Mobile app development — for product teams and agencies worldwide

Mobile apps that launch, scale, and stay on the home screen.

iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter mobile development for consumer apps, B2B SaaS companions, enterprise field-ops, and funded startups. We ship mobile apps with crash-free sessions above 99.5%, cold launch under 2 seconds, full VoiceOver / TalkBack parity, and App Store approval on first submission.

Start a mobile project See apps we have shipped

1,000⁺

Websites shipped since 2015

10yrs

Building on WordPress

4.9★

Across 1,000+ reviews

95+

Lighthouse mobile baseline · every site

The real cost

A crashy, slow, or inaccessible mobile app quietly costs you customers every week.

Mobile apps live or die in their first 30 days. A 1-star review on the App Store compounds for years; a crash on first launch costs a customer forever; a screen that locks up on a mid-range Android is a customer who never returns. The three observations below are what we say out loud on every mobile discovery call.

Every 0.1% of crash rate compounds into churn.

A crash-free rate of 97.8% sounds fine until you do the maths: across a daily-active user base of 50,000, that is roughly 1,100 users hitting a crash every day. The Apple App Store and Google Play algorithms downrank apps with elevated crash rates. Reviews tank. Customers who experience a crash on first launch never come back. The difference between 97.8% and 99.7% is not technical — it is the difference between a mobile app that retains customers and one that bleeds them quietly every week.

A 1-star review compounds for years; a 5-star review you have to keep earning.

Mobile is the only software channel where customers permanently rate you publicly on the route to install. A 1-star review from launch month sits in your App Store listing for the life of the app. Apple and Google weight recent reviews higher, but old 1-stars never disappear. The cost of shipping a borderline app is not measured in the bug-fix sprint that follows; it is measured in the conversion drop on the App Store listing for the next 36 months.

Every September and August, your mobile app is a release away from breaking.

iOS ships a major release every September. Android ships its major release every August. Each one deprecates APIs, tightens permissions, changes navigation behaviour, removes support for older SDKs. Mobile apps that are not maintained on a cadence visibly degrade within 6 to 18 months — permissions stop working, layouts break on the newest device sizes, biometrics stop authenticating, push notifications quietly stop delivering. Mobile maintenance is not a luxury; it is the difference between an app that is still on the App Store in three years and one that has been quietly retired.

What we build

Six kinds of mobile build, each engineered for the home screen.

Consumer apps for App Store and Play Store

Direct-to-consumer apps built to launch and stay on the home screen. Onboarding that converts, payments and subscriptions via Apple / Google billing or Stripe, push notifications, analytics from sprint one. Launched to App Store and Play Store under your developer name.

Enterprise & field-ops apps

Field engineers, drivers, inspectors, agents. Offline-first architecture, secure auth (SSO, MFA), barcode and QR capture, offline sync with conflict resolution, MDM compatibility. Distributed via TestFlight, ad-hoc, or enterprise MDM rather than the public App Store.

MVP & POC apps for funded startups

6 to 10 week MVPs for funded startups validating a hypothesis. React Native or Flutter, focused feature set, instrumented for product analytics from day one, TestFlight by week three, App Store-ready by week eight. Engineered to scale if the bet wins.

React Native engineering

React Native New Architecture (Fabric, TurboModules) with TypeScript and Expo SDK. JavaScript-native teams who want web code-sharing with React on the frontend. Native modules where the JS bridge does not cover the case. Sentry / Crashlytics observability from sprint one.

Flutter engineering

Flutter 3.x with Dart 3+, Material 3 and Cupertino design parity, Riverpod or BLoC state management, go_router navigation. The right cross-platform choice for design-led apps that need pixel-perfect parity across iOS and Android without compromising on native feel.

Native iOS (Swift) & Android (Kotlin)

SwiftUI with Combine and async / await for iOS. Jetpack Compose with Hilt and Kotlin Coroutines for Android. The right choice for performance-critical apps (AR, real-time video, games), apps that need day-one OS feature parity, and single-platform-only products.

