This idea has been with me for a long time. I have over 15 years of experience in e-commerce โ I've seen projects across the widest range of niches: from kitchenware and recipe stores to building materials and complex B2B platforms. And throughout all of it, I kept noticing the same pattern: e-commerce stores rarely have a proper mobile app. Or they have nothing at all.
Picture this: you're on the couch watching TV, you remember you've been meaning to replace your remote โ the old one is completely done. You grab your phone, two taps, and the remote is on its way. No laptop, no browser. Everything is right there in your hand. That's already the norm for people who shop on Amazon or Zalando. But what if your favorite store is a local brand or a niche shop? There you'll find either a poorly adapted website, a barely functional PWA, or nothing at all.
That's exactly where Ridly Mobile SDK came from.
Why Magento โ and Why Mobile Apps Are Still a Problem There
Before getting into technical decisions, I need to explain the context. Why Magento specifically? And why does this problem even exist?
Magento is powerful โ but heavy
Magento is one of the most powerful e-commerce platforms in the world. It offers enormous flexibility: complex catalogs, multi-store setups, custom pricing rules, advanced logistics. Serious businesses build seriously on it.
But Magento was traditionally built around server-side rendering and a web interface. All the business logic, templates, and frontend โ one tightly coupled system. Great for web. A real challenge for mobile.
To build a native mobile app for Magento, developers have traditionally had to:
- Write custom REST API integration โ verbose, inconsistently documented, and not mobile-friendly.
- Implement everything from scratch โ auth, cart, checkout, order management, all of it.
- Track API changes with every Magento update and adapt accordingly.
- Handle performance, caching, and security entirely on their own.
- Rebuild all of this infrastructure from zero for every new client.
The result is either expensive (custom development taking 3โ6 months), poor quality (cheap outsourcing with unstable results), or simply "not a priority right now."
GraphQL in Magento โ the right foundation for mobile
In Magento 2.4, Adobe delivered a full GraphQL implementation. In my view, it's one of the best architectural decisions in the platform's recent history.
REST returns fixed structures โ you get a massive JSON with fields you don't need, or you make three requests where one would do. GraphQL solves this fundamentally: you describe exactly the data you need and get exactly that. Less traffic on mobile networks. Less overhead. A clear contract between frontend and backend.
To be straight about it: GraphQL has been actively used in the Magento ecosystem for a long time. PWA Studio from Adobe, ScandiPWA, Alokai (formerly Vue Storefront) โ all of them are built on GraphQL. The industry embraced this direction years ago. The question was never whether to use GraphQL โ the question is what architecture to build on top of it for mobile.
The Lesson I Learned the Hard Way: PWA Studio Without Next.js
Before I got to React Native, there was another chapter โ and I'll be honest about it, because it's an important part of the picture.
We were building a project on PWA Studio โ Adobe's official PWA solution for Magento. PWA Studio is built on GraphQL + React, which is a reasonable foundation. But there's one fundamental problem: PWA Studio dictates its own stack and its own architecture. And that architecture is React without SSR, without Next.js.
The stakeholders pushed hard to go with PWA Studio as the core solution, and I went along with it. If I had pushed back and insisted on React + Next.js โ or gone with Alokai, which provides proper SSR โ I would have saved myself and the team a significant amount of rework.
Two things hurt most in practice:
- SEO and initial load. All rendering on the client means the first paint is slow, Google indexes it poorly, and users see a blank screen while JavaScript loads.
- It's still not a native app. PWA lets you "install" a site on your home screen, but it's not the App Store and it's not Google Play. You lose the distribution channel, the marketing touchpoint, and a layer of user trust that native apps carry by default.
Now, with full freedom to choose, I'm doing it differently โ building exactly what was missing back then.
Why React Native + Expo Is the Right Choice
When I sat down to think through the architecture of Ridly Mobile SDK, I spent a long time on it โ with AI and without โ looking at Flutter, separate native development for iOS and Android, and next-generation PWA approaches. I landed on React Native + Expo.
The Stack
- React Native gives a real native experience โ not a WebView wrapper, not a compromised PWA. Native components, native performance, access to native APIs. One codebase for iOS and Android.
- Expo eliminates operational overhead. Without it, React Native requires separate Xcode and Android Studio configuration, complex build pipelines, and manual native dependency management. Expo handles all of that and lets you focus on the product.
- GraphQL + Magento 2.4+ is the logical combination. Instead of wrapping REST endpoints, we communicate with Magento through GraphQL: efficiently, predictably, with a clear contract.
- Claude 4.6 helps me write code. Yes, I use an AI assistant in development, and I'm not shy about saying so. It's a tool like any other, and it significantly speeds things up.
What Is Ridly Mobile SDK and Why I'm Making It Free
Ridly is a brand. There may be many different products under it โ but today we're talking specifically about Ridly Mobile SDK.
It's an open SDK for developers that makes it possible to build mobile apps on top of Magento without implementing all the integration logic from scratch. Authentication, product catalog, cart, orders โ the essential building blocks of any e-commerce app.
Repository: https://github.com/rtsehynka/ridly-mobile-sdk
Why free? I believe open tools grow communities. Plenty of times in my career, someone else's open solution saved me weeks of work. I want to give that back. And honestly โ it's also a strategy. An open Ridly Mobile SDK builds trust, attracts developers, and generates real-world feedback. All of that makes the paid product better.
Early Access: Why Getting In Now Makes Sense
Alongside the free SDK, I'm building the full version of Ridly Mobile SDK โ with a unique theme, maximum feature coverage across supported platforms, and a continuously growing feature set.
Early access includes:
- Full source code
- Repository access with all new features as they're added
- Expanding functionality over time
- Early adopter pricing โ locked from day one
The price will increase as the product grows. That's not a marketing trick โ it's the reality of building something that keeps getting better. Everyone who joins early keeps their rate. No surprises.
What's Next
Today โ the first blog post, the free SDK release, and the landing page at ridly.io.
More is coming: new features in the SDK, deeper technical posts on architecture, GraphQL integration, and Expo and React Native specifics in an e-commerce context. I'll share wins and mistakes โ mostly mistakes, because those are more useful.
If you're a developer building on Magento โ star the repo and follow along. If you're an e-commerce store owner who's been thinking about a mobile app โ reach out, let's talk.
15 years in e-commerce taught me one thing: the right time for a mobile app was already a while ago. The second right time is now.
