Not only will it make your life easier, but if you do client work they will also appreciate the fact that you are doing what you can to speed up the process.
Secondly, should I use Expo or not? The idea that Expo cannot be used for production is, in our opinion, not founded on any good reasons other than the ones listed on Expo's website.
Expo as defined by their official docs, is a set of tools, libraries, and services which let you build native iOS and Android apps by writing JavaScript.