Beyond the build

The work that keeps the site healthy after launch.

A WordPress site is healthy only as long as someone is paying attention to it. We offer three engagement types alongside the build itself — for clients moving onto WordPress from another platform, for teams who need ongoing engineering after launch, and for sites that need their SEO foundations set up properly from day one.

WordPress migrations

Moving from Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, Drupal, Joomla, Ghost, or a legacy WordPress install. We migrate content cleanly, preserve URL structure with a proper 301 redirect map, and ship a custom WordPress build at the end of it — not a like-for-like rebuild of what you had.

Content audit and IA review before migration
URL-to-URL 301 redirect map · SEO equity preserved
Custom theme + content modelling on landing
Performance and accessibility brought up to baseline

Maintenance, support & security

Monthly retainers covering WordPress core and plugin updates, security patches, daily backups, uptime monitoring, performance monitoring, malware scanning, and a fixed allocation of editorial and development hours. For clients without a dedicated WordPress engineer in-house, this is how the site stays healthy past month one.

Plugin / core updates · weekly cadence
Daily off-site backups · quarterly restore drill
Cloudflare WAF · uptime & CWV monitoring
Allocated hours: editorial, bug fixes, small features

On-page SEO setup

WordPress SEO done properly from launch — Yoast, Rank Math, or AIOSEO configured to the site, schema markup baked into every template (Article, Product, FAQ, BreadcrumbList, Organization), XML sitemaps, robots.txt, hreflang for multilingual sites, and indexing strategy aligned with what you actually want to rank for.

Schema markup per template type
Internal linking architecture from day one
Core Web Vitals tuned for ranking
AI-search citation-ready content patterns

Performance & accessibility

The numbers every WordPress site we ship has to hit.

Every site is shipped against four hard targets. We measure, we tune, we re-measure. Below the line, the build is not done — and the engagement is not closed — until each number is in the green.

01 — Core Web Vitals

LCP under 1.5s · CLS under 0.05 · INP under 100ms

Real-Chrome-user metrics, measured continuously after launch. Sub-1.5s LCP on every primary template. Failing CWV is not an option — Google ranks sites that pass them visibly higher in 2026.

02 — Lighthouse score

95+ on mobile · 99+ on desktop · every page

Performance, accessibility, best practices, and SEO measured in Lighthouse with mobile throttling enabled. Below 90 mobile, we hold the launch. Most pages clear 95 on mobile and 99 on desktop.

03 — Accessibility

WCAG 2.2 AA · baseline on every build

Colour contrast checked per token. Keyboard navigation tested per template. Screen-reader landmarks audited. Form labels reviewed. Live regions for dynamic content. Accessibility is part of the build, not a fix after launch.

04 — Security & uptime

Modern PHP · WAF · daily backups · 99.9% SLA

Modern PHP, Cloudflare WAF, daily off-site backups, uptime monitoring, plugin and core update cadence, file-integrity monitoring. The site stays healthy after launch — not just during it.

How we work

Five steps from brief to a site that loads and lasts.

The process below has stayed the same for ten years and 1,000+ WordPress builds. Every step is required. Skipping any one of them is how WordPress sites end up slow, fragile, or unmaintainable.

Brief and content model

We learn the business, the editorial cadence, the current site (if any), the audience, and the integrations the site has to live with. We finish with a written brief and a content model on paper.

Architecture and engineering plan

Custom post types, taxonomy, content blocks, hosting plan, caching plan, performance targets, accessibility targets. The architecture is decided before any visual work starts.

Custom theme development

Custom theme. ACF Pro for content modelling. Minimal plugin footprint. Modern PHP. Performance and accessibility tuned per template. Weekly demos, two-week sprints.

Performance and accessibility testing

Real-device testing across Chrome, Safari, Firefox. Core Web Vitals tuned on live URLs. WCAG 2.2 AA audit. Editorial UAT — the team that will run the site uses it before we ship.

