Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!
Ionic vs PhoneGap vs Xamarin: What are the differences?
# Introduction
1. **Framework Difference**: Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit whereas PhoneGap and Xamarin are full-fledged app development frameworks.
2. **Toolset Difference**: Ionic primarily utilizes web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) while PhoneGap and Xamarin support a wider range of programming languages.
3. **Performance Difference**: Ionic apps can be slower compared to native apps, while PhoneGap and Xamarin provide better performance near to that of native apps.
4. **Community Support Difference**: Ionic has a strong community support system, while PhoneGap and Xamarin have a more extensive range of plugins available for developers.
5. **Market Presence Difference**: Ionic is popular for cross-platform development, PhoneGap is known for its simplicity, and Xamarin is favored for enterprise-level applications.
6. **Ease of Development Difference**: Ionic provides easy-to-use UI components, easy prototyping, and quick development, while PhoneGap and Xamarin offer more control and customization options.
In Summary, the key differences between Ionic, PhoneGap, and Xamarin lie in their frameworks, toolsets, performance, community support, market presence, and ease of development respectively.
We are developing an AWS IoT app for large boats. The IoT devices have sensors all over the boat for engine oil pressure, position, water depth, fuel level, crew location, etc. When the boat has internet, we interact with AWS cloud using lambda and Amazon DynamoDB. When the boat is offshore, the captain and crew still need normal and emergency alerts and real-time sensor information. The crew might have an Android or IoS phone or a Windows or macOS PC to receive alerts and interact with sensors. We may use the AWS GreenGrasss edge computing solution and either MQTT or HTML for that function.
Question: We want to develop a cross-platform client to run on Windows, Mac, Android, IOS, and possibly Linux. We are primarily Python programmers, so PyQt or Kivy are options for us, but we have heard good things about React Native, Flutter, Xamarin, and others. We think an AWS Greengrass core on an RPI4 could communicate to the client with MQTT or a local webserver with a client web interface.
Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
I don't know much about Xamarin but I know about PyQt and React Native.
However, I don't recommend PyQt because the apps made using PyQt are not that suitable for mobile apps. If you take a look at the PyQt interface, you will be able to see that the features are more of a desktop apps kind.
React Native uses JavaScript. React Native is immensely flexible in upgrading your apps because it allows you to formulate your app code into independent blocks.
In Xamarin, you have to write the code in .NET . The best thing about Xamarin is, that it extends the.NET developer platform with tools and libraries specifically for building apps for Android, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, macOS, and Windows
While the best choice for you depends on various factors but React Native app development is a promising overall choice. In today’s scenario, React Native has steady growth, flawless code structure, and brilliant and large community support. We suggest you go for React Native for your next project owing to its outstanding support from developers, easy availability, and cost-effectiveness.
It seems like your app is not really using any native functionality on the phone. I have experience with cross platform iOS & Android development. They are all really good tools! Xamarin (all the project on the website portfolio I attached) is awesome for accessing native functionality (NFC, Sensors, Bluetooth, etc), and I have built apps that have millions of downloads, some that hit Top 5 on Utilities, another that hit Top 50 in Finances. You just have to look at what your application intent is, it seems like it's just to read and post data. For that they are all pretty good, but you should also look into Ionic which may serve the same purpose
Hi, we are an early startup (with an iPOC prototype) but need to get started on our MVP, and our tech developers in India recommended a hybrid, and they use Ionic, then we spoke with a software company in the US and he recommended Flutter or React Native. Any advice or input for us on the differences between these? Our app will need Bluetooth GPS for "near me" and social media sharing reviews capability, and also link on the backend with businesses. Thanks in advance for any help you can give!
Maturity, Community, Facility, Libs React Native is the principal platform of mobile cross-platform development today, Flutter is it's a promise.
I would never recommend you to go with Ionic, Because of the User experience it provides is subpar. Flutter is most promising, Can be easily used to develop great user experience in no time. React native is also good, but it's phasing out in my opinion, while Ionic has already phased out. Flutter also provides great developer experience, resulting in fast and productive developers. I would have to press hard to think of a CON about flutter when recommending it for your needs.
Even if React Native is older (I didn't say mature) you should go for Flutter, It's works really well and the developer experience is great (auto-completion, plugin etc). I spent years with React Native and now I am using Flutter and I don't regret It. Even if you have to learn a new language, It's pretty simple even more If you know some OOP, Java and Javascript ES6 syntax in some case. One other advantage is the facility to design app in Flutter, you have widgets for everything and you can adapt any design made by your designer. For example you can't make a simple custom box shadow with React-Native ...
Flutter is built on DART which is written in GO. GO compiles to binary. Hence is faster than any java based framework. It provides superior performance and has a simplified UI process for designing apps.
