native app.

Vendrux extends your existing website into native iOS and Android apps. Your site’s design, functionality, checkout flow, and every integration you’ve already built carries over. You get native app capabilities on top: reliable push notifications (including on iOS), App Store and Google Play presence, and the performance and trust that come with a native app.

It works for any website platform and any tech stack. There’s no rebuild, no separate codebase to maintain, and no features to sacrifice.

How it works

1. Book a strategy call. Share your website URL. We’ll discuss your goals, answer questions, and assess fit.
2. Get a custom app preview. Our team builds a personalized preview of your app so you can see exactly how it looks and performs.
3. Launch in 30 days. We handle the build, App Store submission, and launch. Your app goes live while you focus on running your business.

We’ve built 2,000+ apps over the last ten years, including numerous global ecommerce brands. We give you a way to go live with your own native apps, with no revenue share, predictable pricing, and a fully managed service from start to finish.

‍Book a free strategy call to see how your website becomes a native app.

We’re about to answer all your burning questions about progressive web apps (PWAs). We’ll explain what a progressive web app is, how they’re different from regular web apps, and the advantages and disadvantages of progressive web apps vs traditional web apps and native mobile apps.

We’ll also give you an in-depth background on PWAs, and the results that some major businesses have had from launching their own progressive web application.

Essentially, anything you ever wanted or will want to know about progressive web apps, you can find in this article. Read on for more!

What is a Progressive Web App?

A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a browser-based website that replicates the look, feel and features of a native mobile app.

PWAs live in the browser like a traditional website and are fully connected to the web’s infrastructure of links and search engine indexes.

At the same time, like native apps, they can be launched from a home screen icon, send push notifications to the user’s device, load in a split second, and be built to work offline.

Progressive web apps are not separate from your site, they are an enhancement of your site. Generally the user doesn’t need to take any special action to access a progressive web app – it will just show up when they access the website in a mobile browser.

Want to see some real, live, progressive web app examples? This article shows you 50 of the best progressive web applications out there today.

Some Background on Progressive Web Apps

The actual definition of what is and isn’t a progressive web app is pretty vague, truth be told. There’s no clear line that separates a regular mobile website and a progressive web app. So it’s worth looking at the background of PWAs and several different parties’ definitions to get a feel for what a PWA really is.

The Original Definition of a Progressive Web App

The term “Progressive Web App” was coined in 2015 by Francis Berriman and Google engineer Alex Russell. They had been observing the emergence of a new class of web applications, and over dinner decided to define and name them.

They came up with the following criteria:

• Responsive: to fit any form factor
• Connectivity independent: Progressively-enhanced with Service Workers to let them work offline
• App-like-interactions: Adopt a Shell + Content application model to create appy navigations & interactions
• Fresh: Transparently always up-to-date thanks to the Service Worker update process
• Safe: Served via TLS (a Service Worker requirement) to prevent snooping
• Discoverable: Are identifiable as “applications” thanks to W3C Manifests and Service Worker registration scope allowing search engines to find them
• Re-engageable: Can access the re-engagement UIs of the OS; e.g. Push Notifications
• Installable: to the home screen through browser-provided prompts, allowing users to “keep” apps they find most useful without the hassle of an app store
• Linkable: meaning they’re zero-friction, zero-install, and easy to share. The social power of URLs matters.

You can see how these criteria fulfill the “web app” part of the definition.

For many years companies like us and others created platforms that allowed businesses to create app experiences with web technologies. This works great to this day, but there are tradeoffs. In order to create a great native app experience you lose the discoverability and linkability of the web.

New web technologies like service workers (we’ll get into those later) emerged and changed things – allowing developers to build experiences that took the best of native app UX and put that in the browser, thus retaining all the benefits of the web.

You no longer needed to accept a mediocre mobile web UX, while pushing people to download your native apps to get the real deal. You could provide a great mobile experience across the App Stores and the web, to everyone who interacted with your brand online.

This is what Berriman and Russell observed. They didn’t invent anything, they noticed a shift in the web and named it.

“Progressive” Web Apps

What about the “progressive” part?

In this context it means that the apps are built with progressive enhancement. This is a design technique focused on building a “baseline” experience that works for everyone but that upgrades and enhances on more advanced devices. The experience of a progressive web app isn’t necessarily the same for all users, it adapts based on the power of their device as well as the permissions they grant.