Launch, monitor, maintain

Launch checklist, 301 redirect map verified, sitemap, GSC and analytics live. Monthly maintenance from day one. Quarterly performance and SEO reviews.

Selected work

Websites we have shipped across SaaS, services, publishing, and e-commerce.

Six websites from the last 24 months. Every one of them passes Core Web Vitals, hits WCAG 2.2 AA, and was built on WordPress with a custom theme and a minimal plugin footprint.

Meridian

LCP 0.9s · AA · 98 Lighthouse

SaaS productivity

Nordsalt

LCP 1.1s · AA · 96 Lighthouse

D2C · WooCommerce

Chayya

LCP 0.8s · AA · 99 Lighthouse

Publishing · multilingual

Frondhill

LCP 1.0s · AA · 97 Lighthouse

Services · B2B

Lavenir

LCP 1.3s · AA · 95 Lighthouse

E-commerce · beauty

Stratos

LCP 0.9s · AA · 98 Lighthouse

Content · SaaS

Need a WordPress site that actually performs?

Send us a one-paragraph brief about the business, the editorial cadence, and where you want the site in three years. We will come back with a free, honest plan — fixed scope, fixed targets.

Request a discovery call

Where it shows up

Four kinds of business, one WordPress engineering team behind them.

The same WordPress engineering capability adapts to four very different commercial contexts. Visual language stays consistent; what changes is the content model, the integrations, and the editorial workflow we build around the team.

SaaS marketing

Product-led marketing

SaaS marketing sites with clean information architecture, fast page builds for new launches, and an ACF Pro content model the marketing team can extend without engineering.

Services & B2B

Consulting & advisory

Consulting, advisory, agency, and professional-services sites. Sector-led navigation, case-study and white-paper publishing, gated content where it earns its keep.

Publishing & media

Editorial platforms

Editorial-grade publishing with custom post types, taxonomy, author profiles, and the search and discovery surfaces that keep readers engaged across long catalogues.

E-commerce

WooCommerce storefronts

WooCommerce stores from small catalogues to multi-region storefronts. Custom checkouts, payment-gateway logic, subscription billing, ERP and CRM hooks.

Client stories

Two WordPress engagements, and what changed for the businesses behind them.

Meridian

SaaS productivity · UK + Europe · 2024–2025

The situation

An overweight, plugin-heavy WordPress site that loaded in 4.2 seconds on mobile was costing Meridian roughly 30% of its trial sign-ups. Marketing could not ship landing pages without engineering. SEO had stalled despite content investment.

What we did

Rebuilt the site on a custom theme; cut the plugin footprint from 41 to 11; moved hosting to Kinsta; shipped a new ACF Pro content model the marketing team could extend without engineering; tuned Core Web Vitals against real Chrome user data; rebuilt the on-page SEO foundations with schema per template type.

The outcome

LCP moved from 4.2s to 0.9s. Mobile sign-up conversion was up 38% within the first eight weeks. Lighthouse mobile score moved from 32 to 98. Marketing now ships landing pages independently of engineering. SEO impressions roughly doubled over the first six months.

More about Meridian →

Chayya

Long-form publishing · multilingual · 2024–2026

The situation

A 6,000-article publisher with three language editions had outgrown its template-based WordPress site. Editorial throughput was capped by the content model; the editorial team was working around the CMS rather than with it. Multilingual SEO was leaking through hreflang errors.

What we did

Rebuilt the content model around how the editorial team actually works (commissioning, drafting, peer review, scheduling, syndication); added WPML with hreflang done properly and per-region content overrides; shipped a custom-themed publishing platform; built an internal-link automation system; tuned the site for sub-1-second LCP globally via Cloudflare edge caching.

The outcome

Global LCP under 0.8 seconds. Editorial throughput up roughly 40%. Organic traffic followed within the first quarter. Three language editions live and the team is shipping a fourth (Arabic) without engineering help.

More about Chayya →

For agencies & product teams

The WordPress engineering team behind the agency.

