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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Cross Platform Mobile Development
  5. Ionic vs Sails.js

Ionic vs Sails.js

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Ionic
Ionic
Stacks9.5K
Followers8.6K
Votes1.8K
Sails.js
Sails.js
Stacks337
Followers511
Votes296
GitHub Stars22.9K
Forks1.9K

Ionic vs Sails.js: What are the differences?

Developers describe Ionic as "A beautiful front-end framework for developing cross-platform apps with web technologies like Angular and React". Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript. On the other hand, Sails.js is detailed as "Realtime MVC Framework for Node.js". Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Ionic and Sails.js are primarily classified as "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" and "Microframeworks (Backend)" tools respectively.

"Allows for rapid prototyping" is the primary reason why developers consider Ionic over the competitors, whereas "Data-driven apis " was stated as the key factor in picking Sails.js.

Ionic and Sails.js are both open source tools. Ionic with 38.4K GitHub stars and 13.1K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Sails.js with 20.6K GitHub stars and 1.85K GitHub forks.

Sellsuki, Edify, and eTobb are some of the popular companies that use Ionic, whereas Sails.js is used by TestLegends, HYPH, and Giguana. Ionic has a broader approval, being mentioned in 392 company stacks & 350 developers stacks; compared to Sails.js, which is listed in 32 company stacks and 12 developer stacks.

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Advice on Ionic, Sails.js

Anonymous
Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 7, 2020

Decided

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.

403k views403k
Comments
Thuan
Thuan

FE Lead at SOLID ENGINEER

Jun 16, 2020

Decided
  • 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.
666k views666k
Comments
Melly
Melly

Dec 19, 2019

Needs advice

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!

540k views540k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Ionic
Ionic
Sails.js
Sails.js

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Sails is designed to mimic the MVC pattern of frameworks like Ruby on Rails, but with support for the requirements of modern apps: data-driven APIs with scalable, service-oriented architecture.

Performance obsessed;Utilizes Angular and React;Native focused;Beautifully designed;Based on Web Components;
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
22.9K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
1.9K
Stacks
9.5K
Stacks
337
Followers
8.6K
Followers
511
Votes
1.8K
Votes
296
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 248
    Allows for rapid prototyping
  • 228
    Hybrid mobile
  • 208
    It's angularjs
  • 186
    Free
  • 179
    It's javascript, html, and css
Cons
  • 20
    Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps
  • 15
    Not meant for game development
  • 2
    Not a native app
Pros
  • 49
    Data-driven apis
  • 47
    Waterline ORM
  • 37
    Mvc
  • 32
    Easy rest
  • 25
    Real-time
Cons
  • 5
    Waterline ORM
  • 4
    Defaults to VueJS
  • 0
    Standard MVC
Integrations
No integrations available
Grunt
Grunt
Node.js
Node.js
MySQL
MySQL
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
MongoDB
MongoDB
Socket.IO
Socket.IO
ExpressJS
ExpressJS

What are some alternatives to Ionic, Sails.js?

ExpressJS

ExpressJS

Express is a minimal and flexible node.js web application framework, providing a robust set of features for building single and multi-page, and hybrid web applications.

Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Xamarin

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Django REST framework

Django REST framework

It is a powerful and flexible toolkit that makes it easy to build Web APIs.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Sinatra

Sinatra

Sinatra is a DSL for quickly creating web applications in Ruby with minimal effort.

Framework7

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Lumen

Lumen

Laravel Lumen is a stunningly fast PHP micro-framework for building web applications with expressive, elegant syntax. We believe development must be an enjoyable, creative experience to be truly fulfilling. Lumen attempts to take the pain out of development by easing common tasks used in the majority of web projects, such as routing, database abstraction, queueing, and caching.

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