Google’s Definition of a Progressive Web App

Microsoft has been enthusiastic about PWAs for some time. Apple took some convincing and is now (mostly) in. Among big tech though, it was Google that really championed PWAs from the beginning.

That said, Google themselves don’t seem to be 100% sure about the definition. Back in 2015 they put out a list of 10 characteristics, then reduced that to six, then added three new ones.

Currently, Google’s definition of a progressive web app includes three pillars. In their introduction page, they state that PWAs are:

“Web applications that have been designed so they are capable, reliable, and installable. These three pillars transform them into an experience that feels like a platform-specific application”

This is more helpful, but not that helpful as it’s so broad. It hints at the key point though, that PWAs are bringing experiences to web users that were traditionally associated with native platforms exclusively.

The Technical Definition of a Progressive Web App

A third way that we can define a PWA is by specifying the purely technical, rather than UX criteria.

This is what web developer and author Jeremy Keith attempted in his 2017 blog post What is a Progressive Web App?.

Keith thinks that the confusion about PWA definitions is unfounded and that basically, three criteria must be met:

1. HTTPS – PWAs must run on secure servers employing HTTPS. Service workers are essential for their potential, and they can only be used if you have HTTPS in place.
2. A Service Worker – essentially a JavaScript file that runs separately from the main browser “thread” and allows the developer control over how the app handles network requests and caching. This helps to drive the impressive speed and offline capabilities of PWAs.
3. A Web App Manifest – a JSON file that provides a description of the application to the browser, including details like the name, author, icon, description, and resources to run it. This ensures that the application is discoverable.

Keith goes on to note that this is a minimal, bare-bones definition. PWAs are capable of a whole lot more, but they must fulfill these three technical criteria to make the cut.

Summing Up: What Does “Progressive Web App” Really Mean?

So we’ve seen the original observational/aspirational definition, Google’s UX-driven definition, and a minimalist technical definition. What can we surmise? Although there may still be a little ambiguity, we now have a good idea of what a progressive web app is.

A PWA is a modern, secure, fast-loading website that uses cutting-edge web technologies to achieve these characteristics. Unlike traditional websites, it performs and feels to the user like a native app – and “escapes” the browser tab in the process.

As Alex Russell puts it:

“These apps aren’t packaged and deployed through stores, they’re just websites that took all the right vitamins”

This is a great way to put it. PWAs are the latest generation of the web. They are web apps that are able to leverage the potential of modern browser technology. By turning your own website into a PWA, you give it the “vitamins” necessary for it to perform optimally.

Why stop at PWAs? It’s easier and more affordable than ever to convert your website into real, fully-functional mobile apps. Book a free demo of Vendrux today to see how.

👉 Book Demo

Do I Need a Progressive Web App?

Let’s get this out of the way –  if you have a website, and it’s remotely important to you or your business – you need a PWA.

That may seem like a bold statement, but it’s the truth. Why?

In a nutshell, by not building a PWA you are likely leaving customers, revenue and growth on the table, the scale of which is going to continue to grow as mobile keeps taking ground from desktop as the most popular way to use the web.

As Pete LePage and Sam Richard from Google’s web team put it:

“The numbers don’t lie! Companies that have launched Progressive Web Apps have seen impressive results. For example, Twitter saw a 65% increase in pages per session, 75% more Tweets, and a 20% decrease in bounce rate, all while reducing the size of their app by over 97%. After switching to a PWA, Nikkei saw 2.3 times more organic traffic, 58% more subscriptions, and 49% more daily active users. Hulu replaced their platform-specific desktop experience with a Progressive Web App and saw a 27% increase in return visits”

Let’s take a look at the results that other well-known brands have achieved as a direct consequence of launching PWAs.