Roughly 35% of our WordPress work is built for other agencies, product teams, and consultancies — under their brand, against their clients' deadlines. Three partnership models, all NDA-protected, with senior WordPress engineers working in time zones that overlap the UK, EU, and US workday.

01 · Partnership model

White-label WordPress development

Your brand. Our engineers. We never appear in front of your client — all communication, deliverables, and code go out under your name. The standard model for agencies that win WordPress projects but don't want to hire in-house WP engineering.

NDA & sub-contract in place before any work begins
Code, design files, and deliverables shipped under your brand
Joint slack / email channels with your team only
You stay client-facing; we stay implementation-facing

Used by: digital agencies, marketing firms, brand studios

02 · Partnership model

Agency-of-record & dedicated WP team

A pod of senior WordPress engineers, a front-end developer, and a project lead working as your in-house WordPress capacity — full-time or fractional, month-to-month or annual. The choice when WordPress is core to your service mix and hiring in-house is slower or more expensive than partnering.

Dedicated pod: 2 to 6 engineers + lead, scaled to your roadmap
Direct integration into your project tools (Jira, Linear, ClickUp, Asana)
Monthly capacity commitment; retainer or rolling SoW
Code ownership transferred to your repos

Used by: full-service agencies, SaaS product teams

03 · Partnership model

Capacity overflow & sprint-by-sprint

When your in-house WordPress team is full and the next project cannot wait. Sprint-by-sprint engagement, no commitment beyond the current two-week sprint, ready to pick up scoped work within 5 to 7 business days from green-light.

Two-week minimum sprint, rolling renewal
Scoped fixed-price work — feature build, migration, performance pass
Fast spin-up: 5 to 7 business days from signed SoW
No long-term commitment; ramp up or down per sprint

Used by: agencies with seasonal WP demand spikes

NDA-protectedStandard NDA, sub-contract, and IP transfer in place before any work begins.

Time-zone overlapWorking hours overlap with UK mornings, EU workday, and US afternoons every business day.

Single point of contactNamed project lead on every engagement. No agency-side account churn.

Your repos, your codeCode ownership transfers cleanly. We work in your Git, your hosting, your tooling.

Already running an agency or product team? Explore our white-label terms Start a partner conversation

From the journal

Cheap WordPress shops & DIY builders vs WordPress done properly.

Two routes most businesses consider before they hire an engineering team. Both look cheaper on month one. Neither holds up by year three. Here is what each one actually delivers — and where it falls short.

Cheap WordPress shop

Theme bought from ThemeForest, then "customised" with 40 plugins
Loads in 4 to 7 seconds on mobile; fails every Core Web Vital
No content model — every page is a page builder soup of widgets
Breaks on the next WordPress major version
Cheap up-front; expensive to rebuild in 18 to 24 months

DIY builder (Wix / Squarespace / Elementor)

Drag-and-drop interface that any non-developer can operate
Hosted, fixed templates, fixed performance ceiling
Hits a wall the moment you need custom functionality, integrations, or scale
Lock-in: you cannot export the site or move hosts
Year-three cost often higher than custom WordPress

Custom WordPress at Dream Steps

Custom theme · 10 to 15 plugins · ACF Pro content model
Sub-1.5-second LCP · WCAG 2.2 AA · 95+ Lighthouse mobile
Content model the editorial team can extend without engineering
Modern PHP · CDN edge cache · object cache · daily backups
Higher in year one, dramatically lower across years two and three combined

Cheap WordPress is the most expensive WordPress.

The savings show up on the invoice in month one. The cost shows up in the rebuild, the lost organic traffic, the editorial workarounds, and the abandoned plans for things you cannot do on the platform you chose. Every cheap WordPress shop we have inherited has cost the client more in rebuild than a custom build would have cost first time round.

DIY builders work for the brief they were built for.

Small marketing sites that will not change much. The moment the business needs more — integrations, custom workflows, scale — you are either rebuilding or working around the platform. The work-around is rarely cheaper than the rebuild, and the rebuild is rarely cheaper than starting with custom WordPress from day one.

