• React Native vs. Flutter vs. Ionic
  • By Sophia Martin
  • The Nuggets translation Project
  • Permanent link to this article: github.com/xitu/gold-m…
  • Translator: Van Gogh Huang
  • Proofreader: HurryOwen

Whether you’re planning to invest in a mobile app for your startup or converting your bricks-and-mortar store to an online store, your primary concern must be finding the best solution for your business.

Did you notice that? Of the 2.8 million or so apps on Google Play and 2.2 million on Apple’s App Store, only a handful are leading the industry.

In different sectors of these industries, some leading brands occupy the largest market share, such as:

  • E-commerce apps: Amazon, Flipkart, eBay, Alibaba, etc. It is expected to generate more than $2411.6 billion in revenue in 2020.
  • Game apps: Google Play games, Pokemon Go, Candy Crush Saga, and Lucky Money are the most popular iOS app categories, accounting for 25% of active apps and over 18.74 million users a month in the US.
  • Online food delivery apps: When ordering food, Grubhub, Doordash, UberEats, Postmates, Instacart and more are the names of some of the leading apps.
  • Social media apps: Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, Whatsapp, etc.
  • Entertainment apps: More than 57 billion monthly users visit YouTube, Netflix, Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora Radio, Amazon Prime Video, Google Play Music, Hulu, and more.

The key question is what exactly makes them successful and helps them differentiate themselves in the marketplace? Many people may be eager to follow their lead, but before you do, you need to find out what makes them successful.

There are too many factors that can affect success, including functionality, complexity, UX/UI design, backend, front-end, developer skills, etc. But the real success lies in the technology they choose to build their apps with.

No matter how creative your app is and what unique things fit into your app, you can put your entire investment at risk if you choose an old, tired, outdated programming language.

And if we take into account the trend in mobile applications and the need for business growth, it’s safe to say that entrepreneurs today are more interested in cross-platform mobile applications. Because hybrid apps can help target users on a large scale across multiple platforms, entrepreneurs are eager to hire a team of developers with experience developing cross-platform apps.

There’s another key question: Which programming language should you choose to develop your application in?

React Native, Flutter, and Ionic are leading the developer community when it comes to developing hybrid applications using the top cross-platform mobile application frameworks.

Now, when it comes to choosing between these three great mobile application development frameworks, the real challenges come. Don’t worry, we just need to compare the points of each framework to help you easily find the one that best fits your business needs.

Let’s begin with a brief introduction to each framework.

Open source cross-platform mobile application development framework standard line

The overview

Both Flutter and React Native are advanced software development kits, but Flutter was developed and supported by Google, while React Native was developed by Facebook. Ionic is one of the oldest programming languages developed by Driffy Co.

React Native

React Native is an open source framework and was written in multiple languages starting in 2015, including JavaScript, Swift, Objective-C, C++, and Python. It basically provides all the tools and services needed to develop a good cross-platform application on iOS, Android, and Windows, and the performance of apps developed by it is similar to that of native apps.

Key Users: In a very short time, this framework has been used to build all kinds of apps, including Instagram, Facebook, Airbnb, Walmart, UberEats, and more.

Flutter

Flutter is supported by Google and adds a powerful rendering layer to its development process to help developers create applications that look beautiful and resemble native systems. It offers its own rendering engine, out-of-the-box window widgets, command-line tools, apis, and more that make the whole development process easier. But, in comparison to React Native, it’s just starting to catch on in 2018.

Main users: Although Flutter is a recent framework, it has been used by Google Ads, Alibaba, Reflectly, Birch Finance and others.

Ionic

Ionic launched in 2013 as an open source, cross-platform mobile development SDK. Ionic makes building a cross-platform mobile app much easier because it uses a variety of technologies, including HTML5, CSS, and SaaS.

Key users: Ionic has been in the industry for a long time, being used as a building block for applications such as Sworkit, JustWatch, MarketWatch, and more.

Now let’s focus on the key points, and the following simple comparisons will help you understand the pros and cons of each framework.