• Alibaba boosted mobile web conversions by 76%, saw 14% more active users on iOS and 30% on Android
• Debenhams saw a 40% increase in mobile revenue, a 20% increase in conversions, and above market online growth
• Pinterest saw a 40% boost in total time spent, 44% growth in user generated ad revenue, and 60% more core engagement
• Forbes got a 43% increase in sessions per user, a 20% improvement in ad viewability, and 100% more engagement
• BMW saw a 30% increase in CTR to their sales site, 4X faster load times, 50% growth in mobile users, and 49% more organic traffic
• MakeMyTrip boosted page speed by 38%, tripled conversion rates, and saw a 160% increase in shopper sessions
• AliExpress boosted conversion rates for new users by 104% (+82% on iOS) and saw 74% increase in time spent per session with 2x more pages visited per session
• Housing.com saw 38% more conversions, a 10% longer average session, 40% lower bounce rate – and an overall 30% faster page load time
• Wego tripled ad CTR, and saw 26% more visitors and 95% more conversions overall. On iOS, they got an impressive 50% boost in conversion and a 35% increase in session duration
• Treebo saw a 4x increase in conversions year on year. Repeat users converted 3x higher.
• Tinder more than halved loading times from 11.91 seconds to 4.69 seconds and saw engagement up across the board with a PWA 90% smaller than their native app

How are all these amazing results possible? A lot of it boils down to the fact that PWAs provide a much better user experience, and great business results flow from that.

Benefits of Progressive Web Apps

Let’s take a more detailed look at some of the key progressive web app benefits, starting with the most important one – speed.

PWAs are Lightning Fast

Modern consumers expect instantaneous loading. If something doesn’t load in a heartbeat, many will lose interest, perhaps permanently. This is both self-explanatory, and supported by a ton of data:

• Almost 50% of users say their top frustration on mobile is waiting for slow pages to load (source)
• Pages that load within 2 seconds have a 9% bounce rate, pages that take 5 seconds have a 38% bounce rate (source)
• A “sharp decline in conversion rate” is associated with average load times increasing from 1 to 4 seconds (source)
• Every 1 second improvement in load time boosts conversion rate by 2%, while a 100 millisecond improvement generates up to 1% more incremental revenue (source)

Essentially the faster your site loads, the better. If you make your customers/readers/users wait then a decent % of them will bounce and not give you their money.

Improving site speed drives better results across the board. That’s all there is to it.

So how can a PWA help you to achieve this? Progressive web apps are fast. Really fast.

Pinterest, for example, managed to cut their “time to interactive” loading time down from a sluggish 23 seconds to just 5.6 seconds. This was on average Android hardware over a slow 3G connection. This had a welcome knock-on impact on key metrics.

Streaming platform ZEE5 tripled site speed and halved buffering time by building a PWA. Uber’s PWA loads in less than 3 seconds on 2G networks. Forbes cut mobile loading times from 6.5 seconds on its previous mobile site to just 2.5 seconds with its PWA.

Speed improvements are guaranteed when you build a good, well-designed progressive web app.

Why are Progressive Web Apps so Fast?

PWAs are so fast thanks to the all-important service workers. As Jason Grigsby puts it in his excellent book Progressive Web Apps:

“Progressive web apps use service workers to provide an exceptionally fast experience. Service workers allow developers to explicitly define what files the browser should store in its local cache and under what circumstances the browser should check for updates to the cached files. Files that are stored in the local cache can be accessed much more quickly than files that are retrieved from the network”

Grigsby goes on to explain that:

“When someone requests a new page from a progressive web app, most of the files needed to render that page are already stored on the local device. This means that the page can load nearly instantaneously because all the browser needs to download is the incremental information needed for that page”

One of the traditional advantages of native apps is that they can be lightning fast. They achieve this in a similar manner – all the files necessary to run the app are downloaded when you install it, and it only needs to retrieve new data. Service workers allow progressive web apps to bring a similar impressive performance to the web.

PWAs Provide an App-Like UX on the Web

Speed, which we’ve already discussed, is obviously a huge part of UX. There are other important factors though and PWAs help out here too.

Native mobile apps were long the gold standard for mobile UX. They still are (in some ways at least), but PWAs can now match much of their feel and functionality straight from the browser.

For example, PWAs can:

• Work offline or in poor network conditions (more on this next)
• Be installed on the user’s device and accessed via a home screen icon like a native app
• Send push notifications to the device’s lock screen (unfortunately only on Android)
• Be developed to deliver a full screen, “immersive” experience with a navigation structure that mimics a native app
• Make use of animations like a native app
• Be developed to access the device’s hardware like the camera and GPS

The early mobile web was pretty rough. The responsive design era improved this significantly, but there was always something lacking.

Native apps were unambiguously built for smartphones. They always fitted the experience of the device better. PWAs have blurred this line though, the distinction in terms of experience can be hard to pinpoint.  

For example – have you ever used Instagram Lite, Google Maps Go or Twitter Lite?

