Native v/s Hybrid Apps for startups
A number of startups in their early days face this dilemma. Today there’s a mobile app for everything — gaming, dating, cab sharing, finance, insurance claims, email, music, etc. If you can imagine it, it’s probably already available for download. When developing a mobile app, is it better for a startup to build a native app or choose hybrid app instead?
Typically, when a startup decides to build a mobile app, they are either doing it because of their competitors or have identified a business opportunity previously unexplored. Whatever the reason, we want the application to built out and released as soon as possible. However, ASAP often means many compromises need to be made. Both hybrid and native approaches can get the job done but there are certain advantages and disadvantages that one should keep in mind.
Hybrid apps are built using web technologies like HTML, CSS and JavaScript whereas native apps are built with specific technology and language for a specific platform like Java for Android, Swift for iOS. A hybrid app can be built for any platform from the single code base. A single code base for all platforms means write once and run anywhere but for a native app, we need to build and maintain separate app and code for each platform. In a hybrid app, the same development team can develop the app for any platform including website as well. So it has low development cost than native app as in native app separate development effort for each platform increases the development time and cost. Releasing the same feature on all platform at the same time is always challenging because of the different code base.
Graphical Applications, HD games, intensive animation applications might perform well as a native app because the native code is faster than HTML and JavaScript. Native SDKs allows accessing device features without dealing with the complexity of native plugins. But in a hybrid app, high graphics-oriented apps and other performance-centric apps might not go well. Native plugins are required to access the native features of the platform like camera, mic, GPS etc. A hybrid app will able to access all the native device features like calendar, media etc. but be dependent on the native plugins. Sometime entire new device feature might be not be being readily available as a native plugin. We can write our own but it adds complexity to the development.
A hybrid app is having dependencies on different libraries and frameworks like Cordova, Ionic which has to be in sync with latest platform version changes and releases. Cordova is an open-source mobile development framework. Cordova Plugin helps to access device features. Ionic is the app platform for web developers. We can build amazing mobile, web, and desktop apps all with one shared code base and open web standards. Other cross-platform app development frameworks are Framework7, Titanium Appcelerator etc.
The choice between hybrid vs native depends on a number of factors, including business requirements, app requirements, developer skills, cost and time. The bottom line is that each type of app offers a different experience and it’s important to know the strengths and weakness of each before starting development.
Next article — Web apps for Startups
