Ionic Vs React Native: Mobile Apps Done Right

Like native vs cross-platform, Ionic vs React Native is one of the most popular comparisons in the technology world. 

The main difference between Ionic vs React Native is that Ionic React executes native iOS and Android UI patterns employing cross-platform, standards-based web technology rather than accessing platform UI controls directly. In contrast, React Native provides an abstraction via React that controls platform UI controls directly.

With the rising demand for smartphone users, it has become important for businesses to focus on developing mobile apps. Not just mobile apps but a seamless medium for communication between the clients & customers. Also, what technology you use for app development.

Rather than developing apps separately for iOS and Android, developing a cross-platform application seems like a great idea. Not only it saves a lot of money but also allows rapid development.

However, when it comes to developing a mobile app, an important question rings the bell;

Which is the Best Cross-Platform Framework?

Ionic and React Native emerges as the top two cross-platforms for the development of a mobile application. Being best, both cross-platform frameworks are widely used for developing highly interactive and performing mobile apps.

And it leads to further confusion – which one to choose between Ionic and React Native? So, let’s make a quick Ionic vs React Native comparison and find out which one should you choose for your next project!

Let’s first begin with the introduction of these two frameworks:

Ionic

Ionic is an open-source UI toolkit. This cross-platform framework is used for building high-performing mobile and desktop apps. And the interesting thing about Ionic is that it makes use of web technologies (HTML, CSS, and JavaScript) for building applications. However, it requires Phonegap/Cordova plugins to access native features.

The reason behind the use of web technologies is that the Ionic framework focuses on the front-end user experience. Moreover, Ionic is easy to learn and integrates smoothly with other libraries. At present, Ionic has an official integration with Angular. However, it also provides support for Vue and React during the development process.

React Native:

Unlike Ionic, React Native combines the best aspects of native app development with React (one of the most popular JavaScript libraries for building user interfaces).

This cross-platform framework works on a simple principle of “Learn Once, Write Everywhere”. Furthermore, by utilizing native components like View, Text, and Image, React Native provides a native look and feel to your mobile apps.

Let’s Begin with Ionic vs React Native Comparison:

1. Building Blocks:

Ionic is an HTML5 framework that makes use of a wide range of UI components. For building a hybrid app using Ionic, the code is compiled using Cordova/PhoneGap, hence called its building blocks.

Whereas, React Native has a different approach. Rather than building a single app that runs on all other platforms, React Native allows you to share a large portion of JavaScript code among Android, iOS and Universal Windows Platform.

This approach makes the components in React Native reusable. Using this approach, app developers can directly compile the code in the native platform.

Hence, the end product becomes more efficient, having a better look & feel of applications in comparison to Ionic. So, in this architecture comparison, React Native is the clear winner. And if you are comparing these two platforms based on building blocks, go ahead and hire React Native developers.

2. Adaptability:

If we talk about platform adaptability, the battle between the two becomes even more intense.

As the same code is used to run the application across all platforms, Ionic becomes a better choice for cross-platform development.

React Native does not allow you to ignore platform-specific logic, similar to native app development. Therefore, you have to focus on developing platform-specific components. This outlook gives an edge to React Native over Ionic in terms of adaptability.

3. Testing:

It is the point where both the technologies are neck to neck. Both of these cross-platform frameworks allow real-time testing with previews across different browsers and mobile devices.

However, React Native is one step ahead as it even shows the preview of modifications while working on them (without any need of recompiling or rebuilding).

4. App Rendering:

One of the most important aspects of Ionic vs React Native lies in the app rendering.

Ionic makes use of web technologies to render an application. The main programming language of Ionic is TypeScript, which is its main advantage & allows the mobile app developers to write the code once and run it across different platforms.

On the other hand, React Native makes use of JavaScriptCore virtual machine (JVM). It allows developers to create platform-specific versions of components. Using this approach, developers can share a single codebase among different platforms.

Having an excellent code performance, React Native seamlessly becomes the winner.

5. Documentation:

Documentation is another important aspect to consider while comparing two technologies. While the documentation in Ionic is very simple, clean and consistent, React Native has clumsy and disorganized documentation.

6. Plugins:

Phonegap and Cordova have been in the market for a long time. Therefore, there’s a possibility that you will easily find the plugin to use the native features in the web view. Also, you can access the marketplace of plugins available for Ionic.

Whereas, a lot of plugins are available for React Native developers in Node Package Manager (NPM). As a matter of fact, there’s a plugin available to access the Phonegap/Cordova plugins, which means that you can instantly access the plugins from other communities too.

7. Developer Community:

Now comes the most important aspects of Ionic vs React Native comparison – community support!

Both have fairly a well-built community. But if we focus on the difference between the two, ionic is more popular on Stack Overflow. While all the answers related to React Native is available on GitHub, where React Native has 36,000 stars in comparison to 25,000 stars of Ionic. The strength of the community for these platforms is equally comparable.

The most significant difference is that Google supports Ionic whereas Facebook supports React Native. As already stated, one technology is leveraged to create native apps while the other is focused primarily on hybrid apps. So, it depends on what your preference is.

Conclusion:

In the comparison of Ionic vs React Native, RN clearly wins the battle. Based on the code reusability and performance, React Native gets one step ahead of the Ionic. On top of performance, React Native allows rapid development, thus saves a lot of time and money.

Depending upon on your business needs and expectations, a mobile app developer could guide you best to choose between the two technologies.

We hope that this blog clears out your confusion. So, are you ready to take a step towards the digital transformation?

If yes, then look no further, we are here to help. Directly hire developers from Your Team in India and kick start your development process without any hassle.