I don‘t have practical experience with flutter but between ionic and react native I‘d say both a perfectly viable options and we have used both for a number of production apps. We normally go with ionic on capacitor because we build a lot of pwa/web apps so we can use the same code for all. We don‘t use much of ionic elements, we do most styles on our own.
The comments that the user experience is bad I cannot agree with. A well designed and developed ionic apo can hardly be distinguished from a native app. But obviously that depends also on the usecase and type of app.
I hope this helps
It depends also on your team skills. Flutter is fast to learn, fast to develop with and the performance is much better in comparison to React. If your team is already highly skilled in React Native it could be the better option - if not Flutter is my 100% recommendation. We rapidly prototype and deliver MVPs with Flutter since two years.
Hi! I have to develop a software solution for a youth church group, for my graduation project. In the first meeting that I have with the coordinators, they did not have a clear idea of what they want. The biggest problem they have is the attendance control, they do it manually and that causes errors.
I was thinking of developing an Android app in Android Studio because that is the tool I master, but a friend told me that I consider using a tool that builds for iOS, Android and web. I have like 6 months. I own a MacBookAir but I do not know Swift (for iOS). I am familiar with MySQL, PHP, Apache, JSP,HTML,CSS.
Summary: What tool can I use that is easy to learn and easy to scale?
It's probably not relevant anymore, but I think Ionic with Angular as the frontend is the right choice. For IDE I would choose Visual Studio Code. You can just create a basic web application with responsive design, which is already included if you are going to use Ionic components with Material Design to create your app. You don't need to know Swift, you don't even have to create mobile apps, just create a responsive (Ionic already is) web app, or PWA. Upon browsing your website from a mobile device for example using google chrome, you will be prompted to create a shortcut of the website in your mobile phone. After you do this, there will be an icon in your phone that looks like an icon to launch an app, it will launch your website in full screen mode - for the user's perspective it will look like he is using a native app. Access https://ionicframework.com/docs/angular/pwa from your android chrome browser, go to tab options (3 vertical dots), click on Add to Home screen. When you launch the website from the shortcut, you'll see that it behaves and looks like a native app.
I think you should chose between Flutter and Ionic. With those two options, the main question is about graphs and performance. Are they really important for your application? If the answer is yes, your tool is Flutter but, if the answer is that you need an easy tool to create an app with some basic components I would choose Ionic. You have a library with lots of components that you can use and they have native UI by default (for Android and iOS).
You will find more support if you use Ionic with Angular as frontend framework (you have the option to use Vue or React but this is a new feature for Ionic and I think there are more difficult to learn than Angular).
You can develop and debug the majority of features on PC (I don't know if that is possible with Flutter). And when you will finish the app, create iOS and Android versions is simple.
Flutter is easy to use and easy to understand. Once you have completed the android platform, you can easily build it to ios, Web or desktop on a single code base.
- Electron is for desktop apps, so not useful for you.
- Flutter has better performance, but Ionic is decent as well, I would use Ionic unless you're making a game or graphic-intensive app.
- Ionic is more flexible since you have the whole NPM ecosystem available, while flutter is more recent, thus libraries for it are less in quantity and battle-tested than the ones in NPM.
- Ionic 4 introduced CSS variables, which improved immensely the theming process for the app, which was the hardest issue Ionic development had.
- Ionic has extended to many frameworks so it's compatible with Angular and React frameworks, meaning more flexibility, personally I would recommend Ionic with Angular over React since it's more suited to enterprise-level apps.
Hi there. So Electron embeds everything in a webview, which means that what you would have to develop would be a Node project most probably. Ionic does the same (kindof but won't bore you with specifics) but it does it much more efficiently. Usually you do Ionic apps with JS frameworks like Angular or React (this one recently added). Flutter on the other hand does native apps, it does it really good but it's support for Web is in beta and it's relatively simple to setup if you already know the SDK and the environment.
My recommendation would be that you do your app using Angular/Ionic if you reaaally need the multi-platform environment and there's different reasons in this case:
- Since it's a graduation project you need it to be as simple as it can be and adding a new technology adds to the learning curve.
- Flutter is great if you have different complex UI or if you have specific performance needs that require native support and in your case it does not seem like you need that.
- Flutter is also an incredibly powerful tool but it's learning curve might be tricky if you have not developed native apps before so I wouldn't recommend you start off like this if you have time sensitive projects like a graduation project. It does have great docs and an awesome community but I'd suggest you stick as close to what you know as you can.
- Ionic/Angular uses Typescript (a type javascript wrapper) and Angular (JS framework) so you will have to learn a little bit but if you already know HTML, CSS and Javascript you won't have that much of a hard time. Also there's quite a lot in terms of documentation and tooling already tested around this combination.
