Smartphones and smartphone applications, rule our lives. From the moment we wake up to the second we fall asleep, we are constantly in contact with one app or another. From streaming music to movies, from shopping to ordering food, these apps let you do it all. These apps have become essential helpers in our fast-paced lives, enabling us to do multiple things at different locations. This type of handiness and ease is hard to achieve and impossible to let go. So we can conclude that smartphone apps are here and they are here to stay.

But building an app is a tricky job. It involves making many decisions which in return decide the fate of the final product and the profit you will gain from it. There are many types of apps in the market from which you can choose. These variants differ on various aspects. From the choice of platform- Android, iOS, Windows, to programming languages and frameworks they are developed on, there are many choices which you will have to make.

If you have been in the market for a while and have done your research the way it should be done- thoroughly, then you know that two of the variants of smartphone apps are Native and Hybrid apps. A Native app is an app which is created separately for different platforms while Hybrid apps are designed only once, for all platforms. We all know their plus points and shortcomings as well. Native apps have good quality, are robust, faster and have impressive UI/UX but are tediously slow and expensive to build. On the other hand, Hybrid apps are faster and cheaper to build but stand nowhere in front of Native apps in matters of quality, safety, and UI/UX. So the decision falls on you and the weight in your wallets. If you can go for Native apps, you definitely should. But if you can’t, then Hybrid apps are there for you to turn to.

Ionic is just one of the many frameworks in the market which let you create Hybrid smartphone apps. It is an Angular JS based structure which allows developers to make the use of a combination of languages like HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to create an app. It offers Hybrid app developers many advantages; let us discuss some of them.

1. Open source

The first advantage of Ionic app development is that it is free. You don’t need to acquire a license or purchase this framework. You can download and use it to build cool apps.

2. One Codebase

Another advantage which Ionic gives is of having a single codebase. Since Ionic allows you to design Hybrid apps, there is need of only one codebase for apps being developed for multiple platforms. Unlike Native apps, which require you to generate different codes for an app to run on different platforms, Hybrid apps built using Ionic don’t need writing multiple codes. Furthermore, since only one codebase will be created, only one developer is required to develop and maintain an app.

3. UI

One thing which Hybrid apps lack in front of Native apps is a mesmerizing UI. UI is a vital part of any app; everyone knows that a good, interactive and adequately created UI can make your app a darling to its users, and on the flip side, a poorly designed UI can entirely doom it. While other Hybrid frameworks struggle with UI, Ionic lets developers use components which look and feel Native. Ionic provides pre-styled elements which developers can use to make their apps look native, and these components require minimal tweaking as well. Though we will not suggest a zero-tweaking strategy, Ionic components come in pretty good shape to create a speedy prototype.

4. Development and Testing Time

Another reason why Hybrid apps are faster to deploy is that finding bugs and problems in these apps is easier and quicker than Native apps. Because there is only one code for all platforms, it needs to be tested only once.

Ionic takes the testing process to the next level and further fastens the entire development process. It has a feature called ‘Ionic Lab’ which lets user bring up a browser and see how his/her app will appear on different platforms. Furthermore, thanks to its live-reloading feature, any changes you make in the codebase will reflect in the app immediately as well.

5. Lower Cost

The final reason to select Ionic app is the reason why most businesses opt for it- it is cost effective. From being open source to an extremely active community which provides free of cost plugins, the cost of development is substantially lower with the Ionic framework. Developers can develop apps for multiple platforms by writing a single codebase, that means along with dwindling the labor, we are also decreasing the cost because most firms will charge separately for developing Native apps for different platforms. 

Conclusion

Native apps, though have better quality, are very costly and time-consuming. Using Ionic framework, you can make a Native feeling app at the cost of a Hybrid app. With its sound technical support from its online community and its open source nature, more and more advancements are coming in this framework every year. Ionic should be your choice if you are a businessman, out in the market looking to get an app built for your business but are limited by strict budget and timing constraints.