There are nearly 5 million apps available on both the Google Play Store and the iOS App Store targeting more than 14 billion mobile devices worldwide. If you plan to build and launch your business app, one of the most important decisions you need to make is choosing the right approach to building your app: native app development or cross-platform mobile app development.
You need to choose one of the two considering various factors like development cost, app performance, app development time, your budget and many more things.
Now, these are the pros and cons of cross-platform and native app development that will help you choose the right one based on your preferences and requirements.
What is native app development?
Native app development is mostly focused on a single specific platform. In other words, native apps are built specifically for only one platform at a time, be it iOS, Android, or Windows.
And in this type of app development approach, apps take advantage of the features of a specific operating system and the features of devices running on that particular operating system, such as GPS, camera, gyroscope, gravity sensor, and more. Additionally, native apps can be built faster and easier by taking into account the features and guidelines of a specific platform.
Here are the advantages of native app development:
- High performance: Native apps show higher performance in terms of responsiveness, speed, and operational efficiency. And that’s because these apps are built using core APIs and programming languages specific to a single platform. In addition, these applications can take advantage of the processing speed of the device, which guarantees a shorter loading time.
- Extensive functionality: One of the biggest advantages of having a native application is that this type of application can access almost all the features and functionality of the platform or operating system it is made for. And this translates into a better user experience.
- A great user experience: Native apps have a great UX that is synonymous with the platform they are built for. These apps provide a consistent look and feel to all users of the platform.
- best store support: Native apps are much easier to publish since they are designed for a specific platform.
Cons of having a native app:
- ExpensiveNote: Building a native app can be more expensive as you need to build the app separately for a specific platform which is once for Android then once for iOS and so on if you want to run it on more than one platform.
- Waste of time: The cost of developing native applications is higher as the codes are written and the tools used for one platform cannot be used for the other platforms.
Now let’s see what cross-platform app development is.
Cross-platform application development provides the flexibility to build the application using a single code base that is compatible with multiple platforms. The key benefits of this approach are code reuse which simplifies the process and reduces the cost and time of developing the application.
Here are the advantages of cross-platform app development:
- profitable option: You must develop your code once using a single code base and a single set of tools, and you can launch your app on multiple platforms, unlike native apps. This simply means that it is a much more profitable option.
- faster development:- Only a single application development cycle is needed to create the application and make it run on more than one platform. In other words, you have to do the programming once and you can launch the application on multiple operating systems. And that reduces development time.
Cons of Cross-Platform Apps:
- Slower performance compared to native apps: Unlike native apps, these cross-platform apps are not designed specifically for a single platform and do not exactly take advantage of the features of a specific platform, which reduces performance compared to the performance of native apps.
- Limited functionality and UX:- Developers face difficulties in evaluating platform-specific features and functionality, such as camera, microphone, geolocation, etc., with cross-platform applications. And because these aren’t built for a single platform and can’t take advantage of native UX components, they don’t provide a consistent UX experience to users across different operating systems and devices.
Now, having explored the pros and cons of both development approaches, I hope you can choose the right one based on your requirements.
Again to help you:
Choose the native app development approach if you want to:
- A highly responsive and high performance application.
- No budget restrictions
- That can give a consistent user experience.
Or choose cross-platform app development if you need:
- If you have a restricted budget.
- You need to launch the app faster on multiple platforms.
Consider all the points outlined above and make the right decision for your business application development project.