React Native Vs. Ionic Vs. Flutter - Which Tool to Choose for Hybrid App Development?

Mobile app development has changed over time. Earlier, the aspects covered before starting with the app development was design, features or cost of developing the app. However, all that has changed in recent times and the choice of the right framework is a necessity to start with hybrid app development. You cannot choose a mobile app, only from the look and feel of the app but app performance also matters. We find that high-performing apps with impressive design and animations are the most downloaded from the App Stores. Various parameters influence the app performance such as speed, responsiveness, user experience, device, execution and above all loading time. In this post, we will cover primarily three frameworks and then decide on the right framework suitable for our app development work. React Native Vs Ionic Vs Flutter Out of all these frameworks, React Native is the best option for faster performance but you can have options in the form of other frameworks of the likes of Ionic and Flutter. What is React Native? React Native helps to create real and exciting mobile apps with only JavaScript, for both Android and iOS platforms. It creates a single codebase for both platforms and reduces development time. The framework writes the JavaScript code with the help of a hierarchy of UI components. React Native is built on top of ReactJS. The framework can build a mobile application with a native look and feel. What is Ionic? Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit for building high-quality, high-performant mobile and web applications with the use of technologies - CSS, HTML and JavaScript.The developer builds one codebase and runs everywhere. It focuses on front-end user experience, for handling the look and feel of the app. It also takes care of the UI interactions of the app such as controls, interactions, gestures and animations. The framework integrates well with libraries/frameworks such as Angular/Cordova, etc. What is Flutter? Flutter is an open-source, cross-platform app development tool that enables you to build native-like Android and iOS applications with the help of a single codebase. It saves you valuable time and resources throughout the development process. The apps developed by Flutter delivers excellent performance in the form of faster app startup times and lesser performance issues. Flutter comes with lesser compatibility issues with its own set of widgets. Furthermore, Flutter has gained traction among the app developers for reasons like its feature of hot reload. It allows to instantly view the changes on the simulators, emulators and hardware. The changed code is reloaded in less than a second. All this makes adding new features, building new UIs and easier bug-fixing. Differentiate between React Native Vs Ionic Vs Flutter Here are some of the factors based on which we differentiate React Native from Ionic and Flutter: Programming Language React Native uses React library and JavaScript for creating native-like applications on both iOS and Android. Ionic uses CS, HTML and JavaScript along with Cordova plugin to wrap the applications in native containers. However, Flutter uses Dart language from Google. Dart is an object-oriented programming language that is useful to develop hybrid apps on desktop, mobile and web. Performance It is that all-important factor for deciding on the right framework. Superior performance is the hallmark of React Native and Ionic. React Native uses components and native APIs for building applications with the native look and feel. But, Ionic uses web technologies such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript along with plugins and third-party packages. Flutter is better in terms of performance. It uses Dart and the developer must acquire skill sets in Dart and yet to develop to the fullest extent. Architecture All the three above frameworks save a lot of time and cost, with no need to build separate apps for different platforms. JavaScript provides the architectural advantage in the form of JavaScript. It quickly builds better native applications with JavaScript. It can be rated as the best cross-platform app development tools in the market with features of the likes of Native UI Components and Hot Reloading. Ionic enables the developers to build highly interactive apps in a short time, using features like code reusability. So, far as Flutter is concerned it creates comparatively higher performance than the other two while using the highly advanced language of Dart. Flutter has platform-specific SDKs for rendering great mobile experiences for the users. Community of Developers Both Ionic and React have stronger community support. Ionic build on AngularJS exhibits strong support from the developer community. Dart is a relatively new language and offers constant updates and quicker solutions for errors. How to Decide on the Choice between the Frameworks? Ionic offers a lot to developers because it has an easier learning curve based on web technologies. However, wrapper plugins cause issues when developers try to develop game development apps or graphical apps. Flutter, on the other hand, has just started to become popular among the developers as the developers need to acquire the new skill set of knowing Dart. You have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each of these three frameworks and decide the most appropriate as per your requirements. Cliffex is a Mobile Application Development Studio that specializes in hybrid app development and prefers to use Flutter as the app development framework.