Newspaper app development for publishers

We design, build, and operate newspaper apps for Europe's leading publishers — from the first prototype to 24/7 operations.

A newspaper app is a retention business, not a technology project

Print reaches a reader once a day. A website reaches them when they remember to visit. An app sits on the home screen of the most loyal audience a publisher has — subscribers who open it every morning before anything else. The publishers we work with see app users visit 3-5x more often than mobile web users, churn at half the rate, and convert to paid at multiples of any other channel.

That is why we treat newspaper app development as a product discipline. The question is never "which framework" — it is "what makes a reader come back tomorrow". Everything we build follows from that answer.

What we build

We ship native iOS and Android apps and cross-platform builds where budgets demand it, always with the same core capabilities:

Personalised feeds driven by declared interests and reading behaviour — explainable to the reader, never creepy.
Audio editions and article narration — the strongest daily-habit feature we have shipped at any publisher.
Push notification systems with per-topic opt-in, breaking-news channels, and quiet hours. Every notification earns the next one.
Offline reading for the commute — downloaded editions, cached articles, sync when back online.
Digital edition / e-paper integration for publishers who serve both live news and the printed layout.

Paywall and identity, built in from day one

A newspaper app without deep subscription integration is a cost centre. We integrate Piano, Zephr, Limio, and CeleraOne directly into the app experience: metered access, registration walls, in-app purchase and web-checkout flows that comply with Apple and Google rules while protecting your margin. Entitlements resolve server-side, so the app never flickers content a reader has not paid for.

How a project runs

Our engagements follow a fixed shape. A two-to-four week discovery phase with your editorial, product, and commercial teams produces a scoped roadmap — not a hundred-page specification. Build happens in bi-weekly releases your team can install and react to from week three onwards. After launch, most clients move to our operations tier: we monitor, patch, and iterate on the app around the clock.

Proven at scale

We built and operate the mobile platform of Neue Zürcher Zeitung and the apps of CH Media — together serving over 20 million readers monthly. The same team that built them will build yours.