Compare the main properties of React Native, Flutter and Ionic

Because each enterprise has different product needs, and recruit mobile application development teams with slightly different skill levels. So what works for one start-up may not work for another. So here we’ll discuss the features that developers care about most when choosing a framework.

1. Programming languages

Overview: React Native is based on JavaScript, Flutter uses Google’s internal programming language Dart, and Ionic uses multiple languages.

React Native: When choosing a framework for a programming language, React Native is probably the first choice for developers because it is based on JavaScript, which is one of the most popular and dynamic languages for developing hybrid applications. In addition, the framework combines all the best of JavaScript and React and is supported by Facebook. What sets React Native apart from other programming languages is that it provides the ability to write some components in Swift, Objective-C, or Java when needed.

Flutter: Because Flutter is a Google baby, it uses an internal programming language, Dart, to help you develop Android, iOS, and Web apps. Dart is still an unusual programming language compared to JavaScript. But while this is a new language, it still has great potential to take the industry by storm in the years to come.

Ionic: It uses a variety of technologies (including HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript) to develop and run applications and can use some of the native platform controllers via Cordova Wrapper. To improve the quality of your code, you can also use TypeScript in conjunction with Ionic.

2. Code operation and reuse

Overview: When recruiting cross-platform application developers for cross-platform applications, code reusability is a major concern for companies. All three frameworks use different code execution strategies. React Native follows “Learn once and write anywhere,” while Ionic uses “one code base, any platform,” The Flutter provides you with a set of advanced features that can speed up your programming.

React Native: The main reason for writing code with React Native is clear: a single code base can be used to develop applications for a wide variety of platforms, including Android, iOS, and Windows. This allows developers to dramatically reduce the time they need to build faster and better applications.

Flutter: The real reason Flutter is growing in popularity is that it provides a comprehensive toolkit that helps developers create modern applications using off-the-shelf widgets, apis, and unique rendering engines. By using Flutter’s rich features, developers can have a great development experience.

Ionic: Its simple tagline “One code Base, any Platform” also illustrates the benefits of reusable code bases for a wide variety of applications. By using the same code, developers can build highly interactive applications in a short amount of time.

3. Popularity and community culture

Overview: If you assume that the oldest frameworks have the highest level of visibility and community support, you may be misinterpreting this. According to Statista, React Native is used by 42% of developers, while Flutter, despite being a new framework, is used by 39% and Ionic is used by 18% of developers. If we compare these three frameworks, React Native is probably at the top of the list. However, it has the same percentage of developers as in 2019, and Ionic has decreased from 28% to 18%, while Flutter has increased from 30% to 39%.

React Native: When it comes to evaluating community support for the framework, there’s no doubt React Native will easily take the top spot. Because it is based on JavaScript, the most basic web development language, and uses the popular React library, its developer membership is growing rapidly compared to Flutter and Ionic. Meanwhile, according to Github, React Native has 89.7K stars, 3.7K focus, and 19.9K forks.

Flutter: Flutter is a framework recently released by the community, so the Flutter community is small compared to React Native and Ionic. But thanks to Google’s hype and rapid adoption, it quickly became a leader in mobile development frameworks. Additionally, Flutter has harvested 99.2K stars, 13.7K forks and more than 3K developers are paying attention to it in a short time, surpassing React Native and Ionic.

Ionic: As one of the oldest frameworks, Ionic often improves its code. It has the second highest community support and a large market. In terms of popularity, it has 41.6K stars, 13.3K forks, and over 1.8K developers looking at it.

Performance of 4.

Overview: Application performance is one of the most important key factors for any enterprise. Application performance depends on a variety of factors, such as programming efficiency using a framework. But here we’ll evaluate performance by simply analyzing the running time of the application.

React Native: Because the framework uses Native apis and components, it helps you build native-looking applications.

Ionic: Unlike other frameworks, Ionic uses advanced Web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Use them to create high-performance hybrid applications. But it requires plug-ins and third-party packages to wrap the application as a native system supported application.

Flutter: There’s no doubt that React Native and Ionic offer great performance, but Flutter goes one step further by offering out-of-the-box plug-ins, a wide range of widgets, and its own rendering engine to help build beautiful, high-performance cross-platform applications.

