This document describes Super Apps and Mini Apps and their main features.
A Super App is a native mobile application that can host small applications inside it as a way to provide several services.
You can think of it as an ecosystem of services that coexist within the same application (Super App domain), but are not necessarily related to one another.
The characteristics of the small applications that can be used within a Super App are:
- They live within the Super App.
- They consume services exposed by the Super App, such as Login, Payments, etc.
- They are dynamically loaded in the Super App according to the user’s request.
These small applications that live within a Super App are called Mini Apps.
A Mini App is a singular, small application that solves a specific problem within a Super App domain. It is also an autonomous application, in the sense that it may have a different development and maintenance lifecycle than the Super App.
Compared to a regular application, it must be very user-friendly and intuitive, especially for infrequent use. It is recommended to offer a User Experience as simple as possible, trying not to replicate a fully blown application.
A Mini App does not require compiling and publishing it in the platform’s stores. Unlike an application downloaded from the platform’s store, the Mini App does not take up extra storage space on the device. It is loaded dynamically according to user requests, and from different discovery mechanisms such as search, QR codes, user location, etc.
There are two types of Mini Apps:
- Native mobile Mini Apps
- Web Mini Apps