Introduction
With the rapid advancement in technology in today’s highly competitive digital space, developers are constantly on the lookout for cross-platform mobile development tools or frameworks that can simplify their work and reduce the time and cost of app development. Creating an attractive, useful and engaging mobile product is only one side of your success story.
Another important feature is the technical part — how your app runs on various mobile devices supported by certain operating systems and which cross-platform mobile development tools to choose to turn your app idea into a top-notch application.
Hiring the services of a trusted cross-platform mobile app development services, company or hiring a mobile app developer on a freelance basis can enable a business to build mobile apps that are fast, responsive and deliver exceptional user experiences.
What is a cross-platform app development framework?
Cross-platform application development tool is about creating a single application that can run on various operating systems rather of developing different app versions for each platform. This enables you to enlarge your reach to a much larger goal customer across multiple platforms at a much lower cost and less time.
Here are some of the top best open-source cross platform mobile application development frameworks depends on programming languages given below:
Is cross platform better than native development- Pros and Cons
Cross-platform vs native development is a endless debate that has kept the tech community diverged for many years. Both technologies are in a state of constant development. However, as platforms converge, the future appears to be more in approval of cross-platform.
There are two types of latest mobile development — native development and cross-platform, which are perfect for Android and iOS. Also, they have their own advantages and disadvantages. Let’s take a closer look at them.
Native development is the development of apps that have a co-debase built to run on a specific operating system- iOS or Android (or other). Native development has its advantages and disadvantages.
Advantages
- Native apps are faster
- Maximum benefits and easy access to push notifications
- Ability to access basic features of the phone
With the help of native development, you will gain some outstanding benefits. You can have approach to the feature set of a mobile phone, such as camera GPS, speakers etc.
In addition, native apps tend to be high-performing and fast. Despite all the advantages you get from native apps, this type of development has a bunch of inabilities that we’re going to outline next.
Disadvantages
- Over budget
- Resource-consuming development
- Slow delivery and launch of apps
- Problems in support
iOS native apps cannot run on Android and vice versa. So to get the most out of your product, you must have two separate co-debases. Plus, supporting them later would be quite a hassle as you would have to fix the issues with two native apps instead of just one.
Cross-platform mobile development is another type of app development that can be written in a single programming language and it allows your product to rush on many mobile operating systems. When the code for an app is generated, it goes through a interface that translates it into the native API of iOS or Android.
Advantages:
- Rapid development in a short period of time
- Cost effectiveness
- Reusable code
- Wider market reach
- Simple deployment and maintenance
This type of mobile development will help you not miss your chance to win a huge mobile market share with one app compatible with all major operating systems. By using easiest cross-platform development, you have a money-making opportunity to build an app that will be attractive to Android, iOS and other OS users without expend a lot of money.
Disadvantages:
- Limited access to basic features
- Problems with user experience
With cross-platform development, you’ll have limited opportunities for a phone’s feature set as all devices have different functionality. To get a more precise understanding of Mobile app development process, read our recent article about mobile app development.
How to Choose the Best Cross-Platform Mobile Development Tools
There are a lot of cross-platform mobile app development tools to choose from, and the right choice based on your requirements and concerns. Here are some of the shortlists to choose cross-platform mobile app development tools or framework.
1. Readability
It’s always good to know what latest favoured companies use their apps for. You can take Facebook as a grade.
2. Tools support
Pay close observation to support for cross-platform mobile development tools. If you face any problem while growing your app, you can mark to a community to solve the problem. For example, React Native, Ionic, Flutter have great support communities of users, and a readable documentation and websites to assist developers with demanding projects. This means that you will be able to troubleshoot any problem.
3. Budget
When budget plays an important role in the development process of mobile apps, you can go for open-source, cross-platform best mobile app development tools. For example, React Native and Ionic are one of them.
