App development
Most things called an app should be a website, and we will tell you when yours is. When it genuinely needs to live on a phone, we build it properly rather than wrapping a page in a shell.
Sino Recipes is ours. It is an AI kitchen assistant with recipes, meal plans, a pantry and a grocery list, and it runs as a web app, on iPad and on iPhone from a single codebase. It is the clearest answer we have to the question of what we build: open it on any of those and it is the same product, with the same account and the same data.
The work starts with a flow, not a screen: who signs in, what they can see, what they can change, and what happens when two of them do it at once. Getting that wrong is what makes software expensive later, so it is where the first week goes.
We build on Next.js and React for the web, and React Native where a phone is the right home. The data layer is Postgres, usually Supabase, so authentication, row-level security and file storage arrive together rather than as three integrations to maintain.
Everything ships behind real access control. Roles and permissions are enforced in the database, not just hidden in the interface, because a button that is merely invisible is not a security boundary.
- Web, iOS and Android from one codebase
- Accounts, roles and permissions
- Store submission handled
Four things arrive, in this order.
Everything below is in the scope by default. If a project does not need one of them, it comes off the quote rather than being quietly left out.
- 01
A working prototype early
A clickable build on a real URL in the first fortnight, so the argument happens over software rather than over a document.
- 02
The application
Accounts, roles, the core flows, an admin view, and the reporting the business actually reads.
- 03
Data, backed up and yours
Postgres with automated backups, row-level security, and an export you can take elsewhere.
- 04
Release and monitoring
Store submission where relevant, error tracking, and an alert that reaches a human before a customer does.
From the first call to the handover.
You see the work at every stage, on something real. Nothing on this list needs chasing.
- 01
Discovery
Two sessions mapping the flows, the roles and the data. You leave with the map whether or not you build with us.
- 02
Prototype
The riskiest screen, built for real. It is cheaper to be wrong here than anywhere later.
- 03
Build in fortnights
Working software every two weeks on a staging URL, with a short written note on what moved.
- 04
Launch and support
Release, monitoring, and a support agreement so there is a named person when something breaks.
The things people ask before they commit.
Web app or mobile app?
If it needs the camera, offline use, push notifications or a store presence to be taken seriously, it is a mobile app. Otherwise a web app reaches every device at a fraction of the cost.
What does it cost to run?
A small app is typically R500 to R2 000 a month in hosting and database, billed at cost. We show you the numbers before you commit, not after.
Can you take over an existing app?
Often. We start with a paid audit, a week at a fixed price, so both sides know what is really in there before anyone signs a maintenance agreement.
Need app development?
Send through what the business needs and a fixed quote comes back inside two days.
- Office
- Sunninghill, Sandton, 2196
- Hours
- Mon–Fri, 07:00–17:00
- info@bonangtech.com