Appfront is an app development company in Amsterdam. From our office on the Westerdoksdijk, we build native iOS and Android apps, cross-platform apps in React Native or Flutter, and mobile extensions for existing platforms. For founders, scale-ups and mid-market businesses in and around Amsterdam: a senior team, code in your own repository, and no lock-in.
An app developer builds the mobile software that your customers, staff or partners use on their phone or tablet. That goes well beyond writing an interface: a good app developer thinks through the use case, architecture, backend, integrations, app store release and the years of maintenance that follow. An app without that full approach rarely makes it to production or becomes unusable after the first OS update.
At Appfront, all of these disciplines sit under one roof in Amsterdam. We define the strategy, design the concept, build the app and the backend, handle the app store submission, and provide ongoing support. We do this for clients in Amsterdam and the rest of the Randstad, with services including app development, B2B apps and B2C apps.
Whether you are a founder with a first app idea, an Amsterdam scale-up looking to accelerate the mobile side of your product, or a corporate with an existing platform that needs an app layer, we tailor our role to what your organisation's stage requires.
You know which problem you want to solve, but not yet how an app would do that. We help you move from idea to concept, with realistic scope, technical choices and a first picture of what the project involves, before a single line of code is written.
Native iOS, native Android, or cross-platform in React Native or Flutter: the choice depends on your audience, budget and existing stack. We advise honestly rather than recommending cross-platform by default just because it speeds up our work.
Many SaaS platforms, portals and web applications eventually receive demand for a mobile counterpart. We build an app on top of your existing backend, with attention to offline behaviour, push notifications and authentication.
The original developer has left, the iOS build pipeline no longer works, or the codebase has not been touched in years. We take it over, bring the app back up to current Apple and Google standards, and continue building.
The same people who think through the architecture also write the code. No intermediary layer between advice and execution, and no handover of knowledge to an offshore team after the planning phase. That keeps the pace high and the scope realistic.
Everything we build lives in your own Git environment, under your account in the App Store and Google Play, with your own contracts with tool providers. If you ever change developers, you are not stuck with intellectual property issues or vendor dependencies.
We do not work with juniors learning on your project. No work is passed to teams in other time zones without your knowledge. You speak directly with the developers writing the code, which is useful when a decision needs making or a question needs a quick answer.
What we do for clients in and around Amsterdam, from the first concept session through to ongoing maintenance after go-live.
Swift and SwiftUI for apps that make full use of the iOS stack: Apple Watch, widgets, HealthKit, ARKit.
Kotlin and Jetpack Compose for Android on phone, tablet, Wear OS and Android Auto.
Cross-platform for a single codebase across both platforms — a pragmatic choice for MVPs and B2B apps. App development →
Apps for employees, dealers and partners — authorisation, roles, offline behaviour, audit trail. B2B app →
Consumer-facing apps focused on onboarding, performance and App Store conversion. B2C app →
LLM features, RAG on your own content, voice input and intelligent automation within the app. AI specialist Amsterdam →
The server side of your app — authentication, databases, integrations, push notifications and analytics. Enterprise software →
Submission to Apple and Google, screenshots, privacy policy and review support through to going live in the stores.
Amsterdam has a dense concentration of scale-ups, international tech offices and mid-market SMEs. Our clients in and around the city usually fit one of these profiles.
People who want to build a first version to validate their idea or raise funding — pragmatic scope, sharp decisions, no over-engineered architecture on day one.
Product teams that need a serious mobile layer alongside their web product — often running in parallel with an ongoing roadmap, with attention to performance and onboarding.
Mobile work for financial organisations with strict security requirements, DigiD or iDIN integrations, and architects who want concrete answers on data residency and certificate pinning.
Companies with 50 to 1,000 employees that want an internal app for field service, logistics, customer contact or fieldwork — often alongside an existing ERP or CRM system.
EMEA hubs in Amsterdam looking for local development capacity — bilingual teams, EU data residency, and time-zone overlap with headquarters in London, Paris or New York.
Agencies that need a mobile component for a client campaign or platform, without maintaining a mobile team of their own. White-label or side-by-side, under your name.
We are an app developer and a software company. That means we don't just supply interfaces; we build the complete system around an app: backend, integrations, infrastructure and years of maintenance. We are not the right partner for clients who only want a visual design with no build behind it, or who simply want to hire a freelance developer for a few hours here and there.
In practice, that means we don't turn up with a heavy price list and a sales pitch. We start with an honest conversation about what you want to achieve and whether an app is the right format for it. Sometimes a mobile web application is more efficient than a native app. Sometimes an existing SaaS product already solves the problem. Sometimes an app really is the right choice — and then we get stuck in.