A custom WordPress build does more, lasts longer, and gets out of the way.

It costs more up front because that is what it costs to design the system around your business rather than fit your business around someone else's template. Three years in, the maths favours it on almost every commercial axis we have measured — build cost, performance, SEO, editorial throughput, total cost of ownership.

— The honest read

Build the WordPress site that fits the business in three years.

Request a WordPress engagement

Common questions

Questions WordPress buyers actually ask.

Fourteen of the most common WordPress questions, answered straight. If yours is not below, send it and we will reply with a real answer — not a sales pitch.

Why choose Dream Steps for mobile app development?

We have shipped 1,000+ mobile apps since 2015 across consumer apps, enterprise field-ops tools, fintech, healthtech, and B2B SaaS companions. Our 40-person team of senior mobile engineers, designers, and project leads in Noida, India works in time zones overlapping the UK, EU, and US workday. We hold every mobile build to four hard targets: crash-free sessions above 99.5%, cold launch under 2 seconds, WCAG 2.2 AA plus VoiceOver / TalkBack parity, and App Store / Play Store approval on first submission. We do not white-label other agencies’ work and tell clients honestly when cross-platform is the right answer and when native is.

Can you white-label mobile app development for our agency?

Yes — roughly 35% of our mobile work is built for other agencies and consultancies under NDA. Three partnership models: white-label (your brand, our engineers, fully invisible), agency-of-record (a dedicated mobile pod working as your in-house capacity), and capacity overflow (sprint-by-sprint engagement when your in-house team is full). Code ownership transfers to your repos, Apple Developer / Play Console accounts stay yours, and App Store submissions go out under your developer name.

Where is your mobile team based?

Our entire mobile engineering team is based in Noida, India — 40 people in our iThum Tower B office, founded in 2015. We work with product teams and agencies across the UK, US, Ireland, Australia, the UAE, Germany, and the Netherlands. Working hours overlap with UK mornings (your 9 AM to noon), the full EU workday, and US afternoons (your 1 PM to 6 PM EST). For agency partners we run in their tooling — Slack, Jira, Linear, ClickUp, Asana — as standard.

Should I build with React Native, Flutter, or native?

Cross-platform (React Native or Flutter) for around 85-90% of mobile apps — consumer apps, B2B SaaS companions, internal tools, MVPs. React Native if your team is JavaScript / React-native and you want web code-sharing. Flutter if you want pixel-perfect parity across iOS and Android and design is the lead. Native (Swift, Kotlin) for single-platform-only products, performance-critical graphics work (AR, real-time video, games), and apps that need day-one OS feature parity within weeks of an iOS or Android release. We build all four stacks and recommend honestly.

How much does a mobile app build cost?

Mobile app builds range from MVP / POC apps through to consumer-launch apps and enterprise field-ops platforms. The right scope drivers are number of screens, real-time features (push, presence, sync), payments and subscriptions, offline capability, complexity of integrations, and the team’s mobile maturity. We scope every engagement against the specific brief and are honest about which features can wait until phase two.

How long does a mobile app build take?

A typical consumer app (React Native or Flutter) takes 12 to 18 weeks from brief to App Store. An MVP / POC app takes 6 to 10 weeks. A native iOS or Android app takes 14 to 22 weeks depending on complexity. An enterprise field-ops app with offline sync takes 16 to 24 weeks. App Store and Play Store review adds 1 to 2 weeks. We work in two-week sprints with TestFlight / internal-testing builds every sprint.

Will my mobile app be crash-free and fast?

Yes — every mobile app we ship hits crash-free sessions above 99.5% (measured on Firebase Crashlytics or Sentry), cold launch under 2 seconds on mid-range devices, scroll performance at 60 FPS on lists, and memory under 250 MB on baseline screens. We achieve this through proper image handling, careful navigation state management, async-safe code paths, and observability from sprint one. Crash-free is not an afterthought — it is part of the build.

Can you build accessible mobile apps (WCAG 2.2 AA, VoiceOver, TalkBack)?