You can download them on the Google Play store and check them out – and see how they feel like any other native apps.

You would be forgiven for assuming that these are lighter, leaner versions of their main native apps. As you might have guessed though – they are progressive web applications.

This goes to show the potential of PWAs for recreating the UX that mobile app users know and love.

Note: you may have noticed that these PWAs are live on the Google Play store. Google opened the Play Store to PWAs in early 2019! This shows how confident they are about the future of PWAs as truly cross platform applications. You have to jump through a few hoops to get your PWA on there, but it is certainly possible. As of now, there is no information from Apple about whether this will ever be possible on the iOS App Store.

PWAs are Reliable

We’ve all had the experience of trying to use a website or web app on a shaky mobile connection. It isn’t fun.

Thanks again to service workers, that define specifically what the browser should cache locally – PWAs can be built to offer a fast, full experience even when the user has poor connectivity.

This can be taken a step further, too. Through “precaching”, which is when the whole application is downloaded and stored on first visit, PWAs can also provide full offline functionality!

This is really important, when you consider how many people still live in rural and poorly served areas, and the billion or so people coming online for the first time over the next few years – many of whom will not enjoy a flawless internet connection.

PWAs are Secure, Efficient and Adaptable  

For service workers to do their thing, your website must be completely secure with HTTPS.

Hopefully it does already, but if not building a PWA will force you to do all the necessary work of making your site 100% secure.

PWAs are also very efficient. A key factor that puts people off downloading native mobile apps is the available storage space on their device. As the authors of The PWA Book put it:

“They treat their mobile devices like cameras, computers, notepads, assistants, and – most importantly – as a treasury of memories. If downloading an app means that they have to sacrifice precious photos or messages, they think three times before clicking yes.”

PWAs don’t force people to make such tough decisions. They are much lighter than native apps, and the installation process has less friction (one tap on a button and a shortcut is created on the home screen). The PWA does take a little space on the device, but it is negligible in comparison.

The service workers that drive this efficiency are also responsible for reducing server load and minimizing the risk of sluggish performance and crashes during intense periods.

Progressive web apps are also very adaptable. Since they are based on the web, they can be maintained, updated more easily than native mobile apps.

When you want to change or update something you can move fast, there’s no need to deal with the App Store gatekeepers, require the user to manually update, or contract specialized native app developers.

It’s as easy as updating your site is today – and the updates (deployed to a server) are available almost instantly to the user.    

PWAs let you Engage Users with Push Notifications

We’ve been talking about the power of push notifications for years. They are the best way to engage and communicate with your audience on mobile – bar none. You can use them to update users, nudge them back into the apps, promote offers and products, and generally stay top of mind in their busy lives.

Here are some example of how different businesses might use push notifications:

“Breaking News, X and Y just happened!”

Push notifications work great for digital publishers, and allow them to drive traffic back into their top stories and alert users with time-sensitive breaking stories.  

“Special offer / you abandoned your cart / your items have been dispatched”

Push works wonderfully for eCommerce. Shopping apps regularly send notifications out to alert users to offers and new products, keep them up to date with the delivery process, and deliver special app-only coupon codes.

• Social Platforms and Communities

“Your friend just sent you a message/friend request/replied to you”

We’ve all likely experienced push messages from social platforms before. They are the secret ingredient that social apps use to get you back on their platform, engaged and interacting with other users.

These are a few of the use cases. But really push notifications can be a great boost for any business. They were (and still are) one of the strongest reasons to build native apps.

Thanks again to our friend service workers – you don’t need native apps any more to send push notifications. You can send them from your website (if you turn it into a PWA).

Push notifications need to be used properly and not abused, but they can bring a lot of benefits and are a great benefit of building a PWA.

For example, after building a PWA, Lancome saw that 8% of consumers who tap on a push notification make a purchase, and improved conversion rates on recovered carts by 12% via push notifications.

Another one is eXtra Electronics, Saudi Arabia’s leading electronics retailer. eXtra made 100% more sales from users arriving through web push, and noticed that those who opted into push notifications returned 4X more often and spent 2X as much time on site. Chief Business development officer Mujeed Hazzaa said that:

“Push Notifications are a huge part of our mobile engagement strategy. It’s a more personal way to communicate with our customers. That’s incredibly valuable to our bottom line.”