5. User interface

Overview: It is the design and user interface of the application that determines whether to continue using the application or uninstall it. React Native uses the React library to organize the UI, while Ionic uses HTML and CSS. The difference with Flutter is that it ensures the best user interface for an adaptive system compared to other frameworks.

React Native: In order to provide a near-native app experience, React Native uses the React library to provide an amazing UI.

Ionic: Ionic relies entirely on Web technologies such as HTML and CSS to support a native-type application experience. It also uses Cordova to get the look and feel of native applications.

Flutter: There is no doubt that Flutter provides the best user interface by jumping over the bridge of interaction with native components. This is why a large number of mobile app developers have chosen Flutter as their cross-platform application development framework. Ionic does support cross-platform applications, but because it uses Cordova to run JavaScript, it can’t match the efficiency and performance of Flutter and React Native.

6. Usage status

Overview: It’s certainly possible to be impressed with all the technology, but it’s how you use or think about frameworks in real life that really matters.

React Native: JavaScript is the king of programming languages, whether for mobile or Web application development. Not only does it maintain its position in the top five programming languages, but it also remains an important part of the application development industry. React Native is based on JavaScript, and that’s why several leading companies, including Facebook and Airbnb, have adopted the framework.

On the other hand, it’s hard to ignore the story of Airbnb switching to a different technology. As a result of this campaign, the React Native team is working to get rid of documented limitations and issues.

Flutter: Although relatively new, Flutter has set the bar simply by offering developers a complete software development kit. With Flutter, not only can you easily build beautiful applications, but you can also edit code quickly with the thermal reload feature.

Flutter has so many advanced features that it has impressed about 39% of developers and has been used to build some important applications, including Google’s AdWords. As Flutter becomes more and more popular, and more and more people use it, it is safe to say that Flutter will develop more excellent applications. All you need to do is recruit developers who have enough control over the framework.

Ionic: In comparison, Ionic is the oldest framework, but it still hasn’t developed any breakthrough, great applications. Still, there are 86,400 developers using Ionic to develop Android and iOS apps.

7. Application development costs

Overview: Whether you’re a startup or an entrepreneur, app development costs are one of everyone’s major concerns. The cost of application development is directly related to how long it takes to develop the application, the cost to the developer, and the libraries used.

React Native: React Native is an open source framework that allows developers to access a wide variety of libraries for free. To maximize the benefits, all you need to do is hire a skilled software development team.

Flutter: Flutter is also an open source platform that allows developers to access widgets, libraries, and apis for free. Plus, you can easily find Flutter developers anywhere in the world for $18 to $35.

Ionic: It’s a free, open source, cross-platform mobile application framework. However, for professional development environments, you’ll need to purchase the paid version. But Ionic could easily speed up development and make it easier for developers to create applications in real time.

Which framework will you ultimately choose for cross-platform application development?

After all the metrics have been compared, you need to decide if you still want to use native languages like Swift, Object-C, C++, and Java, and continue the hassle of learning and mastering two different languages to develop applications for two different systems. Or do you want to choose a framework that works well on multiple platforms?

Assume that you are ready to develop your application using a cross-platform framework. After reading the whole article, how do you decide which technical framework is best for you?

Let me simplify this a little bit.

Ionic is ideal if you’re looking for a solution to wrap your apps. But because Ionic uses third-party components and Cordova provides an analog Native feel to applications, it can’t beat Flutter and React Native in terms of efficiency and performance. Ionic, on the other hand, ensures a super fast development experience and enables you to build two applications simultaneously on a stack in less time.

Second, if performance and using a large number of Native device features are a priority, then the Flutter and React Native may be your ultimate choice.

Relax, everything about them has been explained in detail above.

Final thoughts

To conclude this article, it must be noted that our goal is not to advertise which cross-platform application development frameworks win. Instead, the simple purpose of this article is to help you understand the advantages and limitations of all three cross-platform frameworks so that you can make a perfect choice for an application development framework.

After evaluating various survey reports and statistical data, this paper analyzes the information and makes a detailed comparison of the giants in the three frameworks.

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