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Once you’ve decided to go for developing a cross-platform app, the main question remains: which is the best hybrid framework to choose? By using cross-platform for app development, organizations can likewise get benefits such as use the same codebase for different devices, wider market reach, quick prototyping & many more. There are many cross-platform frameworks accessible in the market. Though Xamarin is a cross-platform framework & Ionic is a hybrid front end framework, we can differentiate Xamarin & Ionic, which one is a long-lasting option for your organization.
The points below show the thin line between Xamarin & Ionic. An organization likewise considers these points to choose the best cross-platform app for their next projects.
- Quality
Considering that Xamarin will offer a better development quality to native apps. On the other hand, the Ionic platform uses web technologies to build a hybrid app, it will only offer an average development quality in comparison to Xamarin apps. So, Xamarin will be a better choice if organizations are looking to compete with other applications in the market.
- Performance
Cross-Platform development performance is based on reusing the business logic instead of sharing the same codebase between the two kinds of app. In that segment, Xamarin having the additional edge as its performance is close to native apps, Ionic is not close to the performance of Native application as it uses a webview to finish the app development.
- Easiness of Development
Xamarin & Ionic both have their strengths & capabilities that make the development process easier.
- Debugging
Xamarin uses strongly typed variables, except UI. It is helpful by compiling and realizing any issue before debugging even begins. Organizations who adopt Xamarin are using the built-in previewer that allows them to preview the XAML pages. While you can run Ionic by using the Ripple Emulator with less recompilation for changes, it is more time-consuming. You will still need to recompile if you want to test specific native device capabilities.
- UI
Both Xamarin & Ionic offer their own tools for creating UI. Xamaarin has markup-driven Xamarin designers while Ionic has Ionic’s creator for performing drag and drop.
- Community
14% of developers in the world use Xamarin for creating cross-platform apps. The community of Xamarin embraces almost 1.5 Million developers from 110+ countries. These are some tough numbers for the competitors in the cross-platform development framework ecosystem. Ionic developers counting reach up to 5 Million since its arrival in 2013. With 5 million apps created around the 200 countries, it covers a large community in comparison to Xamarin.
- Code Maintainability
One of the toughest tasks while creating a cross-platform app is to maintain the code. Quick iterations make it tougher to implement a minor change across the various platforms. In the case of Xamarin, you only have to apply changes in source files-it will automatically follow across the apps. On another side, Ionic’s backward compatibility breaks most of the time makes it difficult to maintain the code.
- User Experience
In Xamarin, you can create attractive UIs and bring native APIs into the picture for a better user experience. There’s a special store called ‘Xamarin component store’ from where the developers can get stunning themes, charts, UIs & many more. In this segment, Ionic offers a rich in-app experience for both Android & iOS apps. As an Ionic user, you don’t need to download every update of the app.
Hiring Developers is Easy or Complicated?
The report suggests that there are more opening positions for Xamarin than available Xamarin developers in the market. Although the parameters of hiring a developer changes by the region & the nature of the project, it makes the hiring process stiffer. The cost for hiring an Ionic developer is less in comparison to Xamarin. A developer with basic knowledge of various frameworks can easily tune up with the Ionic framework. So in terms of development hiring, Ionic is easy & quick-filling, where Xamarin requires more efforts from the developers.
Popular Companies that are using Xamarin & Ionic
Xamarin & its visual studio have helped big names like HCL, The World bank, Aggreko, UPS, & many more. The list of companies that use Ionic to make web applications includes MarketWatch, diesel, Sworkit, Microsoft flow, etc.
In the Final analysis
As per our observation, Xamarin and Ionic both have their pros and cons. Both have classified those differences in terms of performance, cost, safety & maintainability. Xamarin provides a nearly native-like experience to users, where Ionic is all about providing a cross-platform web app development. So from the above blog, you will get an appropriate framework for your web app development. If you still have any confusion, you can reach us @ blobstation, our expert developers will help you!