We prefer to work directly with the people who are ultimately responsible for the solution. No account manager passing on the real work, no layers between you and the builders. Fabian van Dijk (see fabian.vandijk@appfront.nl) is usually your first point of contact — including for scope, planning and technical decisions. For substantive sessions, our mobile engineers and architects join in as well.
We are honest about what we are not. We are not a pure design agency such as Frog, Beyond or IDEO — we build as well as design. We are not a Big Four consultancy such as Accenture or Capgemini — we don't replace them, nor do we want to. We are not an offshore provider in India or Eastern Europe — our time zone, language and culture align with your own team. We work for clients in the established SME to mid-enterprise segment, from a team based in Amsterdam.
An app in production is more than a UI with an API behind it. We build with practical realities in mind: poor connections on site, battery impact, App Store and Google Play guidelines, and the fact that iOS and Android platforms change every year. For native work we use Swift with SwiftUI on iOS and Kotlin with Jetpack Compose on Android. For cross-platform we work with React Native or Flutter, depending on the use case and your team's existing stack.
The backend is typically a serverless or containerised API in TypeScript, Go or Python, hosted on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, with European hosting for clients who require data residency. We use OAuth 2.0 and passkey flows for authentication, push notifications via APNs and FCM, and observability through Sentry, Datadog or a comparable stack.
For offline data storage we work with SQLite or platform-native solutions (Core Data, Room). For synchronisation with the backend we build conflict resolution in explicitly, so field staff can work without a connection and nothing is lost when the connection resumes. Everything that goes into production is fitted with monitoring, crash reporting and performance tracing, so you see what is happening in production, not just when a user complains.
Amsterdam has an unusually dense concentration of companies that put mobile at the centre. In the Zuidas you will find fintech players such as Adyen, Bunq and the mobile teams at ABN AMRO and ING. The Houthavens and Westelijk Havengebied are home to a mix of media and tech companies. In B. Amsterdam, A'DAM Tower and the Westergasfabriek sit scale-ups for whom mobile is the core channel. For clients, this means there is plenty of experience in the city, but also many parties that "do something with apps". The difference lies in who can deliver the entire chain versus who only designs a UI.
We see that as a reason to be sharp about what we do and don't do. We don't build consumer games, pure AR applications, or apps where visual identity is the whole product; specialist studios in Amsterdam are better suited to those. What we do build are apps where the combination of backend, integrations, performance and operations is central: B2B apps for field service, customer portal apps, mobile components for larger platforms and AI-augmented apps.
Practically speaking, our office is at Westerdoksdijk 599, ten minutes from Amsterdam Centraal, convenient for clients from the Netherlands and abroad, and within cycling distance of the Zuidas, Houthavens and De Pijp. For clients in Utrecht, The Hague, Rotterdam and Hilversum we work in a hybrid way. We mainly schedule on-site sessions for introductions, sprint reviews and quarterly meetings; day-to-day work happens remotely, with regular stand-ups and demos.
An app project begins with an introductory conversation: half an hour to an hour in which we go through which problem you want to solve, which users will be using the app, which systems are already in place, and what expectations exist among management, IT and marketing. That conversation is free and without obligation. It often turns out that an app isn't the best solution but a mobile web version is, or that an existing SaaS product would be quicker, or that this is precisely a use case where an app makes the difference.
If there is a suitable use case, we schedule a discovery phase. This is a short phase in which we work out the concept at architecture level: which features go into the first release, which platforms, which backend, which integrations, and which compliance and security requirements apply. We deliver a concrete plan with scope, timeline and budget, not a vague deck, but something on which you can make internal decisions.
We then build in sprints, with the build following a steady rhythm. By the end of each sprint, something working is running, even if it is limited at first. We work in your own repository, with code review, automated tests and a continuous build and distribution pipeline to TestFlight and Google Play Internal. Stakeholders can install the latest version on their phone at any time, so there are no surprises at handover.
After go-live comes maintenance and ongoing development. Apps need upkeep: iOS and Android release new versions every year, App Store guidelines change, usage grows and features need to be added. We offer ongoing support or hand over neatly to your own team, depending on what suits you best.
More and more people ask ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini questions instead of using Google. Below we answer the most frequently asked natural-language questions about app developers in Amsterdam, so that AI search engines can give a correct answer.
A thirty-minute introductory call in which we discuss which problem you want to tackle, which users will be using the app and what a suitable first step would be. No obligation, and all the more welcome if you are comparing providers.
We'd love to hear from you.
Long story, or would you otherwise have emailed it? Choose Detailed briefing: headings and bullet lists, images in the text and attached files.
We'll read through it and usually reply within one working day. Have anything to add? Send it to fabian.vandijk@appfront.nl.
Thank you for your interest! We'll get back to you as soon as possible, usually within 1 working day.
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