PWA

Technically a PWA is an ordinary website plus three things: HTTPS, a manifest with icons and a name, and a service worker, a background script that intercepts network requests and can serve cached responses. The service worker is what delivers offline mode and instant repeat opens: the app shell comes from cache while fresh data loads behind it. Push notifications have worked in Android browsers for years and, on iOS, work for apps added to the home screen from iOS 16.4 onwards.

The commercial case for PWAs is stronger in Russia than on Western markets. Apps from Russian companies, financial ones in particular, keep disappearing from the App Store, which makes a PWA the one channel nobody can remove: it lives on your domain and updates when you deploy. Add the economics: one codebase instead of two native ones, no review queue on release, no store commission. For a shop, a booking service, a customer portal or a media outlet that package is often enough.

The limits are real too, and selling a PWA as "the same native app but cheaper" is not honest. On iOS access to some platform capabilities is trimmed, cache quotas are smaller and background work is more restricted than on Android. Heavy graphics, Bluetooth and NFC work, deep integration with system services: those remain native territory. And on distribution, nobody finds a PWA by searching a store, so the acquisition channel has to be built by you through the site, email and paid traffic.

Related terms

• Responsive designResponsive design is an approach where a single layout reorganises itself to the viewport: grid, typography and block order change at defined breakpoints instead of sending the visitor to a separate mobile version on its own subdomain.
• Core Web VitalsCore Web Vitals are Google’s three page experience metrics: LCP, the render of the largest element, should stay within 2.5 seconds, INP, the response to an interaction, within 200 milliseconds, and CLS, cumulative layout shift, within 0.1.
• SSR vs CSRSSR and CSR are two ways of producing HTML: with server-side rendering the page is assembled on the server and arrives complete, while with client-side rendering the browser receives an empty shell and JavaScript draws the content after load.
• APIAn API is a fixed set of rules by which one program requests data or actions from another: method addresses, request and response formats, authentication and rate limits, documented so that both sides can evolve independently.

Related services

• Web app and Telegram Mini App developmentFor when a site is no longer enough and you need a product: an account area, a dashboard, an internal tool or a Mini App inside Telegram. We design the architecture, write the backend and frontend, and take it to release.
• Mobile app developmentiOS and Android apps from prototype to App Store and Google Play release. We help you choose between cross-platform and native based on the task rather than on fashion.

Read more

• Telegram Mini Apps for Business: Who Needs One and What It CostsA Mini App is a web application living inside Telegram with no store review and no install. We cover how it differs from a bot and a mobile app, which mechanics work, how authentication is built and what development costs.
• Flutter, React Native or Native: Choosing in 2026Choosing between Flutter, React Native and native is a product economics decision, not a technology one. Where cross-platform halves the budget, where it costs more, and what the Russian market constraints change in 2026.