Mobile Apps were once a luxury tool for many businesses across industries. However, it has become a necessity now. Business owners are finding ways to make such applications run seamlessly on multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and Windows. One such solution is a cross-platform mobile app development approach.
You can choose between the best cross-platform technologies like React Native, Flutter, and Xamarin to build multi-platform solutions. Besides, picking up the right app development tools is important for building a good and native-like app.

Mobile App Development:

Mobile app development is the process involved in writing software for small, wireless devices, such as smartphones. It defines a business and boosts growth significantly. Besides, the mobile app development industry is in a transformative phase. As the number of people accessing the internet is growing, mobile app development has the power to reach a significant number of consumers in the future.
Mobile app development has become a booming industry in the last couple of months. As COVID-19 took a toll on all industries, it was mobile apps that kept all the businesses afloat in the market. Moreover, several top mobile app development companies were filled with premium app development requirements from various industry owners.
Business owners choose cross-platform app development to build high-quality and cost-effective mobile apps in 2021. It offers the functionality to run on various operating systems. Moreover, cross-platform app development offers the development of a single application to avoid developing different app versions for each platform.

Importance of Cross-platform App Development in 2021:

Every business owner wants a cost-effective solution in 2021. Cross-platform app development is just the right choice. It elevates the business experience and increases the potential customer reach. A recent survey by Statista proves that software developers have moved on to cross-platform technologies like React Native, Flutter, and Ionic, and Xamarin for successful mobile app development in 2019 and 2020.

According to the stats, roughly one-third of mobile developers use cross-platform technologies or frameworks; the rest of mobile developers use native tools. Due to the growing demand, it is best if you approach a leading cross-platform app development company to build a successful cross-platform app.

Advantages of Cross-platform App Development:-

Cross-platform offers a significant number of advantages to mobile app development. Below are a few;

• The codes used in cross-platform development are sharable.
• Cross-platform app development facilitates faster development
• It saves a lot of cost on development and designing
• Cross-platform app development helps you reach a wider audience
• The cross-platform app offers a native look and feel

Disadvantages of Cross-platform App Development:-

Although cross-platform offers a lot of advantages there are a few disadvantages as follows;

• Cross-platform apps do not offer high performance
• They have poorer design although there are many features
• The app offers limited functionality to the users
• There is always an updating delay in the cross-platform app

Top 5 Technologies for Cross-platform App Development:

Cross-platform app development technologies offer business owners the chance to make their business presence felt in Google Play or Apple App Store. Business owners want to penetrate the market with intuitive and interactive cross-platform mobile apps. Thus leveraging top cross-platform app development technologies is the best choice.

Let us now check out the top five cross-platform app development frameworks.

1. React Native:-

React Native is a cross-platform development framework developed by Facebook for both iOS and Android. Although it was launched in 2015, it is causing a wave in the app development market. However, React Native is based on React and doesn’t involve the use of WebView and HTML technologies.
Within 6 years of its introduction to the market, React Native is crowned as the most widely used cross-platform framework. Moreover, React Native has the capability to combine the best features of JavaScript and React.JS and build apps according to the React Native app development trends.
React Native is best suited for apps built for Android and iOS platforms. Furthermore, It offers custom design, only requires a shorter time-to-market, and reduces production costs significantly.

Pros of React Native:-

You can grab the pros of React Native if you work with a top-notch React Native app development company. Because the experienced developers will help you extract all the advantages React Native offers.

• Single development team: – The single codebase in React Native allows business owners to work with a single development team that is familiar with JavaScript.
• Shorter time-to-market: – As React Native shares the codebase for iOS, Android, and the Web, the time-to-market for apps is short.
• Hot reloading: – This feature allows developers to see changes made in code within seconds.
• Responsive interface – React Native app development focuses on UI to offer a highly responsive interface.

Looking for React-native development? Contact Soft Suave

2. Flutter

Flutter is an open-source cross-platform framework that facilitates the development of beautiful native Apps for iOS and Android platforms in no time. Besides, the framework is maintained by Google. Flutter app development is loved and preferred by developers during cross-platform app development.
Flutter is an object-oriented language written in C, C++, and Dart. Moreover, it facilitates app development for platforms such as Android, iOS, Linux, Mac, Windows, Google Fuchsia, and the web. Basically, Flutter comprises of Dart platform, Flutter engine, foundation library, and design-specific widgets. If you are looking to build an MVP, Flutter should be your primary choice.

Dive Deeper – Quick steps to build your first Flutter app efforstlessly and cost-effectively.

Pros of Flutter:-

Flutter app development offers a lot of advantages to business owners; below are a few.

• Faster rendering – Flutter’s layered architecture offers full control over the pixels on the screen and allows seamless integration of animated graphics, videos, text, and controls.
• Less Testing – Flutter development offers one codebase for different platforms so the need for testing is less.
• Native performance – Flutter does not depend on any intermediate code representations or interpretation. Thus the app offers native performance.
• The same UI for all platforms – Flutter allows sharing of the same Ui for all platforms.

Looking for Flutter development? Contact Soft Suave

3. Xamarin

Xamarin is an independent cross-app development framework loved by developers and trusted by enterprises. It is now maintained by Microsoft. Besides, Xamarin solves the problem of disjointed native technology stacks and saves mobile app development complexity and cost.
The strong community of Xamarin comprises 60,000 contributors from more than 3,700 companies. Codes in Xamarin app development offer a “write once, run anywhere” feature that allows faster development. Furthermore, Xamarin uses .NET and C# and shares 90% of the code on other platforms for designing engaging mobile apps.
Xamarin.Forms offer the native look, native feel and give your mobile app a consistent look across all platforms. This open-source framework satisfies remarkable UI requirements during mobile app development.

