Native iOS and Android apps, built by the same person who looks after your website. Not a cross-platform wrapper, and not outsourced.
Does your idea need an app at all?
Worth asking first, and most developers skip it because the answer can cost them a project. A good responsive website does most of what people picture when they say they want an app. It costs a fraction as much, there’s nothing to install, and a fix goes live in minutes instead of waiting on App Store review.
An app earns its keep when you need push notifications, offline use, the camera, GPS in the background, a watch, CarPlay, or a home screen icon people tap out of habit. If none of that applies, I’ll say so and build you a better website instead.
Built native, not wrapped
iOS is Swift and SwiftUI. Android is built natively alongside it. Wrappers are cheaper up front and they show it the moment an app needs the phone properly: background location that survives the screen locking, a watch app, CarPlay, home screen widgets, system-level permissions. Native costs more and behaves like the device it’s running on.
Apps I’ve built
Mile Magpie
A mileage and expenses logbook for people who drive for work, with turn-by-turn navigation built in. Multi-stop route planning, live traffic, speed limits, GPS tracking of every mile, and exports an accountant will accept. Ships with an Apple Watch app, home screen widgets, CarPlay support and CloudKit sync across devices.
iOS, watchOS, CarPlay. Swift, SwiftUI, SwiftData.
File Cleaner Plus
Storage cleaner for the photo library, contacts and calendar. Finds duplicates, near-identical shots, blurred frames and screenshots you meant to delete months ago, plus duplicate contacts and dead calendar entries. Everything runs on the device. Nothing is uploaded, and nothing is deleted without you confirming it.
iOS. Vision framework for image analysis, Face ID vault, on-device only.
Roughly
A shopping list that knows the store you’re in. Items sort themselves into that shop’s aisle order so you walk it once, barcode scanning builds the list faster than typing, and a running total keeps the basket roughly costed before you reach the till. Shared live with family over iCloud.
iOS. Barcode scanning, store floor plans, live iCloud sharing.
Kids Mode Lockdown
Locks a phone to approved apps only. Time limits with warnings, web blocking, a PIN-protected exit and biometric unlock for parents. It also closes the gap most parental tools leave open, forcing audio to the internal speaker so headphones can’t be used to slip past the shield.
iOS. Apple’s Family Controls and DeviceActivity frameworks, Guided Access integration.
Tooling other developers use
I also write add-ons for Local, the development tool a large share of professional WordPress developers run every day.
- cPanel Sync pulls WordPress and static sites from a cPanel or SSH host into a local environment and pushes them back, files and database, either direction.
- ngrok Live Link shares a work-in-progress site on a reserved domain that stays the same between sessions, so a preview link sent last week still opens today.
It’s worth knowing about because it’s the same skill your project needs: understanding a system deeply enough to extend it, instead of working around it.
Apps that talk to WordPress
This is where the WordPress background pays off. If your content or catalogue already lives in WordPress or WooCommerce, that can feed the app directly through its API. Your team keeps editing in the dashboard they already know, and the app updates without a new release.
- Product catalogues and ordering driven by your existing WooCommerce store
- Content and news pulled from the site you already maintain
- Customer accounts and subscriptions shared between web and app
- Push notifications triggered by things happening on the site
I’ve built this both ways round: a native iOS client for the CRM behind my own client portal, and an audit engine that runs heavy crawling off-host and posts results back through authenticated endpoints.
How a project runs
- Scoping. What the app must do, who uses it, and what the first release needs against what can wait.
- Design. Screens and flows agreed before code is written, while changes are still cheap.
- Build. Working builds you can install on a real device as we go, not a demo at the end.
- Release. App Store and Play Store submission, including the review requirements that catch first-time publishers out.
- After launch. Apps need maintaining. iOS and Android break things annually, and both stores eventually drop apps that stop being updated.
What it costs
App projects vary too much for a price list to be honest about. The cost is driven by how many distinct screens there are, whether it needs a back end built from scratch or can use one you already have, and how much of the design is bespoke. You get a written quote after scoping, before anything starts.
Budget separately for the Apple Developer Program and a Google Play developer account. Those are annual costs paid straight to the platforms.
Talk it through
Bring the idea and I’ll tell you straight whether an app is the right shape for it. Get in touch. Based in Cheltenham, working with businesses across Gloucestershire and the UK.
Last reviewed and updated: