Today’s fast-paced business environment demands the developers, CEOs, and CTOs to employ a proactive approach that leads to a shorter development time, high app performance, reduced cost and deployment time, and seamless user experience when building apps for their businesses. When creating an app, businesses often fall into the dilemma between hiring React Native developers and Hybrid app developers. They are confused about whether they should build apps that provide a better user experience or apps that have reduced cost and development time. This leads to the hot debate of React Native vs Hybrid apps. This discussion has been active since 2015 when Facebook released the first version of the ReactJS configuration.
As an experienced ReactJS app development company, we’ve been working with the framework over the years and offering world-class React Native development services to our global clientele. When comparing React Native vs Hybrid apps solutions, we believe React is the right platform for building dynamic, feature-rich, and highly-engaging web applications.
Are you confused between choosing React Native and Hybrid apps for your business? Then this article is meant for you. Here in this article, we are going to focus on why startups and enterprises should opt for ReactJS web development services instead of Hybrid app development services.
But before jumping into the topic, let’s first understand the difference between React Native and Hybrid Apps.
Difference between React Native and Hybrid Apps
●Hybrid Apps
Hybrid apps combine the features of web technology and native app. Hybrid applications are coded in the same technologies that are used to build web applications. These apps are hosted within a native container on a mobile device.
●React Native mobile development
Released in 2015 by Facebook, React Native, on the other hand, is an open-source mobile app development framework that is used to develop apps for multiple platforms including Android, iOS, Android, Web, and UWP using a single codebase. React Native mobile development offers greater efficiency and updated features that enable the app developers to integrate various plugins and device features for a better user experience.
Now that you know the basics of both of these platforms, let’s now proceed with the React Native vs Hybrid App debate.
Major Pros and Cons of Hybrid App Development Approach
Hybrid Apps
A Hybrid app uses a web view to present the HTML and JavaScript files with the help of the native browser rendering engine within the app. The key component of a hybrid app is an abstraction of a layer that shows some common set of APIs to the hybrid app as a JavaScript API.
A hybrid app is a suitable option if you:
● Want to expand your reach to a wider market for various mobile platforms.
● Want your app to be accessed even in offline mode.
● Want to enjoy various shortcuts offered by hybrid apps.
● Don’t need advanced graphics performance that is supported only in native apps.
Pros of Hybrid Apps
1. Reduced Development Cost
Hybrid app development is around 30% cheaper than the native app development approach. App developers create a single project for both Android and iOS platforms by using a hybrid app development approach. However, the more customization requirements you have, the more will be the cost of maintenance of hybrid apps.
2. Shorter Development Cycle
Businesses often look for a fast development time of applications without quality concern. With the hybrid app development approach, developers do not need to write and implement unique code for different platforms. The hybrid framework allows a single codebase for both Android and iOS platforms.
3. Reach to a Wider Market
If you want to capture a huge market, you should adopt hybrid technology. Hybrid app development allows startups and enterprises to target a wider market of both Android and iOS platforms quickly.
4. Easy and Smooth Integration to the Cloud
The hybrid app development framework offers easy-to-use plugins. Some of the frameworks like PhoneGap, Ionic, Titanium can be integrated into the cloud with seamless and easy exchange of integration code. So, app developers can easily integrate hybrid apps into cloud services such as Salesforce, AWS, etc.
Cons of Hybrid Apps
1. Non-platform Specific User Interface
Users often check the app store before they download an app. If your users cannot understand your app’s interface, they are likely to avoid downloading your app. Although some hybrid apps look sharp, the user interface looks unappealing, odd, and alien in a particular platform. Hybrid apps may look like a web app or iOS apps on the Android platform.
2. Poor App Performance
Hybrid apps often encounter bugs and crashes that affect their performance. Hybrid apps support an extra layer between the source code and the targeted mobile platform. These apps have slow loading time and perform unsatisfactorily in poor internet connectivity.
3. The Debugging Process is Complex and Lengthy
Since the hybrid apps add a layer between the source code and the mobile platform, it makes the debugging process more complicated and lengthy. The mobile app developers need to rely on the framework to dig through the target operating system to restrict the entry of any bug in the applications. All this makes debugging a lengthy process as the developers may not have a deep understanding of the chosen operating system or platform.
4. Limited Software Capabilities
Businesses need to upgrade their app to make it compatible with the new feature set of software capabilities. With the Hybrid framework, it becomes quite difficult to add new features that come with the latest software upgrade.
Why Hire Reactjs Development Company for Hybrid App Development Services?
1. React Native Apps Have High Performance and Speed
The React Native mobile development framework works with the same components of the platforms with which native Android or iOS apps are coded. Hybrid apps, on the other hand, use a web view that is within a native container. Therefore, they behave and run like a web application on the operating system.
The Hybrid framework also cannot compete with the smooth UX and high speed that a React Native app offers. This is why you should consider Hiring Reactjs Development Company instead of Hybrid app developers.
2. React Native is Time and Cost-efficient
ReactJS web development is based on the ‘write once run on multiple platforms’ approach. Unlike the typical native app development, React Native developers do not need to write unique codes for different platforms. With the single codebase, React Native significantly reduces the development time, cost, and effort in developing apps that perform flawlessly on Android and iOS platforms.
We, at ReactJS India, have built successful React Native apps where 75-80% of the codebase can be used on both iOS and Android platforms, thus cutting downtime and cost.
3. React Supports Full-stack Web App Development
Supported by other tools, ReactJS can be used to develop full-stack web applications. For instance, you can use ReactJs for back-end development, React Angular for front-end development, and No SQL to develop the database.
4. React is SEO-friendly
React Native mobile development comes with in-built features that support the latest SEO algorithm features. You can build SEO-friendly websites using two React tools namely React Router and React Helmet. The former helps you to reroute a React app, while the latter helps ReactJS developers to use the HTML metadata in the component header of an app.
5. React Native Leverages the Conceptual Framework of ReactJS Web Language
When it comes to choosing between React Native development services and Hybrid app development, we suggest you hire React Native developers for your project. React Native is a JavaScript framework at its core and shares the programming model with the ReactJS web language. When creating React Native applications, app developers leverage the same conceptual framework in rendering ReactJS web development services.
So, React Native development services help you save overhead costs of three developers for iOS, Android, and Web app development.
6. React Native Framework Supports Third-party System Integrations
Earlier React Native did not support external system integration. Many companies offering ReactJS web development services faced challenges in creating custom UI because of this problem.
In present times, the React native framework comes with a rich open-source ecosystem that supports third-party system integration. React Native now offers you the flexibility of integrating third-party applications to create custom UI that your end-users would love.
7. Provides Reusable Native Components
React Native developers are new building blocks with reusable native components that can be compiled to the native applications directly. Additionally, React Native has the counterparts of components used in Android and iOS app development.
This enables the app developers to maintain a consistent look and feel, speed, and essential functionalities of the native apps. The reusable component-based structure enables the app developers to use the web-based development approach that is efficient and progressive than the typical hybrid app development approach.
8. Provides Third-party Integration Compatibility with a Flawless UX
Third-party integration compatibility is one of the major reasons for opting for ReactJS web development services over hybrid app development services. On the contrary, in the cross-platform app development approach, you cannot integrate the in-built elements of the device.
React Native applications support third-party plugins to integrate in-built elements of the device like GPS, camera, Bluetooth in the mobile application. Since React Native supports third-party plugin integration, it eliminates issues like slow loading speed and high memory consumption for the developers.
9. Low-coding and Testing Efforts Leads to Quick and Enhanced Development Process
The React Native developers only need to write code once for both Android and iOS platforms, which saves their time and effort. Moreover, this compresses the code line by half which reduces the chances of bugs and errors, and eventually, the testing efforts are also reduced significantly. All this has improved and made the app development process faster.
10. Eliminates Writing Codes from Scratch
When you choose to React Native development services, you can easily include native elements into the operating mobile app’s code. Hence, React Native developers don’t need to write the codes from scratch and turn an existing mobile app into a React Native library.
11. Supported by a Large Open-source Community
React Native is supported by Facebook and a large community of ReactJS developers who share and contribute to the enhancement of the framework. The developers and contributors help in developing advanced packages and fixing bugs and security vulnerabilities.
12. Most Renowned Apps are Leveraging React Native
Industry-leading top applications available in the marketplace such as Facebook, Tesla, Instagram, Walmart, Bloomberg, and many others have already invested in ReactJS web development services over hybrid app development. These examples are enough to validate the effectiveness of the framework.
Are You Ready to Hire React Native Developers?
Considering all the above-mentioned reasons, we can confidently say that opting for React Native development services is better than hybrid app development services. Especially if you are a startup who is looking for a cost-effective, shorter development cycle, cross-platform compatible app solution, then React Native is your go-to solution to close the debate of React Native vs Hybrid Apps.
React Native delivers unmatched app performance and quality that make it the future of mobile app development. If you’re looking for react native mobile app development, do not hesitate to get in touch with our proficient team of ReactJS developers.