Mobile applications are in high demand because these are true companions of today’s human and social life with almost everything at their fingertips. Therefore, businesses across industry verticals look for mobile app development to cater a wider audience base. But the question arises what kind of mobile app they would like to develop. There are different types of mobile apps ruling the app world. From native apps to hybrid to web and progressive web apps. Native apps are best to target dedicated platform’s consumers like Android or iOS. But if they want to cater the mass audience, hybrid app development is a boon for them as it can be accessed across platforms, operating systems and devices.
Other than this, it provides several other benefits like time and effort saving as the development is based on the write once and run everywhere concept. The developers need to write code for once and store it in native containers, deploy those native apps on different platforms.
But the market witnesses the presence of a number of hybrid app development frameworks and choosing the best is hell of a task for a layman. However, an experienced hybrid app development company or hybrid app developers can help you out opting the best suite concerning your hybrid application development project.
Being a reputed mobile app development company, it’s our responsibility to help you out finding the right hybrid app framework. So, we are providing a list of top 10 hybrid app development frameworks to consider in 2023. Alongside, you will get a list of questions one must ask to self before choosing a hybrid app framework.
so, let’s start with.
How to Choose the Best Framework for Your Hybrid Application Development Project?
Are you planning to build a hybrid application and looking for the best hybrid mobile app framework? It’s going to be really tough for you to choose the best one as the market has different frameworks available. Then how would you pick the right hybrid mobile app framework for your mobile app development project?
It’s well known that mobile hybrid framework space is packed with numerous options. And most of them offer a comparable set of features. But how comprehensive and worthy they are as per your app development needs?
Therefore, first of all, you should be aware of what you want from a hybrid app framework. Only then can you step ahead with starting off your cross-platform mobile app development. Otherwise, you have to bear the consequences like waste of time and money if you go with the wrong framework.
Therefore, before selecting any hybrid app framework, one must ask themselves a number of questions which are as follows.
What type of hybrid app do you want to develop?
It totally depends on the factors like cost, speed, performance and compatibility of a framework that you choose to build your mobile app solution. Since it will help you deliver the look and feel and user experience you are willing to offer through your mobile app.
Who will be the target audience for your hybrid mobile application?
The set of your target audience plays a vital role in determining the success of your mobile app. Therefore, it is necessary to keep your target audience in mind, how you’d add value to their life and your purpose with the hybrid app development, before choosing a framework for your hybrid app development project.
Does it meet your project requirements?
Choosing the hybrid app framework that will meet your requirements is definitely the most obvious thing to consider. It is necessary to know which framework the best is to fulfill your app development requirements with the needed sets of features.
What is the level of your expertise?
The market is filled with numerous frameworks for different levels of developer’s experience. Likewise, a beginner, intermediate and advanced developer in the field of hybrid mobile application development. For a beginner, a framework that is easy to set up and has a low learning curve will be the best.
Top 10 Hybrid App Development Frameworks to Build Multi-platform Mobile Apps in 2023
1. React Native
React Native is a top-rated hybrid app development framework according to the Stack Overflow Developer Survey in 2021. Powered by Facebook, React Native is a tried and tested hybrid app framework by a large community of developers. Even Facebook uses it for most of its applications.
With React Native, you can build natively rendered robust and complex hybrid apps from scratch for both the Android and iOS platforms. The framework uses a unique language named JSX for developing user interfaces. It lets you write HTML and CSS through React. The user interface components the platform possess are meant to offer a fast and enjoyable user experience.
React Native has an interesting feature of rendering changes instantly without even recompiling code or relaunching the app. Consequently, the cross-platform app development process speeds up and the app time-market is reduced to a great extent. With React Native, mobile app developers get the advantage of accessing a huge collection of libraries and open-source tools. Thanks to the use of JavaScript engines on each platform. Also, they can port different sections of their code to another platform without any hassle.
If we talk about the limitations of React Native, it is not a perfect solution for some interfaces, basically those with dynamic, complex or advanced designs. It would be hard to create for your application. Also, the platform does not offer custom models, therefore, you need to build some from the scratch.
