Mobile applications have completely transformed business as most companies, including SMEs and startups, are now using mobile applications for both external and internal software needs. In this highly competitive market, every business owner is adopting new trends and technologies to deliver the best services to their customers. Developers use new frameworks and tools for cross-platform mobile app development to minimize the development cost and time.
By adopting cross-platform app development frameworks, companies can maximize the reach of an application while controlling the budget. It is because cross-platform development is based on WORA (Write once, run anywhere) concept, which means you need one-time coding for developing mobile applications for platforms as diverse as iOS and Android.
This resolves one of the biggest challenges of other frameworks- that requires developers to code separately twice for the same application on different platforms. As a result, today, most companies prioritize cross-platform mobile app development over native mobile app development.
Moreover, if you want to develop a simple mobile application without complex functions and animations, a cross-platform mobile app framework works excellent. The only thing you need to do is choose the best one according to your business requirements. To choose the best, here is the list of the top five mobile app development frameworks that will help you develop a robust mobile app for your business.
Top Five Frameworks for Developing Cross-Platform Mobile Apps
1. Ionic
Ionic is an open-source and front-end SDK (Software Development Kit) framework that allows developers to create a mobile application for Windows, iOS, and Android using the same codebase. Ionic is a proven mobile app development framework for building robust websites that work well on every device.
The framework enables developers to build Hybrid mobile applications. The core Ionic software development kit is Ionic Capacitor, a cross-platform Native bridge that enables you to turn any web project into a Native Android or iOS mobile application.
Ionic Capacitor includes a rich library of Native Plugins that gives you easy access to shared device features, JavaScript, using basic, with complete access to the Native operating system when you need it. The platform has many components that provide the functionality of the mobile platform.
2. React Native
React Native is another essential name when it comes to cross-platform mobile app frameworks. React Native is built on JavaScript and is used to write actual code and provides a Native like feel to mobile applications that work both on iOS and Android platforms.
Due to the remarkable features of React Native, it is not only the best choice for developers, but business owners also have faith that React Native is the right platform for their business applications. It is because, React Native integrates the benefits of JavaScript and React.Js along with providing advantages to writing modules in Objective-C, Java Languages, or Swift.
Additionally, by using libraries and Native modules of React Native platform, developers can also perform heavy operations such as video processing, image editing, or some other operations which are not part of framework APIs.
3. Flutter
Flutter is an open-source mobile UI framework created by Google. The framework enables developers to create a native mobile application with only one codebase. This means developers can use one programming language and one database to develop two different mobile apps (for Android and iOS). There are two essential parts of Flutter:
- Software Development Kit (SDK)
It is a collection of tools that helps developers to develop applications. SDK includes tools to compile your code into native machine code for both Android and iOS.
- A Framework (UI library based on widgets)
It is a collection of reusable UI elements, including slider, buttons, text inputs, etc, that you can customise for your own needs.
To develop a mobile application with Flutter, you'll need to use a programming language known as Dart. Google created this language in October 2011, but the language has improved a lot over these few years.
4. Xamarin
Xamarin is significantly different from the frameworks we have discussed earlier. It is a robust and streamlined framework used for developing apps for Windows, iOS, and Android with the help of C# and .Net, instead of JS libraries and HTML. The platform allows developers to use 90% of the code for building an application for three different platforms.
Developers like Xamarin because it delivers mobile applications with aesthetics like a Native app with the help of its excellent APIs. With the help of this framework, developers can build applications that look and feel like they are entirely Native.
5. Node.Js
Node.js is a highly scalable server-side platform built on Google Chrome's JavaScript Engine (V8 Engine). Node.Js is a popular platform because it uses an event-driven, non-blocking, I/O model that makes it efficient and lightweight, perfect for data-intensive real-time apps smoothly running across distributed devices.
It is an open-source platform, a cross-platform runtime environment for developing server-side and network applications. Node.Js applications are written in JavaScript. They can be efficiently run within the Node.js runtime on Linux and Windows.
Wrapping Up
A cross-platform app development framework is the best option to build a robust and scalable mobile application for your business. Cross-platform applications are popular these days because they eliminate the effort to develop different mobile applications for different platforms. As cross-platform apps can run smoothly across platforms and devices seamlessly.
But to develop a cross-platform app, you need a cross-platform framework. In the above post, we have mentioned the top five cross-platform frameworks you can use to build your next mobile app. We have mentioned all the essential details of the frameworks so you can pick the one by knowing its specifications. Or another best thing you can do is take the help of a professional mobile app developer who can guide you well.
