Native vs. Hybrid app- Choose the right one for your App development

Native vs. Hybrid app- Choose the right one for your App development_banner

As of today, mobile apps are the gateway to increase business sales. Living in this digital age, where everyone is glued to their devices, building good relations with the customers is really easy.

According to Comscore, mobile users spend 90% of their time using apps. It is predicted that mobile apps are going to generate a revenue of $935.2 billion in 2023!

This seems like the best time to invest in a mobile app to yield fruitful returns for your brand. But here is the thing, people prefer using mobile apps that provide good customer experience. For which, building the right type of mobile app that caters to a positive user experience is important.

It is important to choose between iOS and Android mobile platform and the type of app- native app or a hybrid app, that would be perfect for your business requirements.

Native app and hybrid app, both are unique in their ways. Presently, these two types of apps are the most preferred choice for developing a mobile app.

Here is everything you need to know about native apps and hybrid apps and make the right choice.

What is a Native app?

What is a Native app?

Each native app is developed to work with a specific operating system (OS). This means an app coded for iOS apps will not be compatible with Android and vice-versa. Native mobile apps follow certain methodology to enhance the user experience. Native developers can build apps that leverage all the features of an OS. However a Native app will require different code written for each platform it is on.

What is a Hybrid app?

What is a Hybrid app?

While a native app is platform dependent, a hybrid app has cross-platform compatibility. This means that a hybrid app can run on iOS & Android platforms with the same development code. These applications can be viewed as websites put into containers using the Cloud. Most of the time, a hybrid app uses the rendering engine of the built-in OS browsers.

Advantages of Native App development

Advantages of Native App development
  • Better User Experience: Great user experience is the backbone of any brand wanting to increase their reach to potential customers. During native app development, programmers adhere to the platform specific features for which the native app is being built. This helps improve the functionality of the app that helps enhance the user experience. Native apps can also better utilize offline mode capabilities.
  • Increased Performance rate: Native app, compared to a hybrid app, always has a higher rate of performance. This is due to better optimization of memory and storage achieved through code that is written only for a single platform. This makes maintaining a native app much easier.
  • Better Security: Contrary to a hybrid app, a native app can fully consume the hardware capabilities of the operating system it uses. Thus implementing efficient data security features for a native app is easy.
  • Functionality: Native app development offers access to latest features as soon as they are launched in the market, so that developers can quickly integrate them within the native app.
  • Personalization of the native app: Different mobile devices have different sizes and features. A native app can help adjust the different layouts of the devices. With a native app, creating the best user design (UX) that delivers satisfactory user experience (UI) is easily doable.

Advantages of Hybrid App development

Advantages of Hybrid App development
  • Cross platform compatibility: A hybrid app can run on both iOS and Android with the same base code. This helps reduce the development cost if the developer plans to launch a hybrid app for both mobile platforms.
  • Less development time: Hybrid app development requires the developers to work on a single set of code, making it very time-efficient to roll out a hybrid app.
  • Easy Maintenance: Since there is only one core set of code, it becomes effortless to update and maintain the hybrid app. There is no need for the user to download the latest version to fix a bug.

Disadvantages of Native App development

  • Higher Cost of development: The need for excellent development resources at hand and experienced native app developers who can curate app requirements specifically for business needs, makes developing a native app an expensive process.
  • Time-Consuming process: Developers need to write a separate code for each platform the native app is going to be released on. Native app development seems to go on forever in such cases. For example, even if the native app is ready to be released on iOS, and development for Android is still left, business won’t prefer releasing it on iOS platform just yet. As they prefer to simultaneously release the apps on both platforms. Even developing one native app takes more time than a hybrid mobile app.

Disadvantages of Hybrid App development

  • Continuous internet connection required: Most of the hybrid apps are like websites that function through the containers (contains the mobile app code) downloaded from the Cloud. Due to this, continuous internet connectivity is required for hybrid apps.
  • Bad User Interface: As the user interface needs to be compatible with as many platforms as the hybrid app is on, several functionalities are compromised. One being the UI. Developers need to write code that is compatible for Android & iOS, leading to minimal UI features being implemented for the hybrid app that might not be so appealing to the eye.
  • Native App Developer needed at times: Many functionality issues in a hybrid app requires a native app developer work on the issues at times. This leads to increased development costs. Businesses have a problem incurring these costs as the main reason of choosing a hybrid app over a native app is the lower cost of development associated with hybrid app development.

Technology Stack used for a Native app

The most preferred frameworks to develop a native app are:

For iOS apps:

  • Objective-C: This is a programming language that has phenomenal development experience and many available libraries. It is also compatible with other programming technologies. However it requires more coding time due to its dependencies.
  • Swift: Swift is the new programming language from Apple and has replaced Objective C. Having better performance than Objective-C, it is a preferred choice to build an iOS native app that simply delivers seamless experience.

For Android apps:

  • Java: This language is not only used for mobile applications but also for desktop and web development. It provides gives developers access to a vast library of APIs to develop Android OS features.
  • Kotlin: This programming language was specifically developed to work with Java for Android. Google declared Kotlin as ‘the programming language’ for android app development. Kotlin reduces the time required for programming in app development.

Technology Stack used for a Hybrid app

The most popular frameworks for hybrid app development are:

  • React Native: This is an open-source, cross-platform compatible software developed by Facebook. It offers a simple elegant UI, higher rate of performance, and short development cycles.
  • Xamarin: It is suitable for a simple hybrid app, this open-source framework is maintained and strongly supported by Microsoft. Xamarin is the popular choice for business driven projects.
  • Ionic: It produces mobile hybrid apps with technologies like JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. It is easy to learn and has a simple UI but can be challenging to maintain. But since the introduction of React Native, Ionic isn’t a preferred choice any longer.

This should help clear things up between how a native app & a hybrid app are different from each other.

Still having a tough time making up your mind? Don’t worry! That’s where Communication Crafts comes to play!

Give us a call and we’ll lay out the best development plan for your business needs. , Throughout the last 15 years, our team of expert hybrid & native app developers have worked on creating just the right kind of mobile apps for our clients. With the latest Mobile App monitoring systems, our app developers not only gather in depth analytics of your app’s performance after it is launched, but also help roll out timely updates to make your app’s performance better. With the best mobile app developers working in our development team, every line of code we write for your mobile app is quality assured. Crafting your native or hybrid mobile app to meet all your business needs is our forte! Customer satisfaction is of utmost priority for us and we tend to achieve it no matter what!

Hire us and get the best native or hybrid app made quickly!

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