Read also: Best React Native Apps in 2023
2. Ionic
Ionic is a powerful front-end software development kit (SDK) that allows the creation of visually appealing hybrid apps with outstanding front-end user experience and UI interaction. Using Ionic, developers need to create a single codebase for multiple platforms. Writing code with this multi-platform app framework is so hassle-free as it packs a set of libraries that are mobile-optimized with HTML, CSS background patterns and JavaScript components.
Other than this, the set of extras it provides power up the app development. Thanks to a camera, GPS, and health kits, mobile app developers can enhance your app’s functionalities. They can even test every component while coding which enables the early detection of bugs or errors for a quality, error-free app development.
The collection of responsive widgets here ensures a flexible user experience and saves valuable time of developers as well. One of the drawbacks of using Ionic is that its apps are heavily dependent on native plugins as they support apps to offer native apps-like performance. But in several cases, you can’t find the needed one and have to develop your own plugin which will definitely take time and effort. Ultimately, affecting app development time and cost.
3. Xamarin
Xamarin: Once a community project, Xamarin garnered popularity in the field of mobile app development after it was acquired by Microsoft in 2016. It enables developers to build high-performance, cross-platform mobile apps in the Microsoft ecosystem while maintaining a native look and feel.
Allows app development using C# language and native libraries from .NET layers, Xamarin supports the creation of high-end apps without compromising their performance on different platforms. Also, the user experience of Xamarin-developed mobile apps is significantly better than other popular hybrid frameworks.
If the limitations of Xamarin-based mobile apps are concerned, they lack in performance in contrast to native apps. Therefore, it is not the best option for creating complex apps. Also, the framework does not feature hot reloading which hinders the inclusion of some app features in real-time.
Still, Xamarin is a good choice when it comes to hybrid mobile application development. Since it offers strong support, resources, and comprehensiveness to offer mobile applications a close-to-native performance.
4. Flutter
Google’s offering Flutter has great demand among business owners looking for cross-platform app development. Within the last few years, the hybrid mobile app development framework has strengthened its position among emerging and evolving players in this field.
The reason being the app development framework has its own programming language, Dart- a combination of Java and Kotlin. Also, it enables the creation of mobile apps for different operating systems (Android, iOS and others) and devices (laptops, desktops, tablets, smartphones, etc.) using a single codebase only. That empowers developers to create highly productive cross-platform mobile apps with a native-like experience.
Read more : 10 Amazing Apps Built with Flutter Framework
Among others, Flutter’s hot reloading feature that allows developers to see changes instantly can’t be ignored. Along with its offerings like CLI and VI editors. Compatibility with Fuchsia and Google’s mobile OS and impressive speed that is best for a hybrid app framework.
5. Native Script
NativeScript is a renowned framework in the hybrid application development field. It is one of the first choices of developers and business owners to build truly native mobile apps. Being an open-source framework, any developer can use this framework and develop mobile apps based on their experience with web app skills like JavaScript and CSS.
Other than this, its features and overall performance along with its compatibility with the latest mobile versions, up-to-date resource library and command-line interface strengthens its usefulness among mobile app developers. It has an outstanding feature that allows users to see the changes made in real-time without needing to refresh.
This saves a lot of developers’ time by keeping them in the flow. Besides, it has several other features that make it a feature-rich option that is easy to use and cost-effective.
6. Mobile Angular UI
Mobile Angular UI is an open-source UI framework that allows the creation of gen z web and mobile applications in the least time possible. It is a perfect blend of HTML5, AngularJS and Bootstrap. Those who have the knowledge and hands-on experience of Twitter Bootstrap and AngularJS can easily learn to use Mobile Angular UI and develop hybrid mobile applications.
With the Mobile Angular UI, developers get the ease of using JavaScript libraries like FastClick.js and Overthrow.js for web and mobile app development. Some of its components are highly useful and provide an excellent user experience. This includes overlays, scrollable areas, switches, sidebars, etc.
7. Onsen UI
Released in 2013, Onsen UI is an open-source framework under the Apache v2 license. Being a framework-agnostic UI component, Onsen UI can be used among different frameworks for hybrid app development. Likewise, AngularJS, Angular, React, Vue.js and other JavaScript frameworks.
