Should I focus on mobile or web app ideas?

If you are faster building stuff on the web go for web. So you now sooner rather than later if your product is even used.
When building a mobile app you are have additional hurdles by Google and Apple to jump. There is way more overhead to release your product to the stores.
Preview images, in app purchases, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Developer Account details just to name a few.
But, creating a mobile App myself and seeing this work with some friends of mine, Apple and Google will distribute your app to a audience. At least a few people will stumble upon your app even if you don't promote it at all. This is what encouraged me to create a mobile app instead of web, as I don't have an audience I could pitch my product to.

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I don’t necessarily have an opinion on mobile vs web, beyond “don’t make android apps because android users don’t pay.”

But.

You should think long and hard about your market and pricing structure. One time app pricing is easier to get purchases for. But are you going to have ongoing costs? Are you running a server forever? App updates forever? Saas is harder to get signups for but generates continuous revenue to cover continuous costs.

One aspect of mobile is pricing too- if you’re trying to build a business on one time sales you are going to have a hard hard time doing that charging a dollar for your app. I think for an indie selling anything to consumers is a really bad idea, because folks will start pushing back on you for a five dollar price point, which is near the bottom for a price point that can sustain development. The App Stores exert a powerful downward pressure on pricing. It’s very challenging and likely a really bad idea.

There are a variety of freemium options that try to get around this, but they depend on massive scale, which is a super bad indie strategy, not least of which is that being able to generate that kind of scale is almost entirely outside your control. You can do well through skill. Going huge is the will of the gods. Don’t count on going viral, that’s not a business model.

Neither. Focus on problems, see how you solve them.

It can be app, website, API or a simple remote server program

What matters is your solution, nothing else.

It's harder to get users on mobile. It has higher traction -- they need to find you, click through the shop, install it, probably sign up. Each step makes user drop at some point. But, when they do install the app and the app offers the value to them, then it's easier to keep them. In the end, they have it installed on their device and are more exposed to it.

In contrary, web doesn't have this traction -- you just visit the website and that's it. User can check/use it without any additional hustle of downloading. But, this makes it harder to keep them. There are hundreds of websites they visit everyday and once they leave, it's harder to get them back.

I guess it depends on what your app/web does.

You can try building with Flutter. With the same codebase you can compile for iOS/Android and web easily. But mind that web is still in beta.

Personally I chose to build for mobile.

Always start with web if that is an option (ie, if you don't use sensors, etc). For users, make it mobile optimized (a PWA might be best).

When people talk about mobile usage they don't necessarily mean mobile apps. There is a browser in all mobile phones.

I tried both and think it's much easier to survive on web. Mobile is just so competitive and the overhead of getting someone to view your app vs view your website is large.

With React Native you can target mobile (on both Android and iOS) as well as web (via React Native Web) from the same codebase for all three platforms. You can even potentially build desktop apps (Windows, macOS, and even Linux) from the same codebase. Whichever of these you choose to start with (if not all options at once), going this route prevents you from having to fragment development teams in the future.

Someone will inevitably chime in that you can do the same thing with Flutter, but JavaScript devs are much easier to find than Dart devs, and React Native has a much larger community than Flutter.

my 2 cents as I spent a year building Pipfeed.

I decided to go the mobile app route and have faces these challenges and advatages as well.

Pros:

• Good retention
• Notifications have higher open rate

Cons:

• Harder to fix bugs as you want to manage backward comaptibility
• Expensive to acquire users ($0.5-1$ per user)
• Harder to code as a lot of restrictions based on mobile devices

In the end it depends on your product, where do you see your customers using your product. Are most of them going to open it in email or on web? Why would they come to your website as compared to mobile.

In the end mobile apps are expensive to manage, build and grow as compared to web apps but that also depends on the kind of app you are creating.

I think it's helpful to approach the problem based on where your users are. If it's a consumer app for something social or involving discovery, then mobile might be the way to go. If it's more of a tool (think Airtable or Notion) then it's likely fine to start out on web.

The majority of mobile users come from App Store search (just talking about iOS for now). So, would you be able to rank well for keywords in your space? A novel idea can do well, especially if it's following recent trends. You get a huge boost from being a new app.

For web, you'll need to work harder and wait longer for results. Product Hunt is likely not going to turn you into an overnight success. You need to build up SEO overtime, grow a mailing list, and get your feet on the ground with cold emails, PR pitches, and content marketing.

All that said, I typically work on the web (client work) and my side product is a native iOS app. I find coding in Swift to be a real joy and it will teach you some principles that aren't yet very prominent in JS. It's good for your brain to try something new!

My app has over 2k DAUs as a solo founder and until I get too 10k or so, I can't see my processes breaking. Submiting to app stores is annoying but I don't think it's 3x the work of web overall.

Put aside technology for a minute.

Have you validated the value exchange of your idea to people who will be using it?

You can do this without writing a single line of code. Create low fidelity sketches/wire-frames and go show them to people to get an idea if it provides value to them. If a small cohort finds it to be valuable, work on higher fidelity mock-ups & expand to a larger cohort to ensure that value is provided and they are willing to exchange something for it (attention, money, etc).

Sure you can leverage existing marketplaces/app stores, but the first question should be about the value provided before you consider a distribution vehicle.

If you're just going to iterate on a handful of ideas & let the market validate value, pick a platform you enjoy & believe in. Nowadays one market is enough to get a good idea of whether it's valuable in the market or not & then you can decide later to distribute to more markets in the future.

If you consider web development as supporting an open ecosystem, your project becomes part of a collective effort to make the pie larger for everyone. The more popular the web is, the more accessible it becomes, the less you need to invest in particular platforms.

Another idea: platform marketplace apps. Take a look at this IH post I wrote earlier this week.