The Bottom Line: Spree Commerce is API-first and built for custom frontends, but building a native mobile app from those APIs means a second codebase for your team to maintain forever. MobiLoud takes the custom web storefront you've already built on Spree and delivers it as a native iOS and Android app. Same frontend, same experience, new channel.
If you're running Spree Commerce, your team made a deliberate technical choice. You picked an API-first Ruby on Rails framework that gives you full control over the frontend, the data model, the deployment, and the business logic.
You probably built a custom storefront with Next.js, React, or whatever your engineering team prefers. The product catalog, checkout flow, and buyer experience are designed and coded by your people, not generated by a template.
That's the Spree philosophy: the framework handles commerce logic, you build the experience.
So when someone mentions a mobile app, the instinct is to build one. You have the APIs. You have the engineering team. You could spin up a React Native or Flutter project and start calling Spree's endpoints.
You could. But there's a real question about whether you should.
Can You Build a Mobile App With Spree Commerce?
Absolutely. Spree's API-first architecture is designed for exactly this kind of use case. The Storefront API exposes product data, cart management, checkout, user accounts, and more through a well-documented REST interface.
Spree 5 is adding a TypeScript SDK and Next.js Starter Kit that make frontend development even more straightforward.
The technical capability isn't the question. The question is cost, timeline, and maintenance.
The Hidden Cost of a Second Frontend
Your team already built and maintains a custom web storefront. A native mobile app is a second frontend. Even with a shared API layer, you're now maintaining two separate codebases that need to deliver the same experience.
Every time your frontend team ships a new feature on the web, the mobile team needs to ship the equivalent. Product page redesign? Twice. New checkout step? Twice. Updated promotion display logic? Twice. A/B test on the category page? Twice, with different tooling.
For teams at Goop, Bonobos, or Craftsman scale, that parallel development effort might be justified. For mid-market companies running Spree with a small-to-mid-size engineering team, it's a significant resource allocation that competes with every other item on the product roadmap.
Realistic Costs
Building a native mobile app on Spree's APIs runs $80K-$250K for the initial build, depending on how complex your storefront is. If you're running a marketplace, multi-vendor setup, or B2B operation, push that toward the upper end.
Annual maintenance runs $30K-$80K for OS updates, app store compliance, bug fixes, and feature parity with the web. Plus the opportunity cost: every sprint your mobile team spends keeping the app current is a sprint they're not spending on the web experience or other priorities.
The Spree Team's Position
Spree's official stance on mobile is essentially "use our API to build whatever frontend you want." That's consistent with the framework's philosophy. But it also means there's no turnkey mobile solution. No app generator. No shortcut. It's a build-from-scratch project.
Your Options for Launching a Mobile App
Realistically, there are two ways to go live with your own native app.
Build It on Spree's APIs
Your engineering team builds native iOS and Android apps (or a cross-platform app) against Spree's Storefront API. Full control, fully custom. But it's a parallel development effort with ongoing costs, and it pulls engineering resources from the web storefront.
Website-to-App With MobiLoud
Your custom Spree storefront already works on phones. Whatever your team built for the web, the responsive version of your Next.js or React frontend, that's what MobiLoud delivers as a native app. Same design, same checkout, same everything.
No second codebase. No second deployment pipeline. No mobile team. When your frontend team ships changes on the web, the app reflects them instantly.
Why MobiLoud Makes Sense for Spree Commerce Stores
Spree teams value efficiency and clean architecture. MobiLoud fits that mindset by eliminating the duplication that a separate mobile app introduces.
One Frontend, Two Channels
Your engineering team built one storefront. MobiLoud lets that one storefront serve both web and app. There's no mobile-specific code to maintain, no separate CI/CD pipeline for app releases, no divergence between what customers see on the web and what they see in the app.
When your team deploys a new feature, refactors a component, or updates the design system, the change goes live on the web and in the app simultaneously. That's the kind of architectural simplicity Spree teams appreciate.
Your Custom Frontend Is the App
This matters specifically for Spree merchants. Your storefront isn't a theme you selected from a marketplace. It's a custom-built frontend your team designed and coded. The product detail pages, the collection layouts, the checkout flow, the account dashboards, these represent real engineering investment.
MobiLoud preserves that investment. Your customers see your frontend in the app, not a generic app shell with a standard layout. The experience you spent months building is the experience they get on mobile.
Marketplace and Multi-Vendor Support
If you're running Spree's marketplace features, with vendor onboarding, product sync, split payments through Stripe Connect, and vendor payouts, all of that works in the app. Buyers browse products from multiple vendors, vendors manage their listings, and the marketplace logic runs unchanged.
Multi-Region and Multi-Currency
Spree supports multi-store, multi-region, and multi-currency configurations natively. Your app inherits all of that. Different pricing for different regions, localized content, currency-specific checkout: it all carries over from the web.
Push Notifications Without a Mobile Team
This is the feature that most Spree merchants want from a native app but can't justify the development cost to get. Push notifications for abandoned carts, new arrivals, flash sales, order updates, back-in-stock alerts.
MobiLoud includes push notifications out of the box. No mobile development required. Your marketing team can reach customers on their phone screens without your engineering team writing a single line of mobile code.
Fully Managed, Engineering Team Stays Focused
MobiLoud handles the app build, app store submissions, ongoing maintenance, and OS updates. Your engineering team stays focused on the Spree backend and web frontend, the work that actually differentiates your business.
No React Native or Flutter project to staff. No app release cycle to manage. No App Store review process to navigate. The mobile channel runs itself once it's set up.
How It Works
- Preview your storefront. Book a free consultation, share your Spree-powered website URL. We'll build a working preview so your team can test the app experience firsthand.
- App build. MobiLoud creates your native iOS and Android apps with push notifications, native navigation, deep linking, and your branding.
- Team review. Your engineering and product teams test the app. We refine based on feedback.
- App store launch. MobiLoud handles Apple App Store and Google Play submission, compliance, and metadata.
- Ongoing management. Your apps go live. MobiLoud handles OS compatibility, policy changes, and support. Your team keeps shipping on the web.
You could be live in just four weeks.
Next Steps
Your Spree storefront is a custom-built frontend backed by a powerful commerce API. Building a separate native app against that same API means maintaining two frontends indefinitely, at a cost of six figures in the first year and five figures every year after.
MobiLoud lets your existing web storefront double as your mobile app. One codebase, one deployment pipeline, one team. The mobile channel adds revenue without adding engineering overhead.
Book a free strategy call to see if MobiLoud is the right way to turn your Spree storefront into a powerful native app.
