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Expo

Stacks339

Followers385

+ 1

Votes45

Ionic

Stacks6.1K

Followers5.5K

+ 1

Votes1.7K

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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.

Decisions about Expo and Ionic

Thuan Nguyen

FE Lead at SOLID ENGINEER · Jun 16, 2020 | 5 upvotes · 163K views

Chose

React Native

over

Ionic

Flutter

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
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awesomebanana2018

CEO at ME! · Jun 7, 2020 | 7 upvotes · 104.6K views

Chose

Flutter

over

Ionic

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

Pros of Ionic

10
Free
9
Hot Reload
7
Common ios and android app setup
6
Streamlined
6
Easy to learn
4
Open Source
3
Builds into a React Native app

245
Allows for rapid prototyping
225
Hybrid mobile
208
It's angularjs
183
Free
178
It's javascript, html, and css
107
Ui and theming
76
Great designs
74
Mv* pattern
70
Reuse frontend devs on mobile
64
Extensibility
31
Great community
28
Open source
22
Responsive design
20
Good cli
13
Angularjs-based
13
Beautifully designed
13
So easy to use
12
Widgets
11
Allows for rapid prototyping, hybrid mobile
11
Typescript
10
Quick prototyping, amazing community
10
Easy setup
8
Angular2 support
7
Fast, easy, free
7
Because of the productivity and easy for development
7
So much thought behind what developers actually need
7
Base on angular
6
Super fast, their dev team is amazingly passionate
6
Easy to use
6
It's Angular
4
UI is awesome
4
Hot deploy
3
Material design support using theme
3
Amazing support
3
It's the future
3
Angular
3
Allow for rapid prototyping
3
Easy setup, development and testing
3
Ionic creator
2
User Friendly
2
It's angular js
2
Complete package
2
Simple & Fast
2
Fastest growing mobile app framework
2
Best Support and Community
2
Material Design By Default
2
Cross platform
2
Documentation
2
Because I can use my existing web devloper skills
2
Removes 300ms delay in mobile browsers
1
1
1
Native access
1
Typescript support
1
Ionic conect codeigniter
1
Fast Prototyping
1
All Trending Stack

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Cons of Expo

Cons of Ionic

Be the first to leave a con

20
Not suitable for high performance or UI intensive apps
15
Not meant for game development
1
Not a native app

Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

What is Expo?

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?

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.

Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

Jobs that mention Expo and Ionic as a desired skillset

(Senior) Mobile Engineer (Flutter) - New Platform (f/m/d)

Delivery Hero SE

Germany City Berlin

View Job Details

Senior Mobile (Flutter) Engineer - New Platform (f/m/d)

Delivery Hero SE

Germany, Berlin

View Job Details

Senior Mobile (Flutter) Engineer - New Platform (f/m/d)

Germany, Berlin

What companies use Expo?

What companies use Ionic?

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What tools integrate with Expo?

What tools integrate with Ionic?

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What are some alternatives to Expo and Ionic?

React Native

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.

Create React Native App

Create React Native App allows you to work with all of the Components and APIs in React Native, as well as most of the JavaScript APIs that the Expo App provides.

Flutter

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

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.

Apache Cordova

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.

See all alternatives

Interest over time

News about Expo

More news

News about Ionic

7 Questions from the Ionic Enterprise Edition Webinar

(blog.ionicframework.com)

Mar 7, 2019

Ionic Release: 4.1 Hydrogen Out Now!

(blog.ionicframework.com)

Mar 6, 2019

How to Lazy Load in Ionic Angular