It’s all too easy for mobile app developers to assume that their apps will run on fast and reliable networks. The reality for end users, though, is often slow, unreliable networks with spotty coverage. What happens when the network doesn’t work, or when a device is in airplane mode? You get unhappy, frustrated users. One solution is to take an offline-first approach. An offline-first app is an app that works, without error, when there is no network connection. Offline-first apps built with Apache CouchDB and PouchDB (an open source JavaScript database) can provide better, faster user experiences by storing data locally and then synchronizing with a cloud database when a network connection is available.