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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Frameworks
  4. Cross Platform Mobile Development
  5. Apache Cordova vs Ionic vs React Native

Apache Cordova vs Ionic vs React Native

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Ionic
Ionic
Stacks9.5K
Followers8.6K
Votes1.8K
Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova
Stacks686
Followers892
Votes218
GitHub Stars955
Forks345
React Native
React Native
Stacks34.4K
Followers29.5K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars124.4K
Forks24.9K

Apache Cordova vs Ionic vs React Native: What are the differences?

1. **Architecture**: Apache Cordova is a platform that uses web technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to build cross-platform mobile applications, while Ionic is a framework built on top of Cordova that provides a sleek UI and user-friendly components. React Native, on the other hand, utilizes native components to render the user interface, resulting in more performance and a native look and feel. 2. **Language**: Apache Cordova allows developers to code in web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, making it easy for web developers to transition to mobile development. In contrast, Ionic uses Angular for building applications, adding a layer of complexity for developers who are not familiar with Angular. React Native uses JSX, a syntax extension for JavaScript, to build components, providing a more streamlined development experience. 3. **Performance**: React Native outperforms Apache Cordova and Ionic in terms of performance as it uses native components to render the user interface, resulting in faster loading times and smoother animations. Cordova and Ionic, on the other hand, may experience performance issues as they rely on web views to display content. 4. **Community Support**: Ionic has a vibrant community with a large number of plugins, themes, and components available, making development faster and more efficient. React Native also has a strong community backing with a large number of libraries and tools. Cordova, while still popular, may not have as extensive community support as Ionic and React Native. 5. **Development Environment**: Cordova development can be done using any text editor and a web browser, making it easy for beginners to get started. Ionic provides a command-line interface for developers to build and test their applications effectively. React Native requires installing the Node.js and watchman to start the development environment, which can be a bit more involved compared to Cordova and Ionic. 6. **Native Functionality**: React Native has better access to native device functionalities compared to Apache Cordova and Ionic, allowing developers to create truly native experiences. Cordova and Ionic may require additional plugins to access certain device features, which can add complexity to the development process.

In Summary, Apache Cordova, Ionic, and React Native differ in architecture, language, performance, community support, development environment, and native functionality, offering developers a variety of options to choose from based on their specific project requirements.

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Advice on Ionic, Apache Cordova, React Native

Nick
Nick

CTO at Pickio

Jun 2, 2020

Decided

We built the first version of our app with RN and it turned out a mess in a while. A lot of bugs along with poor performance out of the box for a fairly large app. Many things, that native platform has, cannot be done with existing solutions for RN. For instance, large titles on iOS are not fully implemented in any of existing navigations libraries. Also there's painfully slow JSON bridge and many other small, yet annoying things. On the other hand Flutter became a really powerful and easy-to-use tool. A bit of a learning curve, of course, because of Dart, but it worth learning. Flutter offers TONS of built-in features, no JSON-bridge, AOT compilation for iOS.

491k views491k
Comments
Andrea
Andrea

May 26, 2020

Needs adviceonVue.jsVue.jsVue NativeVue NativeReactReact

I'm a huge fan of Vue.js and I'm pretty comfortable with it. I need to build a mobile app for my company and I was now wondering whether I could make use of VueJS with Vue Native instead of switching to React. I know Vue Native builds on top of RN. My question is whether I'd have as much freedom with Vue Native over RN and whether you feel like Vue Native is "production ready" or not. Not sure of which shortcomings I may find using Vue Native... Thanks a lot!!!

336k views336k
Comments
Anonymous
Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 7, 2020

Decided

While with Ionic it is possible to make mobile applications with only web technologies, Flutter is more performant and is easy to use if you are willing to learn Dart, which is a fun language. Plus, it has awesome documentation and, while its ecosystem isn't near as big as JavaScript's is, it has a good package manager called Pub and its packages are generally high quality.

403k views403k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Ionic
Ionic
Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova
React Native
React Native

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Performance obsessed;Utilizes Angular and React;Native focused;Beautifully designed;Based on Web Components;
Cross-platform (CLI) workflow;Platform-centered workflow;Hundreds of plugins
Native iOS Components;Asynchronous Execution;Touch Handling;Flexbox and Styling; Polyfills
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
955
GitHub Stars
124.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
345
GitHub Forks
24.9K
Stacks
9.5K
Stacks
686
Stacks
34.4K
Followers
8.6K
Followers
892
Followers
29.5K
Votes
1.8K
Votes
218
Votes
1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 248
    Allows for rapid prototyping
  • 228
    Hybrid mobile
  • 208
    It's angularjs
  • 186
    Free
  • 179
    It's javascript, html, and css
Cons
  • 20
    Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps
  • 15
    Not meant for game development
  • 2
    Not a native app
Pros
  • 48
    Lots of plugins
  • 35
    JavaScript
  • 26
    Great community
  • 25
    Easy Development
  • 18
    Easy to learn
Cons
  • 2
    No native performance
  • 1
    Hard to install
  • 0
    Hard to install
Pros
  • 214
    Learn once write everywhere
  • 174
    Cross platform
  • 169
    Javascript
  • 122
    Native ios components
  • 69
    Built by facebook
Cons
  • 23
    Javascript
  • 19
    Built by facebook
  • 12
    Cant use CSS
  • 4
    30 FPS Limit
  • 2
    Some compenents not truly native

What are some alternatives to Ionic, Apache Cordova, React Native?

Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

Xamarin

Xamarin

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

NativeScript

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Framework7

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

Expo

Expo

It is a framework and a platform for universal React applications. It is a set of tools and services built around React Native and native platforms that help you develop, build, deploy, and quickly iterate on iOS, Android, and web apps.

Vue Native

Vue Native

Vue Native is a mobile framework to build truly native mobile app using Vue.js. Its is designed to connect React Native and Vue.js. Vue Native is a wrapper around React Native APIs, which allows you to use Vue.js and compose rich mobile User Interface.

Shoutem UI

Shoutem UI

Shoutem UI is a set of styleable components that enables you to build beautiful React Native applications for iOS and Android. All of our components are built to be both composable and customizable.

Sencha Touch

Sencha Touch

Sencha Touch 2, a high-performance HTML5 mobile application framework, is the cornerstone of the Sencha HTML5 platform. Built for enabling world-class user experiences, Sencha Touch 2 is the only framework that enables developers to build fast and impressive apps that work on iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Kindle Fire, and more.

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