When you turn your site into a progressive web app, you can get strong results for your business too. There’s one big caveat – you can only use them on Android. iOS doesn’t support them, and it’s anyone’s guess if it ever will. If push notifications are important to you and you want to send them to all users then you’ll have to build native mobile apps.

Progressive Web Apps will Grow your Business

We’ve gone through some of the most important benefits of turning your site into a progressive web app.

The bottom line is that they make total sense for any business with a website, who cares about their mobile web presence. They allow you to upgrade your entire web UX, and offer a fast, modern experience that is all but guaranteed to improve key metrics.

Disadvantages of Progressive Web Apps

What are the downsides of building a PWA?

None really, except the time and money you need to invest to build one. Even so, a PWA is relatively affordable, and very likely to (more than) pay for itself over time – especially if your site is tied to any kind of revenue through advertising, eCommerce or memberships.

Compared to a regular website or web app, there’s little to no reason not to build a PWA, as long as you have the means to do so.

The question of progressive web apps vs native mobile apps, however, is a more interesting one. Let’s take a look at this now.

Progressive Web apps vs Native Apps

There’s an idea going around that progressive web apps and native apps are rivals. That PWAs will render native apps irrelevant and unnecessary, and that businesses will choose between building a PWA and a native app and always opt for the latter.

This narrative is misguided and presents native apps vs PWAs as an either/or choice, which is inaccurate. The truth is that PWAs and native apps are a brilliant combination, and work synergistically together. They cover each other’s bases and ensure that you are giving everyone an optimal user experience regardless of the channel.

PWAs benefit from the reach, discoverability and ubiquity of the web. They pull in organic traffic and impress first time visitors with a fast and sleek experience, persuading them to spend more time (and money) on your site. They give an easy installation option that reduces friction and gatekeepers, and can appeal even to those worried about limited device storage space.

They provide the perfect means of building a connection with new visitors on mobile web browsers, and those who are engaged enough to return but not enough to download your native apps for whatever reason. PWAs are the perfect means of nurturing people through your funnel.

Native apps on the other hand have poor reach and visibility compared to PWAs. They are behind the “walled gardens” of the App Stores, and require a higher level of commitment from the user to install and download them. On the other hand, they are more in-keeping with existing user habits, allow you to send push notifications to iOS users, and can get you brand-boosting visibility/presence on the App Stores.

Native apps are great for your core readers/customers/users. Your most loyal base should be encouraged to download your native apps and access them – behind a login screen or paywall even – so you can gather them in one place and really focus on understanding and engaging them, maximizing LTV and retention as much as possible.

Native apps are a great “home” for your biggest fans.

Google puts it this way:

“PWAs don’t have to replace native apps; they can work in tandem with them. Retailers, for instance, can use a native app to engage loyal users who are more likely to install an app, but use a PWA to easily reach new users. Users who interact with the PWA can then be prompted to download the mobile app in the future”

Our recommendation – build both!

If you’re limited budget wise, go for a PWA. If you have a native app but not a PWA, you should definitely build one ASAP. If you’re fully committed to building an optimal mobile-first UX and able to invest in achieving that then build both and have them complement each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

TLDR: There’s no need to choose between PWAs and native apps. We recommend you build both, a progressive web app to serve your mobile web visitors and native mobile apps to serve repeat users on iOS and Android devices.

If you want to read more on how progressive web apps compare to native apps, check out this post for a deeper look.

How to Build a Progressive Web App

The purpose of this guide is to give you a complete high level overview of PWAs. The intricacies of their development isn’t something we’re going to get into, but we are going to lay out your options so that you can make the choice yourself. 

There’s a lot of content floating around online about how you can build a PWA in “10 minutes”. With promises of bringing that native app feeling to a traditional web app all from scratch in just less than an hour, it’s easy to get enticed by these tutorials.

Is it legit though?

Yes and no. These PWA “hacks” also are for fulfilling the absolute minimum criteria – HTTPS, web manifest and service worker. If you are interested in creating a very basic, functional progressive web app – you could try Microsoft’s PWABuilder. With a bit of tinkering and technical know-how you could get something decent up and running.

In order to build a unique, optimized and feature rich progressive web app – that really fulfils its potential – you need to invest more. To see why, let’s break down the fundamental steps.