Best Cross-Platform Mobile Development Tools
There are several tools you can consider for best mobile app development -platform software development. We did market research and shortlisted a set of great tools. We don’t provide any rates, but we do provide a detailed overview of each:
There are several tools you can consider for cross-platform software development. We did market research and shortlisted a set of great tools. We don’t delivers any rates, but we do provide a detailed overview of each:
1. React Native
React Native is called as open-source framework depend on React, which is an ideal tool for mobile cross-platform development. It was released by Facebook in 2015, in 2012, Mark Zuckerberg said that hybrid apps were far behind native ones.
However, for complex apps, native code is often needed to bridge any gap in functionality.
Currently, the company uses React Native to build its cross-platform products. The Facebook app was highly downloaded on iOS and Google Play Store in 2018.
Rapid growth and deployment are the primary cause beyond the universal demand of React Native.
Other remarkable characteristic of this involve reusable components, integration with third-party plugins, and component-based GUI development for front-end applications.
2. Flutter
Flutter is Google’s open-source framework for developing native Android and iOS apps using a single code base. It is a thorough SDK for cross-platform app development, which uses a individual speak to provide apps with a native look and feel.
Flutter is a comprehensive framework with widgets, a rendering engine, APIs, and tools to create elegant mobile apps.
It is an matchless and highly reliable mobile UI framework to create surprising apps by speeding up the development process.
Flutter is a full SDK for cross-platform app development, offering a native look and feel via an individual address.
With an modernize in 2019, Google added a functional feature — you’ll be supported when combine flutter into your existing iOS or Android apps spotlight in the Store.
3. Xamarin
Xamarin is Microsoft-ownd open-source framework used to purchase native and high-performance Android, iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS apps.
The framework authorize businesses to deliver end users with native performance and unparalleled user experiences.
In Xamarin, an abstraction layer powers the presentation between the basic platform code and the shared code.
However, as of now, this tool is already a bit correspondence. If you select this alternative, you may overlook many in commodity.
App overhead, lack of community support, expensive for professional use as well as stability problems may demoralize you from using this tool. As such, we suggest that you can think about other options before making a final decision on the technology stack for your project.
4. Ionic
Ionic is known as the cross-platform mobile app development create with Apache Cordova (Phone Gap) and Angular, which allows developers to build Android and iOS apps for seamless mobile performance.
This tool helps create fast, high-performance apps that run smoothly on various operating systems.
In this way, the framework provides you the opportunity to grow applications rapidly and in less time.
It has its own IDE known as Ionic Studio. This also delivers elements like code deployment, automatic builds, lazy loading, etc.
The most important advantage of this mobile app is that it allows developers to use multiple UI elements such as filters, forms, views, navigation menus, and action sheets in app design.
It is an open source framework keep up by its huge and close-knit community of developers. The agencies charging their apps to Ionic are Amtrak, Burger King, Target, and others.
5. Phone Gap
Phone Gap is an open-source, cross-platform mobile development tool supported by Adobe. The framework is useful if you don’t need to use a mobile device’s native features.
It encapsulates JavaScript, HTML and CSS in a single container that can access the API.
HealthTap, Localeur, Logitech, Neexercise, Saber are HealthTap, Localeur, Logitech, Neexercise, Saber are between the companies that use PhoneGap successfully that companies that use Phone Gap successfully.
Conclusion
There are completely a few operating systems, iOS and Android are certainly among the market leaders over the globe. If not to sit on the fence for a long time, you better opt for cross-platform development.
It has many benefits such as speed of development, a code base, cost-savings, and many others. Some of the cross-platform mobile app development tools you can choose from are — Flutter, React Native, Ionic and others.
Many open-source tools, utilized by major companies with strong community support, can help you gain a significant share in mobile development.
Wrapping Up
Getting the services of a trusted mobile app development company or hiring a mobile app developer on a freelance basis can enable a business to build mobile apps that are fast, responsive and deliver exceptional user experiences.
Our professionals have deeply knowledge and the right skills in cross-platform app development services to create your app that will run on different operating systems.
The best framework for you really depends on your technical skills, preferred programming language, project requirements and the platforms you want to target.
