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Expo vs Visual Studio App Center: What are the differences?

Introduction: Expo and Visual Studio App Center are both popular tools used by developers for building and deploying mobile applications. While they have some similarities, there are key differences between the two that make them unique in their own ways.

  1. Development Approach: Expo is a comprehensive development tool and platform that allows developers to quickly build and test React Native applications without the need for configuring complex native build tools. It provides a streamlined development experience with features like live reloading, instant previews, and easy device testing. On the other hand, Visual Studio App Center is a mobile app lifecycle solution that offers a wide range of services such as build, test, distribute, monitor, and engage. It supports multiple platforms and frameworks, including React Native, and provides extensive CI/CD capabilities.

  2. Built-in Features: Expo comes with a rich set of pre-built features and components that are readily available for developers, including APIs for camera access, push notifications, location services, and more. These built-in features help speed up the development process and simplify the integration of common functionalities in React Native apps. In contrast, Visual Studio App Center does not provide pre-built features like Expo. Instead, it focuses more on the continuous integration and deployment aspects of the app lifecycle.

  3. Native Code Support: Expo primarily focuses on web-based and pure JavaScript development for React Native apps, aiming to provide a smooth cross-platform experience. It restricts direct access to native code and libraries, which can be a limitation for certain projects that require native code integration. On the other hand, Visual Studio App Center supports both JavaScript and native code development, allowing developers to easily incorporate platform-specific features and libraries as needed.

  4. Data Storage and Backend Services: Expo provides a set of cloud-based services, such as Expo Push Notifications, Expo Payments, and Expo Auth, which simplify the integration of common backend functionalities in applications. It also offers built-in data storage options like AsyncStorage for persisting data locally. In contrast, Visual Studio App Center does not provide specific cloud-based services or data storage options. It focuses more on the build, test, and deployment aspects, while leaving backend integrations to be implemented using other tools or services.

  5. Deployment and Distribution: Expo offers a simplified deployment process with its over-the-air (OTA) updates feature. Developers can publish updates to their apps without requiring users to download a new version from the app store. On the other hand, Visual Studio App Center supports various distribution channels, including app stores, private distribution groups, and direct installation via email or QR code. It provides more flexibility in terms of distributing the app to different target audiences.

  6. Analytics and Monitoring: Expo provides basic analytics and monitoring capabilities, allowing developers to track user sessions, crashes, and performance metrics through its own dashboard. However, it lacks advanced custom tracking options and fine-grained monitoring features. In contrast, Visual Studio App Center offers more comprehensive analytics and monitoring capabilities, allowing developers to track custom events, set up funnels, perform A/B testing, and gain deeper insights into app usage and performance.

In summary, Expo offers a streamlined development experience with ready-to-use features and simplified deployment, while Visual Studio App Center provides a comprehensive mobile app lifecycle solution with extensive CI/CD capabilities and advanced analytics and monitoring features. Choosing between the two depends on the specific requirements and priorities of the development project.

Advice on Expo and Visual Studio App Center
Needs advice
on
ExpoExpoReact NativeReact Native
and
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in

Hello guys, I am new here. So, if I posted without specific guidelines, please ignore.

Basically, I am an iOS developer and developing native apps for the last three years. Recently, I started learning React Native to develop apps for both platforms. If anyone out there knows any useful resources that will become a better react native developer.

#newbie

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Replies (1)
Javier Silva Ortíz
Senior Full Stack Developer at Aleph Engineering · | 6 upvotes · 318.1K views
Recommends
on
ReduxRedux

Well, the first resource I would recommend you is my upcoming book by Packt Publishing, "Professional React Native", but it's due late January next year :) . Now jokes aside (the book's real by the way :) ), the easiest way to build a iOS/Android/Web app with React Native is to do: npm install -g expo-cli expo init some-project cd some-project expo eject

You might have heard of Expo, but trust me, stay away from it. Expo highest value is that it's an already pre-configured 3 platforms environment, but if you don't eject then you're vendor-locked to what Expo has to offer in iOS and Android, which is very poor compared to going full React Native on these platforms, they can't even handle Google Sign In properly and by the way, even if your app is 10 lines of code your app size will be over 40 MB if you don't eject, yep it's that bad, plus the performance is regular and the loading times slow, not to mention that you're stuck with their build service which the free tier makes you wait for hours for a free build slot. It's important to note that when ejecting you don't lose the Web, you simply do expo start --web to start your dev environment and expo build:web to build a static website that you can serve with any web server. Regarding state management, don't bother with "lifting state up" philosophies mixed with Context API to manage your state, lifting state is a great pattern and helps your codebase, Context is great to avoid prop-drilling, but NEVER mix them to achieve app-wide state management, for that, simply go for Redux or MobX, the hype is all about Redux, but I consider MobX far better in many aspects. However, as you're getting new into this I would recommend you start with Redux AND PLEASE grab yourself npm install @manaflair/redux-batch so that you can batch updates and don't bring your app to a crawl. Forget that "connect HOC" thing with React-Redux, don't bother for a second with it, go with Hooks and useSelector and useDispatch and the likes, it will make your code SO much cleaner and smaller. Adopt clean and new Hooks philosophy, avoid writing class components as much as possible and write function components augmented with Hooks.

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Pros of Expo
Pros of Visual Studio App Center
  • 15
    Free
  • 13
    Hot Reload
  • 9
    Easy to learn
  • 9
    Common ios and android app setup
  • 6
    Open Source
  • 6
    Streamlined
  • 5
    Builds into a React Native app
  • 2
    PWA supported
  • 1
    Plugins for web use with Next.js
  • 1
    Show error issues for mobile devices
  • 1
    Slack integration
  • 1
    Bug tracking integration
  • 1
    For Mobile apps diagnostics and tracking

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What is 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.

What is Visual Studio App Center?

Automate the lifecycle of your iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS apps. Connect your repo and within minutes build in the cloud, test on thousands of real devices, distribute to beta testers and app stores, and monitor real-world usage with crash and analytics data. All in one place.

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What companies use Expo?
What companies use Visual Studio App Center?
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What tools integrate with Expo?
What tools integrate with Visual Studio App Center?

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What are some alternatives to Expo and Visual Studio App Center?
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.
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.
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.
JavaScript
JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.
See all alternatives