Pros of Xamarin:-

Xamarin has the potential to offer remarkable mobile app development solutions. Let’s take a look at a few;

• Native-like performance – Xamarin app development matches the native development standards.
• Hardware support – Xamarin removes hardware compatibility issues and works across all the platforms
• Easy maintenance – Maintaining apps build using Xamarin is easy and quick as a single change will reflect on both iOS and Android Apps.
• Optimal user experience – As Xamarin uses platform-specific UI elements it offers optimal user experience.

Looking for Xamarin development? Contact Soft Suave

4. PhoneGap

PhoneGap is an open-source framework that allows mobile app developers hassle-free coding. Developers love this framework because it offers the flexibility to use different languages without any hardware restrictions. Moreover, PhoneGap offers cloud-based solutions that enable developers to develop mobile apps directly on the platform.

Pros of PhoneGap:-

PhoneGap is the best choice if you’re looking to develop a simple mobile application. Besides, it offers several other advantages to mobile app development as follows;

• Community base – PhoneGap has a large community that offers consistent support to PhoneGap developers.
• UI libraries – PhoneGap is popular for offering impeccable UI libraries that elevate the viewing experience for different viewers.
• Powerful back-end – PhoneGap offers faster and robust backend development for developers.
• Faster development – As PhoneGap offers flexibility, the development process is faster.

5. Ionic

Ionic is an open-source framework that has a rich library of front-end building blocks and UI components that helps in the development of beautiful, high-performance mobile and progressive web apps. The framework allows faster development of business apps with the help of libraries and the latest components.
Ionic enables building native-like hybrid apps and progressive web apps effortlessly. Besides, it uses front-end technologies such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Angular for seamless app development.

Pros of Ionic:-

Ionic app development offers numerous mobile app development capabilities as follows;

• Browser support – Ionic offers exceptional browser support. They just need browser web-views for building the application layout seamlessly.
• UI components – Ionic offers a vast range of plugins and UI components to reduce the development time and cost.
• Faster development – Ionic develops mobile apps for both iOS and Android in a short period compared to apps build natively.
• Diverse plugins – Ionic offers many native plugins to help developers get access to native device APIs.

Looking for Ionic development? Contact Soft Suave

Comparison of Flutter Vs React Native Vs Xamarin

It is challenging to find the best technology from Flutter, React Native, and Xamarin. However, below are a few factors through which you can identify the best tech and use it on your cross-platform mobile app development.

Code Reusability:-

In cross-platform app development, code reuse plays a vital part. It supports developers to build remarkable iOS and Android apps in a short duration. However, in this Flutter Vs React Native Vs Xamarin, all the technologies offer a certain percentage of code reusability.
Flutter offers 50-90%, React Native offers 90% and Xamarin offers close to 96% of code reusability. Considering this percentage, we can determine the clear winner – Xamarin.

Performance:-

The performance of an app determines the success of the business. Thus it is essential to find and use the right technology for your business app development. React Native and Xamarin offers significant performance and meets all the design requirements. However, Flutter is fast only due to the Dart coding.
However, we cannot clearly determine the performance based on the framework because there are few external factors such as device, features & functionalities, app, and codes.

Programming Language:-

The programming languages differ for all the technologies. Flutter uses Dart, React Native uses JavaScript, Swift, Objective-C, Java, and Xamarin uses C# with .NET environment. These languages determine the app’s time to market, flexibility, and performance.
Besides, you have to choose the programming language based on your requirement and the capability of the language. So we cannot determine the winner without understanding your needs.

Popularity:-

In terms of popularity, there is a tough fight between Flutter, React Native and Xamarin. In the race, Xamarin leads with 1.6 million developers and makes it the most popular cross-platform framework. However, there is also a steady increase in React Native as well due to its native development features and functionalities.
Recent studies show that the number of engaging users for Flutter is 75.4% followed by React Native with 62.5%.

Community Support:-

It is essential to choose the framework that has the best community support during App development. Because, they offer a lot of tutorials, guides, forums, and documentation essential for the best mobile app development. All the above frameworks offer excellent developer support, tutorials, and documentation.
However, Xamarin has a vast community base compared to other frameworks as it is managed by Microsoft.

Pricing:-

React Native and Flutter is free to use. However, to use Xamarin a fee of $499 to $2,999 has to be paid as a subscription depending on the size of the organization. If you are a start-up, you can use Xamarin without any subscription fees.

In a Nutshell:

Cross-platform app development provides significant firepower for start-ups and SMBs to run their business using mobile apps. Besides as Android and iOS are the leading mobile app development platforms, it is essential for you to focus on both platforms and release mobile apps accordingly. Moreover, the above-mentioned frameworks will help you to build successful mobile apps.
If you are a start-up or SMB struggling to choose between React Native, Flutter, and Xamarin, get in touch with Soft Suave. Because they are the leading cross-platform app development company in India that houses top mobile app developers for hire. You can get a 30-minute free consultation to discuss with experts and make the right choice for your mobile app development.
As facts and information are placed before you, it is you who has to make the choice between React Native vs Flutter vs Xamarin and start your cross-platform development with Soft Suave.