Frontend
React
Component-driven user interfaces, built by engineers who run what they ship.
Overview
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces out of components — self-contained pieces of UI that describe what the screen should look like for a given state, and let React work out how to update the DOM efficiently. It is deliberately not a full framework. React gives you the view layer and a disciplined mental model; it does not give you routing, data fetching, a build setup, or an opinion on how to structure a large application. That is a strength when you want control and a liability when you want the framework to make decisions for you.
The core idea is declarative rendering. You describe the UI as a function of state, and when state changes React re-renders the affected components against a virtual DOM, diffs the result, and applies the minimum set of real DOM changes through a process called reconciliation. In practice this means you stop hand-writing imperative DOM updates and start reasoning about data flowing one way through a tree of components. Once a team internalises unidirectional data flow and hooks, React code becomes predictable to read and to change.
React has become the default choice for interactive web front ends, and that ubiquity matters: a large hiring pool, a deep ecosystem, and battle-tested patterns for almost any problem. The same ecosystem churns fast — libraries fall out of fashion, and the community’s recommended way to do things shifts every couple of years. We treat that churn as a cost to manage, not a feature to chase, and we make conservative, defensible library choices you will not regret in eighteen months.
Best for — Interactive, state-heavy web applications where a component model pays for itself — and where a senior team can own the architectural decisions React deliberately leaves open.
Why teams choose React
Predictable UI from state
Describe the interface as a function of data and let reconciliation handle the DOM. This removes a whole category of bugs caused by manual, out-of-sync DOM manipulation, and makes complex screens tractable to reason about.
A component model that scales with the team
Well-drawn component boundaries let several engineers work in parallel without stepping on each other, and let you reuse UI across a product. Good boundaries are the difference between a codebase that ages well and one that calcifies.
One skillset, web and mobile
Because React Native shares React’s model, investment in React skills, patterns, and even some logic carries across to native iOS and Android apps — a real saving when you own both surfaces.
Why businesses choose React
- You want an interactive front end that stays maintainable as it grows and as people join the team.
- You value a large talent pool and a mature ecosystem over a smaller, more opinionated framework.
- You are building for web and mobile and want to share a single engineering approach across both.
- You have — or want us to provide — the senior judgement to make React’s open architectural decisions well, once, up front.
What we build with React
The capabilities this technology is genuinely strong at — and what we most often build with it.
Function components and hooks
Modern React is written as function components with hooks — useState, useEffect, useMemo, useCallback and custom hooks — for state, side effects, and reusable logic. We use them idiomatically, and we know their sharp edges: stale closures, dependency arrays, and effects that should never have been effects.
Virtual DOM and reconciliation
React keeps a lightweight representation of the UI, diffs it on each render, and applies the smallest necessary DOM updates. Understanding this — and keys, memoisation, and when re-renders cascade — is how we keep interfaces responsive under load.
Unidirectional data flow
Data flows down through props and changes flow up through callbacks. This one-way discipline is what makes a large React tree debuggable: when something is wrong on screen, you can trace it back to the state that produced it.
Client-side state management
React ships only local component state. For anything shared we choose deliberately: Context for low-frequency global values, Zustand or Redux Toolkit for genuine client state, and TanStack Query for server state — caching, revalidation, and request de-duplication that most teams wrongly rebuild by hand.
Composition over configuration
React favours composing small components and custom hooks rather than configuring large ones. We use this to build design-system components and shared behaviour that stay flexible without turning into a maze of props.
Concurrent rendering features
Modern React can interrupt and prioritise rendering — transitions, Suspense for data and code, deferred values — to keep interfaces smooth during heavy updates. We apply these where they earn their keep, not as decoration.
Use cases
Operational dashboards
Data-dense internal tools with live updates, filtering, and drill-down — exactly the state-heavy, interactive workload React handles best.
In-browser editors and builders
Form builders, document editors, configurators and design tools where UI state is intricate and every interaction must feel immediate.
Customer-facing web apps
Account areas, booking flows, and multi-step processes behind a login, where interactivity matters more than raw SEO reach.
Shared web and mobile products
Products that live on the web and as a React Native app, where a single team reuses patterns and logic across both surfaces.
When React is the right choice
- You are building a genuinely interactive application — dashboards, editors, real-time tools, multi-step flows — where UI state is complex and changes constantly. This is React’s home ground.
