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

Ionic vs React Native vs Xamarin

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Xamarin
Xamarin
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.5K
Votes785
Ionic
Ionic
Stacks9.5K
Followers8.6K
Votes1.8K
React Native
React Native
Stacks34.4K
Followers29.5K
Votes1.2K
GitHub Stars124.4K
Forks24.9K

Ionic vs React Native vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

Introduction: Ionic, React Native, and Xamarin are popular frameworks used for developing cross-platform mobile applications. Each framework has its own set of features and advantages. In this Markdown code, we will discuss the key differences between Ionic, React Native, and Xamarin.

  1. Development Language:

    • Ionic: Ionic uses web technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for app development. It allows developers to build hybrid apps that run on both iOS and Android platforms.
    • React Native: React Native uses JavaScript and React.js for app development. It allows developers to build native apps that have better performance and UI as compared to hybrid apps.
    • Xamarin: Xamarin uses C# and .NET for app development. It allows developers to build native apps for multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and Windows.

  2. User Interface:

    • Ionic: Ionic follows the Material Design guidelines, providing a default set of UI components that are consistent across different platforms. It allows developers to customize these components to match the platform's look and feel.
    • React Native: React Native provides a set of platform-specific UI components that mirror the underlying native UI components. This allows the app to have a truly native feel and performance.
    • Xamarin: Xamarin also provides platform-specific UI components that match the native look and feel. It allows developers to create UI layouts using a combination of XAML and C#.

  3. Performance:

    • Ionic: Being a hybrid framework, Ionic apps may have slightly slower performance as compared to native apps. However, with the advancements in web technologies, the performance gap is narrowing.
    • React Native: React Native allows developers to build truly native apps, which provide better performance compared to hybrid apps. It achieves this by rendering the UI using native components rather than web views.
    • Xamarin: Xamarin apps also provide native-like performance as they are compiled into native binaries. However, the performance may vary depending on the complexity of the app and the platform-specific optimizations.

  4. Development Environment and Tooling:

    • Ionic: Ionic offers a command-line interface (CLI) that simplifies the development process. It has a rich set of tools and plugins for building, testing, and deploying apps.
    • React Native: React Native provides a CLI as well as a developer-friendly environment. It offers a hot reload feature, allowing developers to see the changes in real-time without recompiling the entire app.
    • Xamarin: Xamarin integrates seamlessly with popular IDEs like Visual Studio, providing a comprehensive development environment. It offers advanced debugging and profiling tools, making it easier to identify and fix issues.

  5. Community and Ecosystem:

    • Ionic: Ionic has a large and active community, with a vast number of plugins and extensions available for various functionalities. It also has a strong presence on platforms like GitHub and Stack Overflow, making it easier to seek help and find resources.
    • React Native: React Native has a thriving community and a wide range of packages and libraries available via the npm package manager. Many popular apps and organizations actively use React Native, ensuring its growth and evolution.
    • Xamarin: Xamarin has a dedicated developer community and an extensive ecosystem of libraries and components. It benefits from the popularity of C# and the .NET framework, providing access to a wide range of resources and tools.

In Summary, Ionic is a hybrid framework that uses web technologies, React Native allows building native apps using JavaScript and React.js, while Xamarin enables native app development using C# and .NET. React Native and Xamarin provide better performance and a more native UI experience compared to Ionic, but Ionic has a larger community and extensive plugin ecosystem.

Why do developers choose Ionic vs React Native vs Xamarin?

  • Ionic is most popular with Angular developers, who list rapid prototyping and its ability to reuse frontend Angular code on mobile as pros.
  • React Native fans love that you can “learn once, write everywhere.” They cite its native iOS components, cross-platform capabilities, and the fact that it’s “just React” as reasons for choosing React Native.
  • Xamarin is built for C# coding, so typically attracts fans who appreciate the power of C# on mobile devices. They also cite the ability to leverage Visual Studio and the complete lack of JavaScript as pros.

What are some alternatives to Ionic, React Native, and Xamarin?

  • NativeScript - Build truly native apps with JavaScript
  • Apache Cordova - Platform for building native mobile applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript
  • React Native - A framework for building native apps with React
  • PhoneGap - Easily create mobile apps using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript

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Advice on Xamarin, Ionic, 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

Xamarin
Xamarin
Ionic
Ionic
React Native
React Native

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.

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.

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.

Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.;Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.; Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.;Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio- Create, build, debug, and deploy apps in Visual Studio. Or use Xamarin Studio, a fully-featured IDE that is built for mobile app development.;Native UI, Native Performance- Xamarin delivers high performance compiled code with full access to all the native APIs so you can create native apps with device-specific experiences.; Point and Click UI Design- Xamarin provides a world class Android UI designer. Use Apple Xcode UI designer to create interfaces and Storyboards that automatically sync with your Xamarin.iOS project.
Performance obsessed;Utilizes Angular and React;Native focused;Beautifully designed;Based on Web Components;
Native iOS Components;Asynchronous Execution;Touch Handling;Flexbox and Styling; Polyfills
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
124.4K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
24.9K
Stacks
1.3K
Stacks
9.5K
Stacks
34.4K
Followers
1.5K
Followers
8.6K
Followers
29.5K
Votes
785
Votes
1.8K
Votes
1.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 121
    Power of c# on mobile devices
  • 81
    Native performance
  • 79
    Native apps with native ui controls
  • 73
    No javascript - truely compiled code
  • 67
    Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms
Cons
  • 9
    Build times
  • 5
    Visual Studio
  • 4
    Price
  • 3
    Scalability
  • 3
    Complexity
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
  • 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 Xamarin, Ionic, React Native?

Flutter

Flutter

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

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.

Apache Cordova

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.

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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