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Expo vs Ionic: What are the differences?
What is Expo? Making React Native Easier. Exponent lets web developers build truly native apps that work across both iOS and Android by writing them once in just JavaScript.
What is Ionic? A beautiful front-end framework for developing cross-platform apps with web technologies like Angular and React. 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.
Expo and Ionic can be primarily classified as "Cross-Platform Mobile Development" tools.
"Free" is the top reason why over 6 developers like Expo, while over 234 developers mention "Allows for rapid prototyping" as the leading cause for choosing Ionic.
Expo and Ionic are both open source tools. It seems that Ionic with 38.5K GitHub stars and 13.1K forks on GitHub has more adoption than Expo with 6.78K GitHub stars and 791 GitHub forks.
Sellsuki, MAK IT, and Edify are some of the popular companies that use Ionic, whereas Expo is used by Discontinuity, PUBLY, and Mifos Initiative. Ionic has a broader approval, being mentioned in 393 company stacks & 361 developers stacks; compared to Expo, which is listed in 29 company stacks and 26 developer stacks.
- Javascripts is the most populated language in the world.
- Easy to learn & deployed production
- Fast development
- Strong community
- Completed Documents
- Native performance with lower RAM used.
- Easy to handle native issues by using native code like Java / Objective C
- Powered by Facebook.
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.
Pros of Expo
- Free10
- Hot Reload9
- Common ios and android app setup7
- Streamlined6
- Easy to learn6
- Open Source4
- Builds into a React Native app3
Pros of Ionic
- Allows for rapid prototyping245
- Hybrid mobile225
- It's angularjs208
- Free183
- It's javascript, html, and css178
- Ui and theming107
- Great designs76
- Mv* pattern74
- Reuse frontend devs on mobile70
- Extensibility64
- Great community31
- Open source28
- Responsive design22
- Good cli20
- Angularjs-based13
- Beautifully designed13
- So easy to use13
- Widgets12
- Allows for rapid prototyping, hybrid mobile11
- Typescript11
- Quick prototyping, amazing community10
- Easy setup10
- Angular2 support8
- Fast, easy, free7
- Because of the productivity and easy for development7
- So much thought behind what developers actually need7
- Base on angular7
- Super fast, their dev team is amazingly passionate6
- Easy to use6
- It's Angular6
- UI is awesome4
- Hot deploy4
- Material design support using theme3
- Amazing support3
- It's the future3
- Angular3
- Allow for rapid prototyping3
- Easy setup, development and testing3
- Ionic creator3
- User Friendly2
- It's angular js2
- Complete package2
- Simple & Fast2
- Fastest growing mobile app framework2
- Best Support and Community2
- Material Design By Default2
- Cross platform2
- Documentation2
- Because I can use my existing web devloper skills2
- Removes 300ms delay in mobile browsers2
- 11
- Native access1
- Typescript support1
- Ionic conect codeigniter1
- Fast Prototyping1
- All Trending Stack1
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Cons of Expo
Cons of Ionic
- Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps20
- Not meant for game development15
- Not a native app1