- You want to share engineering patterns and people between web and mobile: React and React Native use the same component model and hooks, so a team can move between the two without relearning everything.
- You need a large ecosystem and hiring pool, and you value being able to find engineers and libraries for almost any requirement.
- Wrong for: a mostly static content site — marketing pages, a blog, brochureware. Plain HTML with a little JavaScript, or a lighter tool, will load faster, cost less to build, and be far simpler to maintain. Reaching for React here is overkill.
- Wrong for: teams that want the framework to make architectural decisions for them. React’s flexibility means you must choose routing, data fetching, state management, and folder structure yourself — if nobody owns those decisions, projects sprawl. If you need SEO on public pages, React alone renders on the client and will disappoint; that job belongs to Next.js.
React: pros and cons
Strengths
- Enormous ecosystem and community: a library, pattern, or answer exists for almost any problem, and the hiring pool is deep.
- Declarative, component-based code is easier to reason about and test than imperative DOM code once the model clicks.
- The virtual DOM and reconciliation give good UI performance for most applications without hand-tuning.
- Skills and patterns transfer directly to React Native, so one team can serve web and mobile.
Trade-offs
- Not a full framework — you must assemble and maintain routing, data fetching, build tooling, and state management yourself.
- Client-only rendering is poor for SEO and slow to first paint; getting this right means adding server rendering, usually via Next.js.
- The ecosystem churns quickly; libraries and recommended patterns go out of date, and keeping current is an ongoing cost.
- Its flexibility is a double-edged sword: without disciplined conventions, large React codebases drift into inconsistency and sprawl.
Architecture
Because React makes so few decisions for you, the architecture is where a project is won or lost. We settle the load-bearing choices early: how components are grouped by feature rather than by type, where the boundary sits between presentational and stateful components, how data is fetched and cached, and which state belongs local, which is shared client state, and which is really server state that should never be duplicated into a store.
Getting that last distinction right removes most of the complexity teams associate with React. Server state — data that lives in your API — is handled by a caching layer such as TanStack Query, so components request what they need and the cache handles freshness. Genuine client state stays small and explicit. Above the component tree we choose a routing and rendering strategy; when public pages need to be indexable or fast to first paint, that is the point at which we reach for Next.js rather than bolting server rendering onto a bare React app.
Performance
React is fast by default for most applications, but its performance problems are predictable: unnecessary re-renders, oversized JavaScript bundles, and expensive work done on every keystroke. We profile with the React DevTools profiler rather than guessing, then apply the right fix — stable component boundaries, memoisation only where it measurably helps, virtualised lists for large data, and code-splitting so users download only what a screen needs.
The largest wins are usually about how much JavaScript ships and when. We keep bundles lean, lazy-load routes and heavy components, and are honest that a client-rendered app pays a first-load cost no amount of tuning fully removes. Where that cost matters for your users or your search ranking, server rendering is the answer, not more client-side cleverness.
Security
React escapes rendered values by default, which prevents most cross-site scripting out of the box — the notable exception being dangerouslySetInnerHTML, which we avoid and sanitise rigorously when it is genuinely unavoidable. Beyond that, front-end security is mostly about not trusting the client: authentication and authorisation are enforced on the server, never merely hidden in the UI, and secrets never live in front-end code, where anyone can read the bundle.
We are careful with dependencies given React’s sprawling ecosystem — every third-party package is attack surface. We keep the dependency tree small and current, watch for known vulnerabilities, and treat tokens, CSRF protection, and secure cookie handling as deliberate decisions rather than defaults inherited from a starter template.
Scalability
A React front end scales with the team and the codebase more than with traffic — the server and data layer carry request load, while React’s challenge is staying coherent as features and engineers multiply. Feature-based structure, a shared component library, clear state ownership, and typed contracts via TypeScript are what let a dozen people work in one codebase without it fragmenting.
We plan for growth by keeping components composable and boundaries stable, so new features slot in rather than requiring rewrites. When rendering demands change — more public pages, heavier data, tighter performance budgets — a well-structured React app can adopt server rendering or move logic to the edge without tearing up the component tree, because the UI layer was never entangled with those concerns.
React integrations & ecosystem
The technologies we most often pair with it — each links to how we work with it.