- Ionic/Angular has a really good CLI that helps you stick to the architecture they recommend so you wouldn't have to worry about it that much.
- Ionic/Angular helps you test either locally in the web browser as well as your devices which is in the end what you want if you are looking for a multi-platform system. Flutter also does this but is not quite in a stable state (yet!).
Anyway, in the end, if you go for the multi-platform suggestion I think, because of time you would be better off with Ionic. If you decide that you don't need that as of right now (which is fine as well) you can start with just the Android app and plan on the different things you might eventually need like a website or other different stuff. Cheers!
I've made 6 professional/business applications with React Native before choosing Flutter/Dart for the new version of WinMinuteConso (historical in Ionic...). Multi Platform is far more stable, Dart is far more powerful, the whole process is really better... It is just hard to find the proper software architecture...
- Javascripts is the most populated language in the world.
- Easy to learn & deployed production
- Fast development
- Strong community
- Completed Documents
- Native performance with lower RAM used.
- Easy to handle native issues by using native code like Java / Objective C
- Powered by Facebook.
While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.
Proguard
?
ProGuard is the most popular optimizer for Java bytecode. It makes your Java and Android applications up to 90% smaller and up to 20% faster. ProGuard also provides minimal protection against reverse engineering by obfuscating the names of classes, fields and methods.
How to use it inCordova
app?
I didn't find any plugins for it. So I've implemented it by myself and shared it on GitHub.
Feel free to use!
Pros of Ionic
- Allows for rapid prototyping248
- Hybrid mobile228
- It's angularjs208
- Free186
- It's javascript, html, and css179
- Ui and theming109
- Great designs78
- Mv* pattern74
- Reuse frontend devs on mobile71
- Extensibility65
- Great community31
- Open source29
- Responsive design23
- Good cli21
- So easy to use14
- Angularjs-based13
- Beautifully designed13
- Widgets12
- Allows for rapid prototyping, hybrid mobile11
- Typescript11
- Quick prototyping, amazing community10
- Easy setup10
- Angular2 support8
- Fast, easy, free7
- Because of the productivity and easy for development7
- Base on angular7
- So much thought behind what developers actually need7
- Super fast, their dev team is amazingly passionate6
- Easy to use6
- It's Angular6
- UI is awesome4
- Hot deploy4
- Material design support using theme3
- Amazing support3
- It's the future3
- Angular3
- Allow for rapid prototyping3
- Easy setup, development and testing3
- Ionic creator3
- User Friendly2
- It's angular js2
- Complete package2
- Simple & Fast2
- Fastest growing mobile app framework2
- Best Support and Community2
- Material Design By Default2
- Cross platform2
- Documentation2
- Because I can use my existing web devloper skills2
- Removes 300ms delay in mobile browsers2
- Responsive1
- Native access1
- Typescript support1
- Ionic conect codeigniter1
- Fast Prototyping1
- All Trending Stack1
Pros of PhoneGap
- Javascript46
- Backed by Adobe13
- Free11
- Easy and developer friendly9
- Support more platforms6
- It's javascript, html, and css3
- Common code base across all mobile platform2
- Not bound to specific framework1
- Powerful Framework1
- Runs on mobile browser1
- Similar UI across all platform1
- Free easy fast and not buggy in my experience0
Pros of Xamarin
- Power of c# on mobile devices121
- Native performance81
- Native apps with native ui controls79
- No javascript - truely compiled code73
- Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms67
- Ability to leverage visual studio45
- Mvvm pattern44
- Many great c# libraries44
- Amazing support36
- Powerful platform for .net developers34
- GUI Native look and Feel19
- Nuget package manager16
- Free12
- Backed by Microsoft9
- Enables code reuse on server9
- Faster Development8
- Use of third-party .NET libraries7
- It's free since Apr 20167
- Best performance than other cross-platform7
- Easy Debug and Trace7
- Open Source7
- Mac IDE (Xamarin Studio)6
- Xamarin.forms is the best, it's amazing6
- That just work for every scenario5
- C# mult paradigm language5
- Power of C#, no javascript, visual studio5
- Great docs4
- Compatible to develop Hybrid apps4
- Microsoft stack4
- Microsoft backed4
- Well Designed3
- Small learning curve for Mobile developers3
- Ionic2
- Ability to leverage legacy C and C++2
Sign up to add or upvote prosMake informed product decisions
Cons of Ionic
- Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps20
- Not meant for game development15
- Not a native app2
Cons of PhoneGap
- Never as good as a native app2
- Created for web pages, not for complex Apps1
- Poor user experience1
- Not build for high performance1
- Hard to see1
Cons of Xamarin
- Build times9
- Visual Studio5
- Price4
- Complexity3
- Scalability3
- Nuget2
- Maturity2
- Build Tools2
- Support2
- Maturidade0
- Performance0