1. Purchase an SSL certificate to be configured through your hosting service
2. Develop an app shell
3. Verify if the browser supports service workers
4. Register the service working file
5. Add push notifications and web app manifest
6. Set up the install prompt
7. Test the app’s functionalities
8. Audit the app based Lighthouse’s checklist
9. Fix bugs
10. Launch the app

Sounds easy, right?

In reality, to do this well and build a good custom progressive web app requires front-end developers with experience building complex web apps.

The vital work of setting up the service worker and caching for optimal performance is complex and requires real skill. Then, Depending on your requirements you’ll also may also need designers who understand native app user experience and how to apply that effectively on the web.

Unless you’re a pretty big company, you probably don’t have a load of talented front-end developers sitting around waiting for you to tell them what to do. You’d need to find them, hire them and put a team together and manage them – a difficult task if you’re not experienced with such things. Good front-end developers are always in demand too, and their contract rates reflect that.

Cost and timescale of building a progressive web app

So how much would this cost? Well, it’s a bit like the classic “how long is a piece of string?”

It depends entirely on the complexity of the app you want to build. According to the authors of The PWA Book:

Building a PWA from scratch will take something between 3400 wh (for a small app) to 9000 wh (a dedicated project we’ve done). This means a cost between $400K and $1m. Using a cloud platform will be at least 75% cheaper, and Time to Market will also be 75% shorter (2-3 months instead of 8-12 months).

– Chapter 10, The PWA Book

This seems on the pricey end, but it gives you an idea of how major brands like the ones we looked at above invest in their experiences.

Of course if you are converting a site into a PWA rather than building it from scratch it will be cheaper and easier in most cases. As a rough estimate, you’re looking at investing at least 3 months, and $20,000 to $50,000 to get a great result.

Developers follow different project phases but in most cases, it involves seven phases: discovery, design, revision, preliminary development, testing, bug fixing and final launch.

If your PWA is more complex, then expect its completion to last longer considering the advanced functionalities that have to be integrated such as GPS, social media support and camera access.

That being said, simple PWAs can take less than three months (or even just a couple of weeks if they are bare bones). If you want to have more advanced features such as backend admin panel, visualization patterns and other integrations, then you can still have your PWA in less than six months.

This may seem like a sizable amount, but if you put it in context it’s more than worth it. Not only are they more affordable and faster to build than native apps, but the speed and improved user experience is likely to more than pay for itself in the long run.

Turn a WordPress Site into a PWA

If you’re on WordPress, there are some more straightforward ways to turn your WordPress site into a PWA, and some WordPress PWA plugins that you can try out.

We can help to advise you on your options, and If your site is the right fit – use our custom platform to convert it into a PWA in just 2 weeks, for a fraction of the standard cost. We can also build native iOS and Android apps from your site in a similar timeframe, so you’ve got all your mobile bases covered!

Get in touch with one of our mobile experts for a consultation to find out more.

Start Building a Progressive Web App Today!

You should have a good overview about the characteristics and power of progressive web apps by now.

To learn more, check out these resources:

Now it’s your turn. It may seem like a daunting task – but you need to turn your website into a progressive web app to really have an impressive, modern, optimal web presence.

When it’s ready to launch, you’ll be happy, we guarantee. And your customers will reward you by spending more time, attention and money engaging with your business.

As we mentioned though – a PWA is not a replacement for native apps. PWAs are primarily a much better website. It can be hard to get users to install them on their devices, as they are not accustomed to that yet, and you miss out on sending push notifications to iOS users and a brand presence on the App Stores.

Should You Build Native Apps Too?

A PWA is a must, but native apps are still the ultimate mobile user experience. The only reason some are wary or negative about the prospect of native apps is the large expense ($50,000+), and the long and laborious development process that traditionally came along with them.

If you share those concerns, but are interested in building iOS and Android apps for your brand, you should check out our platform, Vendrux. We help you convert your site or web app into top quality native apps in just weeks, for less than $1,000 investment out of the gate.

Our platforms can be used to convert any website to a mobile app. It doesn’t matter what your site is built with. Vendrux is great for building:

And anything in-between! You’ll be set up with unlimited push notifications on Android and iOS, and you’ll have all the features you need to build a winning cross-platform presence on the web and the App Stores.

We can also help you out with a PWA, so you’ll have the ideal mobile combo going forward.

If this sounds good, book a demo today, and join thousands of brands taking the leap to a mobile-first focus with Vendrux.