React development
Most React work that reaches us is not a blank page. It is usually an interface that grew faster than the way it handles data, or a shared component library nobody owns. Sometimes it is a rewrite that has to ship while the product stays live.
01Capabilities
The React work people commission, and where it gets hard
React, React.js and React JS all name the same library, and it is a rendering layer rather than an architecture. (React Native is a different product, for mobile.) These four shapes cover almost everything that gets commissioned, and in each of them the hard part sits above React rather than inside it.
- Product
Product interfaces with real state
Dashboards, booking flows and operational tools, including the hospitality and leisure platforms we build. The difficulty is concurrency, optimistic updates and what the screen shows when a request fails. Booked It is one of them: a 19% increase in bookings and a 13% increase in spend per head, on average. Getting stale data off the screen is a data-layer call before a UI one: TanStack Query or RTK Query for server state, Redux Toolkit or Zustand for what is genuinely client state.
- Systems
Design systems and component libraries
A shared component layer several teams build against, with the accessibility and theming decisions made once. We treat it as a product with consumers and a versioning contract, not a folder of components. Built in Storybook before any application depends on it, on Material UI where the interface is not the differentiator and bespoke primitives where it is. This is our design systems practice pointed at a codebase.
- Rewrites
Front-end rewrites without a freeze
Strangling an old interface a route at a time so the product keeps shipping while it is replaced. A big-bang rewrite is the most reliable way we know to lose a year. The work sits inside our web application development practice, and the first decision is where the seam goes, not which framework wins.
- Data
Scientific and data-dense UIs
Research and healthcare interfaces where the data model is genuinely complex and the users are experts. Rendering large structures without stalling the browser is an engineering problem, not a styling one. We have run React and Redux with TypeScript, Node.js and AWS behind exactly that kind of interface.
02Case studies
Front ends we shipped, and what they had to handle
Six systems in production, across hospitality and leisure, logistics, climate tech, SaaS, healthcare and foodtech.
See all case studies
HospitalityHighly Adjustable Platform for entertainment industriesunicrew developed a platform for Booked It that enhanced the customer experience for nightclub, entertainment center, and festival goers.600+Businesses using the platform
LogisticsMiniMoves Orders Management PlatformA custom-built moving order system that simplifies booking, boosts automation, and improves operational efficiency.Double digit growthMaintained without a substantial increase in staffing
LogisticsCustom software for USA moving companyAn end-to-end SaaS platform for managing household moves and every business operation of a logistics company.Built from scratchAn end-to-end SaaS for household moves and the operations behind them- Climate TechRebuilding a carbon-footprint SaaS platform for a European climate-tech startupunicrew embedded three full-stack developers and a UI/UX designer in a European climate-tech startup's SaaS product, rebuilding many parts of it from scratch.
- HealthcareStabilizing and Scaling a Home Health Monitoring PlatformA U.S. consumer health tech company needed system stability and an experienced partner. unicrew stabilized the platform, optimized infrastructure costs, and delivered new features, becoming a long-term technology partner.
FoodtechDigital Transformation in Food IndustryOur client is an innovation-oriented group of food companies based in Germany that produces and distributes a wide range of products for well-known retail businesses and food services.
03Fit
Where React earns its complexity, and where it does not
React is our default for interfaces with substantial client-side state and a component surface several teams share. It is not our default for everything, and what you are buying from a React development company is that judgment rather than the library. Four of the six rows below send you somewhere that is not a React project with us, and three of those point at no unicrew page at all.
| Your situation | What we recommend |
|---|---|
| An application behind a login, heavy client state, several teams working on one component surface | Use ReactThis is the case it earns, and the hiring pool will still be deep in three years, which matters more on a long-lived product than any benchmark. |
| Mostly content, where load speed and search visibility decide the outcome | We argue againstA static or server-rendered build, with interactivity as the exception. A single-page app taxes every visitor to serve the few who interact. |
| A public product surface where first paint and indexability both matter | Different pageReact, but through Next.js. The question you are actually asking is about rendering strategy, not about the library. |
| A genuinely small interface: one screen, one team, no growth planned | We argue againstReact plus its toolchain is more machinery than the problem deserves. Plain markup and a little JavaScript will outlive it and cost less to keep. |
| A team already productive in Vue or Angular | Leave it aloneMigrating for its own sake is a cost with no owner. Our Vue and Angular pages are the honest next click. |
| An existing React application that has become slow or unpredictable | Stop firstNot a rewrite. Find where the data lives, measure the routes that carry revenue, then decide. Most of these are fixed without replacing anything. |
Scope
On a React engagement we own the interface decision and everything under it. That means how data moves, what each component promises, the upgrade path, and whether your own developers can still change the product after we leave. unicrew has been building software since 2012, with 100+ senior in-house engineers across six countries. We work under an ISO 27001:2022 certified information-security management system, renewed through a multi-stage audit with Quay Audit UK. Where the smaller piece of work is the honest answer, that is the answer you get, including when the larger one would have been ours.