Yes. WCAG 2.2 AA is our baseline on every mobile build. VoiceOver (iOS) and TalkBack (Android) parity is verified per screen — proper accessibility labels, traits, navigation order, and focus management. Dynamic Type on iOS up to XXXL. Touch targets at least 44pt on iOS and 48dp on Android. Reduced-motion support. Real users test the apps with screen readers before launch. Accessibility is part of the build, not a fix before launch.

Can you handle App Store and Play Store submissions?

Yes. We have shipped 1,000+ apps to the App Store and Play Store. We handle App Store Connect setup, screenshots and store listings, App Review compliance (privacy policy, data declarations, age rating, encryption export), Play Console setup and target-API compliance, staged rollouts, and review-process management when Apple or Google has questions. Most of our apps get approved on first submission; we handle the back-and-forth when they do not.

Can you migrate my legacy mobile app to React Native, Flutter, or native?

Yes. Common migrations include: PhoneGap / Ionic / Cordova to React Native or Flutter; old Swift / Objective-C to modern SwiftUI; old Java / Kotlin to Jetpack Compose; React Native old architecture to New Architecture (Fabric, TurboModules). We migrate one feature at a time, not big-bang rewrites — the existing app stays shippable through the entire migration. Typical migration: 8 to 16 weeks depending on app size and feature parity goals.

Will you maintain the mobile app after launch?

Yes. We offer monthly mobile maintenance retainers covering OS-release engineering (iOS major releases in September, Android in August / October), dependency updates and security patches, deprecated-API removals before Apple and Google enforce them, crash triage and fix cadence, App Store / Play Store guideline-change adaptation, and a fixed allocation of editorial and engineering hours per month. For teams without a dedicated mobile engineer in-house, this is how the app stays healthy through OS releases and policy changes.

Do you handle push notifications, biometrics, payments, and other mobile integrations?

Yes. Push notifications via APNs (iOS) and FCM (Android), with deep links, rich notifications, and notification grouping. Face ID, Touch ID, and Android biometric authentication. Apple Pay, Google Pay, Stripe payment sheets, RevenueCat for subscriptions. In-app purchases for App Store and Play Store consumables and subscriptions. Sign in with Apple, Sign in with Google. Camera, microphone, location, HealthKit, CoreML, ARKit. Native modules for anything not yet wrapped by the cross-platform community.

Can you build offline-capable mobile apps?

Yes. Offline-first architecture is one of mobile’s hardest problems and one we have solved many times — local SQLite database, conflict resolution policies, queued mutations, optimistic UI, background sync via WorkManager (Android) and BGTaskScheduler (iOS). Used heavily in our enterprise field-ops apps where engineers and inspectors work in poor-connectivity locations. Offline capability is a 2 to 4 week add-on to a connected app build, scoped from the start.

What stack do you ship for a typical mobile app?

For cross-platform consumer apps in 2026: React Native New Architecture (Fabric, TurboModules) with TypeScript and Expo SDK 53+, OR Flutter 3.x with Dart 3+. State via React Query / TanStack or Riverpod (Flutter). Navigation via React Navigation or go_router. Auth via Firebase Auth or Supabase. Crash tracking via Sentry. Backend on the API we have built for it (typically Laravel, FastAPI, or Node). For native: SwiftUI with Combine and async/await; Jetpack Compose with Hilt and Kotlin Coroutines. We adjust based on the team and requirements but the stacks above are what we recommend by default.

Ready when you are

Build a mobile app that earns its place on the home screen.

Tell us about the app, the audience, the platforms, and the launch goals. We will come back with a written brief, a realistic build cost, and a clear set of crash-free, performance, accessibility, and review-readiness targets we will hold ourselves to.

Request a discovery call See more of our work

What to expect

A 30-minute conversation about your business, the editorial team that will run the site, and where you want to be in three years. No slide deck, no pitch.

You walk away with

A written brief naming the build scope, the performance and accessibility targets we will hold to, the timeline, and a realistic build cost.