What Are the Risks of Choosing Wrong Technology for Your Web App?

Check how an experienced web development company will support you in making the right decision. At the end of this article, you will find six simple tips that will help you avoid choosing the wrong technology for your web application.

What does a “wrong choice” mean in practice?

First, we should establish what a “wrong choice” for the technology in a web application means in practice. The technology you choose to create your web application could be inadequate for your project and your business needs. When you start to work on the app, you should consider what you want to achieve and how it corresponds to your business objectives.

You also need to be certain that the trend for the technology you are interested in is not decreasing. It is important because using such technology may negatively impact the development process and the maintenance of the application after its launch. Outdated technology is also often not secure enough. Making sure that the tech you want to use is properly updated (by the community or the corporation that supports it) and efficiently secured is a must.

Ongoing support is another factor you should keep an eye on when choosing the technology for your web application. If it is not supported and upgraded regularly by its founders, then it is a technology with an uncertain future. You don’t want your business to rely on a technology that you can’t be certain about, do you?

Furthermore, check if the technology you want to use is well-regarded and has a solid track record. There are some rising stars amongst technologies used to build web applications but some of them may turn out to be just “buzz” that will pass by within the blink of an eye. Always choose reliable and proven technology.

Finally, remember that a low price doesn’t always correspond with good quality. Choosing technology that is cheaper than comparable stacks but not as efficient than the other choices is a common mistake.

When building a web application, you should always work with a trusted and experienced web development company – your technology partner will support you in choosing the best and most secure option tailored to your needs, business goals, and plans for the future.

The business consequences of making a bad technology choice

So, we have established what a “bad choice” for the technology in a web application means in practice. Now, let’s take a closer look at the consequences of that decision and analyze how it can affect your business and organization.

Problems hiring developers who will be able to expand your existing app

Choosing the wrong technology for your web application may result in having serious problems with hiring developers who will be able to expand your existing app. If you’ve built a web application in the past, you may have chosen a technology that developers don’t want to work with anymore. The decision may have been right when you made it, but the environment has changed and the stack you used is now outdated.

Being sure that the technology you want to use is not outdated is also important because it may occur that, from the start, you have chosen an old-school technology and developers no longer want to work with it.

Keep in mind that the developers’ market is constantly changing. New technologies appear, developers stop using some technologies (for example Ember), and they start using another – better, faster, more attractive, or easier to learn – solution.

A good example of this is what happened with Ember. There used to be a time when everyone was using Ember for their web applications. It was a hot tech; the amount of buzz around it was significant. But it was only a bubble and after it burst, it became difficult to hire Ember developers.

If you choose a technology that no one later wants to work with, you lose options for developing and expanding your app as a result, which will negatively affect your business. When you can’t upgrade your app and add new features to it, you may lose clients and miss your business goals. It could also cost you more to find people who want to work with outdated technology.

The necessity to rewrite your app to a new technology stack

Using outdated technology can also result in costly rewrites of your app and the necessity to switch to a whole new technology stack. And that costs a lot of time and money to execute.

Sometimes creators of a given technology decide to stop supporting and developing it and you have no other choice than to switch, but you can avoid this by relying on the expertise of your technology partner who will recommend the most futureproof tech available.

Transferring an app to a new technology stack may be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, but there are situations in which it is worth the effort.
Learn more about it by reading our blog post on rewriting legacy apps.

The danger of security leaks

Outdated or unproven technology is often not secure enough and has numerous security vulnerabilities. Choosing such technology means exposing your company to the serious threat of data leaks, reputation problems, a potential PR crisis, and, in effect, a decline of your business.

Sometimes, in the case when a technology founder decides not to support a technology anymore, it means that apps built with this technology will have security problems. With every update of the technology always comes a new security patch but if the tech is no longer supported, new security features for a given technology are no longer created. Hackers and cyber-criminals love to exploit such security holes.

Check how to ensure your app security reading our blogspot with practical tips.

Problems with developing and adding new features to the app

Choosing the wrong technology for your web application and limitations of a given technology makes adding new features impossible. Do not be stubborn with maintaining and developing an app OR adding new features to an app that is made in an already outdated tech – sometimes rewriting it might be a better idea.

Imagine that you want to add a new feature to your web application and the development process in a given technology has already started. You come up with an idea to add something completely new that was not consulted on before and your tech partners inform you that, because of the tech you have used, it is simply impossible to do.

Sometimes companies choose technologies that have a lot of ready-made, built-in solutions. WordPress and e-commerce platforms are good examples of this. It may be a good choice in certain cases, but chances are that you’ll want to introduce some custom features and it is not possible or demands a lot of developers’ work.

Always ask your technology partner about all the limitations of the technology you’re planning to use for your web app. And make sure that the tech is still being developed and supported by the company that created it. If it’s not, often it means that you will not be able add new features.

Additional and unnecessary setbacks

Some firms tend to develop simple apps with complex frameworks; they’re using technology adjusted to complex operations to create a simple app. And sometimes it goes the other way – the technology used for the development of a web app is too limited to create it properly.

Choosing the right technology for your business and organizational needs is key. You need to determine what you want to achieve in order to know how complex your app must be. Some firms don’t adjust the technology to project complexity and it results in huge development delays, longer time to market, and missing business goals.

An app full of bugs with serious quality problems

Cost is an important factor to consider while developing a web application, of course. But don’t look only at the price you have to pay for the project. The quality of the app is more important than the budget you have. Sometimes it is good to do less but better, than trying to chew up too much.

Firms tend to choose cheap technology only because of the price and the number of developers who use it (if there are a lot of developers who use a certain technology, prices are lower). Some technologies are easy to learn and there are a lot of developers out there to create your app. It is easy to find developers but much more difficult to hire true professionals.

Focusing only on the price tag may result in creating poor quality code, exposing your business to security leaks, infecting your app with numerous bugs, and the impossibility of adding new features. All of those setbacks lead to one simple consequence – losing users of the app caused by using cheap and bad tech.

Wrapping up

Choosing a wrong or outdated technology for your web application will certainly have a long-term negative consequence for your business:

• It will create unnecessary costs.
• It will result in a long time to market which often translates to not fulfilling your business goals.
• Furthermore, you will not be able to attract new clients and may lose your current clients.
• With a bad tech set in place, you will have problems with attracting investors and developers.
• Last but not least, it carries a high reputational risk.

6 simple tips that will help you avoid choosing bad technology for your web application

1. Choose a trusted and experienced web development company.
2. Choose an agency that has numerous technologies in its offering.
3. Don’t decide based only on the buzz.
4. Don’t decide based only on a low price.
5. Be open to your technology partner’s suggestions.
6. Talk to your web development company about your long-term plan and strategy.