How we work
We start by pinning down the architectural decisions React leaves open — structure, state strategy, rendering approach, and library choices — because these are cheap to get right early and expensive to change later. From there we build in thin vertical slices: a real feature, end to end, in production, rather than a scaffold that looks complete but does nothing.
The engineers who design the front end are the ones who write it and keep it running. That is what we mean by operating what we build: decisions are made by people who will live with the consequences, so we favour boring, durable choices over whatever the ecosystem is excited about this quarter. You get honest trade-offs, typed code, and a front end your own team can pick up and extend.
The service behind it
Delivered throughCustom Software DevelopmentWhat we build with React
The disciplines this technology most often shows up in — from a first build to taking over and stabilising an existing one.
How we deliver
- 01
Discover
We map the system, the constraints and the business it serves — including the parts nobody documented.
Architecture brief
- 02
Architect
Decisions get made, written down and defended before a line of production code exists.
Decision records
- 03
Build
Short cycles against working software. You see progress in the product, not in a status deck.
Shipping increments
- 04
Operate
Monitoring, incident response and iteration. The system is alive, so the engagement is too.
Runbooks & SLOs
Industries we use React in
Domain knowledge changes what gets built. A few of the sectors we know before the first meeting.
Also in Frontend
Why teams choose us for React
Senior engineers only
React rewards experience and punishes guesswork. The people making your architectural decisions have made them before and have seen how they age — there are no juniors learning on your project.
We operate what we build
We run the systems we ship, so we optimise for the eighteen-month maintenance reality, not the demo. That means conservative library choices and code your team can actually maintain.
Honest about when not to use React
If a lighter tool or plain HTML would serve you better, we will tell you before you spend money. We would rather lose a project than build you something you did not need.
Typical timeline
- 01
Discovery and architecture
One to two weeks agreeing the interactions, data flow, rendering strategy, and library choices, so the foundations are settled before code volume grows.
- 02
First vertical slice
Two to three weeks delivering one real feature end to end in production, proving the architecture against reality rather than a plan.
- 03
Iterative build
Feature-by-feature delivery in short cycles, each shippable, with performance and accessibility checked as we go rather than bolted on later.
- 04
Hardening and handover
Final performance profiling, test coverage on the load-bearing paths, and documentation so your team can own and extend the codebase.
How pricing works
- Fixed-scope builds for well-defined front ends — a dashboard, a customer portal, a specific application — quoted once we understand the interactions and data.
- Monthly senior engagement for ongoing product work, where scope evolves and you want continuity rather than a fixed deliverable.
- Focused audits and rescues for existing React codebases — performance, architecture, or a stalled project — priced by the assessment.
Hire React engineers
Need React capacity on your own team? We embed named senior engineers into your existing team — reporting to your leads, working in your rituals — so you add capacity without a hiring cycle.
Hire React engineersCommon questions
Is React a framework?
No — React is a UI library. It handles the view layer and a data-flow model, but not routing, data fetching, or build setup. You assemble those yourself, or use a framework like Next.js that provides them on top of React. This distinction matters, because choosing React means owning decisions a framework would otherwise make for you.
Is React good for SEO?
Not on its own. A plain React app renders on the client, so search engines and users see an empty page until JavaScript loads — poor for indexing and slow to first paint. If public, indexable pages matter, we use Next.js to render on the server. For content behind a login, client rendering is usually fine.
Should we use React for a simple website?
Usually not. For a marketing site, blog, or brochureware, plain HTML or a lighter tool will be faster, cheaper, and simpler to maintain. React earns its complexity only when the interface is genuinely interactive and state-heavy. We will say so if your project falls on the wrong side of that line.
Redux, Context, or something else for state?
It depends on the state. Context suits low-frequency global values like theme or the current user. For server data we use TanStack Query, which handles caching and revalidation you would otherwise rebuild by hand. Only genuine client state needs a store, and there Zustand or Redux Toolkit both work — we choose deliberately rather than by default.
Can we share code between our React web app and a mobile app?
Partly, and more than most teams expect. React Native shares React’s component model and hooks, so patterns, skills, and non-visual logic transfer directly, letting one team serve both. The UI itself differs — native components are not DOM elements — so expect to share logic and structure, not pixel-for-pixel screens.
Building on React?
A technical conversation with the engineers who would do the work. If we are not the right fit, we will say so on the call.