Onsen UI architecture consists of three different layers including CSS components, Web components, and framework bindings. In addition to this, it equips a vast collection of ready-to-use, responsive and out-of-the-box components. Developers can use this free-to-use framework for commercial projects since it is easy to use, flexible and has semantic markup components. This enables the creation of HTML-based complex apps in the least time possible.
8. PhoneGap
PhoneGap or Apache Cordova is one of the most preferred mobile app development frameworks. It is a cross-platform application development framework and is highly popular among the developers’ community owing to its development friendliness. Using this hybrid framework, they can easily build mobile apps on CSS3. HTML5, and JavaScript.
In addition to this, the platform gives users the leniency of utilizing smartphone Hardware, thanks to the offered set of plugins. They can use an accelerometer, camera, GPS and other smartphone components to provide end-users with a native app-like experience. The major highlight of the PhoneGap hybrid framework is its ability to develop mobile apps at a rapid pace, thanks to single codebase development. Also, it allows the administration of third-party applications.
Among others, developers can get access to Native APIs, strong backend support, UI libraries to update interfaces, etc. PhoneGap has an outstanding feature named Build. It’s a cloud compiler that provides the ease of compiling apps without even installing any SDK. Developers can easily mould a complex, feature-rich and tailored hybrid mobile app. Mobile apps that can reach a wider range of audiences target different platforms while performing efficiently. All in all, PhoneGap is best, if you want to create mobile web apps that are not complex yet easy to use and understand. Also, if there is a cash crunch, PhoneGap is good to go with as a hybrid app development framework.
9. Aurelia
Licensed under the MIT license, Aurelia is an open-source, free-to-use hybrid mobile app framework. It is basically a collection of modern JavaScript modules. When used in combination, it turns out as a powerful platform to build browser, desktop and mobile applications. Other than this, developers can use its modules separately for any of their JavaScript or Node.js projects.
Aimed at writing clean and powerful code, Aurelia allows users to create components using Vanila JavaScript or TypeScript. The company claims it is the only platform that allows it to do so. Aurelia strictly adheres to web standards that allow users to integrate it with any framework or library available in the market.
If the features of Aurelia are considered, some of its most powerful modules come packed with binding, dependency injection, metadata, routing and templating. Other than this, users get the aid of plugins for internationalization, state management and validation. Whereas the set of tools includes CLI, Chrome debugger, VS Code plugin and others. Based on a high-performance reactive system, Aurelia DOM batches update way faster than Virtual DOM-based frameworks.
10. Kendo UI
When it comes to mobile app development, Kendo UI is one of the best hybrid app development frameworks for 2023. It provides developers with an extensive collection of JavaScript UI components with the libraries of Angular, React, JQuery and Vue. Using Kendo UI, developers can easily and quickly build eye-catching, responsive and high-performance hybrid mobile apps. No matter which JavaScript framework, they have opted for mobile app development.
Powered by Progress Telerik (the parent company of NativeScript as well), Kendo UI is an open-source hybrid app framework. Though, it is aimed at enterprise customers. Therefore, no free version of this hybrid app toolkit is available in the market. Still, it manages to garner greater sales owing to its key highlights. Likewise, world-class support and the guarantee that each of its components is tested thoroughly by their strict QA process.
Kendo UI enjoys a reputed and highly considerable client base across the globe. Including top honchos like HP, NASA and over 140K other companies globally. If you are looking for an enterprise-grade solution with dedicated support, Kendo UI is sure to go with a hybrid app development framework.
Conclusion
This blog is a one-stop destination for all your queries related to choosing the best hybrid app development framework to kickstart your mobile app development project in 2023. You get to know the significance of mobile app development in this digital era. Ways to choose the best companion as a hybrid app framework. List of top 10 hybrid mobile app development frameworks compiled after hours of brainstorming, research and experience of our experienced hybrid app developers. Still, if you have any doubts or queries related to hybrid mobile application development. Feel free to connect with our team of expert mobile app developers as the JPloft Solution is a renowned hybrid app development company in the USA & India.