Most React codebases we inherit are not slow because of React. They are slow because server state was put into client state, so every screen refetches, re-renders and drifts out of sync with the database. Separating the two is usually a bigger win than any rendering optimisation, and it is the thing people reach for last. If a team is arguing about memoisation before agreeing what owns the data, they are optimising the wrong layer.
Andrii BurdaSenior Engineering Manager, unicrew04Delivery
The order we work in when the front end is already live
The first four steps are the same almost every time. To start we need repository access and the routes that matter commercially, and nothing else.
- Find where the data livesUsually there are three competing answers: some server cache, some global store, and component state that should have been either. Naming what exists is the precondition for changing it safely, and the output is a written map.
- Measure before opinionsReal interaction timings and bundle composition, on the routes you tell us matter. Performance work driven by intuition optimises the parts that were already fast.
- Establish the seamWhere a rewrite is warranted, old and new interfaces run side by side behind React Router before anything migrates. That is what makes the work reversible, and reversible is what makes it approvable.
- Migrate by route, ship continuouslyOne surface at a time, each live before the next starts. Testing Library and Playwright cover the routes as they move, through the same QA and test automation practice we use on our own builds. You can stop at any point and still have a working product.
05Client voices
Two clients on how the work actually went
06Stack
The libraries that decide how a React app ages
Five choices that outlast any single screen. Most have a page of their own, for when that is the decision you are actually making.
07Questions
What people ask before they commit
Short answers, the same ones you would get from the engineer on the call. If yours is missing, it is a good opening message.
You can bring our React engineers onto your team, and several clients start there. What we will not do is supply people and leave the outcome unowned: architecture decisions get reviewed outside the delivery team, and the work goes through our own QA and test automation practice. Team extension is managed teams; handing over a product outcome is web development.
Both. Our React.js development services cover building and owning the interface, which is most of the work. React consulting is the fixed-scope shape: a code assessment, a state-model review, or an independent verdict before a rewrite is approved. That is our quality audit practice pointed at a front end, and it often ends by recommending less work rather than more.
Next.js when the product has public surface where search visibility or first paint decide the outcome, which covers most content-heavy products. Plain React when the application sits behind a login and server rendering buys nothing but operational complexity. The point is to decide it deliberately rather than inherit it from whichever starter template somebody copied first.
Yes, and it is how we prefer to do it. Old and new interfaces sit behind one routing layer, and we migrate a route at a time, each surface live before the next starts. Slower on paper than a clean rewrite, and far more likely to finish. A rewrite that needs a feature freeze is a rewrite that gets cancelled halfway.
Both, though they are separate services. Our product design team covers UI, UX and design systems, so the component library and the design tokens end up one artifact rather than two that drift apart. Where you already have designers, we work to their system and push back when a component contract is ambiguous, because that ambiguity becomes debt in our layer.
It is part of the component contract, not a later audit. Keyboard interaction, focus management and semantics get decided when a component is designed, because retrofitting them into a shipped library costs several times more. If you have a formal conformance target, tell us early: it changes component-level decisions, not just the testing at the end.
A scoping call, a technical conversation rather than a sales one, usually with the engineer who would do the work. For an existing front end we ask for repository access first, because half an hour in the code beats an hour of description. You get back a written read on where the data lives, what we would change first, and what we would leave alone. Most engagements start within two to four weeks.
Three shapes, and which fits depends on how settled the scope is. Time and materials is billed hourly and quoted per project, which suits work still moving. Fixed price is outcome based, and we only offer it once the first read is done, because a fixed number on a codebase nobody has opened is a guess with a contract around it. Team extension is billed monthly per engineer.
Starting a React front end, or inheriting one?
Send us the repository, or just a description of where it hurts. You will get an engineer's read on where the data lives and what we would change first.
