Top 5 Frameworks For Hybrid Mobile App Development

Mobile app developers face a hassle in choosing an app framework that aligns well with their business objectives. One can opt for many development frameworks based on users’ requirements and developers’ goals. If you want a bigger audience, a cost-effective solution, and a hassle-free app development journey – hybrid mobile app frameworks are for you.  

Incorporating hybrid mobile frameworks brings abundant advantages for mobile app developers. The most important edge it provides to app engineers is that it allows them to write code once to create mobile apps and reuse it across various platforms after minor adaptations. Native and hybrid app development frameworks are always in a consistent tug of war in the app developers’ community. However, we are here to discuss hybrid app development and its top frameworks. 

Hybrid app development is a simple, fast, and time-saving approach to develop apps that will cost you less as compared to native apps. This article will cover some of the best frameworks for hybrid mobile app development. But before diving deep into exploring our list, let us first take a quick look at the difference between hybrid and native app development. 

What is the Difference between Hybrid and Native App Development Frameworks?

There is a lot of debate about native vs hybrid app frameworks that sometimes it creates confusion for us and makes it tough to choose between the two. Picking up the right app framework that is well-suited to your business needs is crucial. So let’s go for the basic definition and explanation of the two – that might be helpful for you. 

Native Mobile App Development

Native app, as the name implies, is developed “natively” for a particular operating system e.g., Android or iOS. This clearly means that you will need different apps for iOS and Android. Native apps for Android platform use Java or Kotlin and for iOS, they are built using Objective-C or Swift. Native apps offer great performance, allow users to access the particular set of a device’s features, are fast to develop and deploy, but at the same time require high cost and time.  

Hybrid Mobile App Development 

On the flip side, hybrid apps consist of specialities of both native and web app developments. Hybrid app is locally installed on a device, deployed with a native shell and leverages mobile WebView object to use platform-specific functionalities. In simple words, these apps are developed using web technologies such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. Hybrid apps are definitely the best option to save cost and development time, meanwhile developers can enjoy using a single codebase for building apps on multiple platforms.  

Coming back to our frameworks discussion. 

Top 5 Frameworks for Hybrid App Development 

Here is a list of top pick hybrid development frameworks that have gained recognition among app developers.

1. React Native

React Native is one of the best frameworks for creating hybrid apps. It was developed by a social media giant ‘Facebook’ to unleash hybrid app development in 2015. By gaining huge popularity in 2021, it has been used by Facebook to develop complex hybrid apps. React Native uses JavaScript and JSX code in this open-source framework, which is subsequently translated into native code. It is simpler to create high-performance apps with a native appearance and feel with React Native thanks to its extensive library of pre-built components and vibrant developer community. One of the major leveraging points of React Native is that it develops apps with more stability. Famous brands like Facebook, Skype, Instagram, UberEats use React Native app development to build their number one apps. 

Pros of React Native

• Strong community support
• Code reusability
• Near-native performance
• Easy-to-learn JavaScript programming language
• A wide range of libraries and plugins
• Time to develop apps is very less
• Live reload feature for faster development

1. Ionic

If you want to consider a hybrid solution that develops mobile apps with two prominent features i.e., fast speed and elegant UI components – then ionic is one of the best frameworks for you.

Ionic is a free and open-source SDK that’s popular among app developers due to its outstanding performance in UI interactive elements. It consists of an entire suite of tools to build multi-platform apps in the fastest way. With a powerful built-in library of CSS, HTML, SaaS and other Web technologies, developers can create hybrid apps without much hassle.    

Pros of Ionic

• Enables multi-platform coding
• Easy-to-learn and integrate as it uses intuitive concepts 
• Offers incredible UI components to help you deliver stunning interface  
• Uses an amalgamation of Ionic and AngularJS to developer feature-rich hybrid apps

1. Flutter

Another attractive tool for developing cross-platform mobile apps is Flutter, which is Google’s UI hybrid framework. It offers a broad variety of widgets that may be customized and utilizes Dart as its programming language. With a single codebase, Flutter is renowned for developing aesthetically pleasing, robust and intelligent apps. Its “hot reload” function, which enables rapid and smooth code changes during development, is valued by developers. Flutter performs well with extensive and user-friendly interactions which makes it a key choice to create MVPs. so, big companies often use Flutter for their app development. 

Pros of Flutter

• Expressive UI components
• Fast development with hot reload
• Consistent performance across multiple platforms
• Strong developer community
• Top-notch choice for building MVPs
• High-quality animations and graphics

1. PhoneGap

PhoneGap, currently known as Apache Cordova, is one-of-its-kind hybrid app development framework. Apache Cordova is powered by Adobe and uses web technologies such asJavaScript, CSS3, HTML5 to write codes for hybrid apps and then wrap them in a native container for distribution. Additionally, Apache Cordova offers a wide range of plugins and a simple development process. It is particularly recognized as a tool to build apps that are simple, user-friendly and easy-to-understand. Developers who already use this framework have regarded it as a cost-effective development approach, so what’s better than this?

Pros of Apache Cordova 

• Quick and easy development
• Access to a vast library of plugins
• Highly reliable and flexible
• Cross-platform compatibility
• Provides effortless testing on apps
• Excellent for prototyping and simple applications
• Strong support for web developers

1. NativeScript

Developers and entrepreneurs may create genuinely native mobile apps with the help of NativeScript. It uses the same APIs as are used in Xcode or Android Studio. NativeScript is a framework for creating well-designed mobile apps for the iOS and Android operating systems with TypeScript or JavaScript. 

The use of reflection to manage native API endpoints is a noteworthy feature. NativeScript takes advantage of reflection to get details and metadata about the NativeScript and platform APIs rather than requiring separate binding layers between them. ReactNative applications may immediately access all the capabilities provided to any native platform API. 

Pros of NativeScript

• Proficient in accessing all iOS and Android APIs 
• Offers rapid integration of code 
• Uses developer-friendly language JavaScript and user-friendly CLI (Command Line Interface)
• NativeScript lets you use JavaScript frameworks which includes Vue, React, Angular, Svelte or even Vanilla JavaScript

Bottom Line – Choosing the Right Framework for Your App

If you want to reach a wider audience while staying within the budget, you should opt for hybrid mobile app development. Hybrid development approach brings you cost-effective, seamless and robust apps without compromising a lot of time and resources. So the next time when you embark on a new app development project, consider pros and cons of each framework and choose one that goes well with your development goals. Best of luck for your coding!