The majority of startups choose their development tools on the basis of how quickly they’ll be able to develop an app with it. It’s understandable. Tech industry has intense competition. Discovering a precise product-market fit requires founders to deliver the app to the first adopters as soon as possible. Investors also want to see how the app works and whether it’s able to attract the users who will want to pay for it. Speed is critical here.
Here’s a quick guide to cross-platform mobile frameworks and their value for startups. All of them are cross-platform, ‘cause we’re running under the assumption that you would want to deploy to several platforms at once with your MVP (or, perhaps, the beta version of your app.) while allocating money you would have spent on the salaries of native development to user research.
React Native
React Native is open source, and it runs on JavaScript — the most widespread programming language on the web.
The pros for startups are
- JS. Easy to find developers.
- Extensive community support; while only about 75% of the code is in JS (and, therefore, can be easily written by JS developers who have never worked with React Native), it’s pretty easy to pick up native parts of the syntax with the help of other RN developers.
- Lots of built-in UI elements streamline the dev process.
- It’s open-source, so everything’s free (including additional tools, libraries, and other parts of SDKs.)
The cons are
- Web bridge. RN apps often have issues with performance, especially if we’re talking data processing, complex animations, and other sophisticated stuff. Your developers should be able to work around it.
- It’s necessary to be at least a little bit familiar with Java/Kotlin and Swift. That, despite community support, might be challenging.
The framework is developed and maintained by Facebook. Coinbase, Discord, Pinterest, and many others use RN for at least parts of their code. Use RN for MVPs, but don’t get too attached to it. When scaling, RN apps often encounter performance issues, so it’ll be reasonable to migrate to a tool that provides better performance.
Xamarin
Xamarin is Microsoft’s child. The framework utilizes C# to create apps — developers write around 90% of the app in it.
Benefits for startups are:
- Uses Visual Studio, so it’s good if your developers have worked with it.
- Utilizes native UI for controls and layouts in Xamarin.Android/iOS, which is time-consuming but allows devs to build apps that are aesthetically close to native designs.
- A tool called Xamarin.Forms scans the pages and controls assigned to them and maps them to automatically connect them to corresponding UI elements. That’s a much quicker way to build an app, and it’s perfect for proofs-of-concept and drafty-MVPs to show off for people who want to become first adopters. Shares more than 95% code in C#.
Cons are:
- Xamarin.Forms is quick, but the apps lose visually. The other tool makes apps look good, but takes much longer to develop.
- Visual Studio is a subscription-based IDE. To unlock all features necessary for developers (like cloud support, mobility sets, etc.), you have to pay at least $500-$6000 per person, depending on how many users will be utilizing it.
- Apple doesn’t allow iOS apps to be developed anywhere other than macOS, and VisualStudio is Microsoft’s app. But this is the case for all frameworks described here that aren’t supported by Apple and don’t have SaaS versions.
Good for people who used to work with C++/C. Choose Xamarin if you’re already planning to utilize Microsoft’s products, their cloud infrastructure, etc. Xamarin is also good for big enterprise solutions (remember that you’ll have to pay for VS, though.)
Native Script
It is a prominent tool for front-end, cross-platform development which appeared in 2014 and was developed by Telerik. It uses JS and TypeScript.
NS advantages for startups are:
- Codesharing with Angular 2.0 and Vue.JS. Great news, because developers can build both on mobile and the web.
- Native rendering of the framework equals close-to-native app performance.
- The declarative style of TS helps write the code quicker.
NS cons:
- Web-sharing causes NS-based apps to lose in looks.
- The same issue with iOS apps — NS, too, uses Visual Studio.
TS is one of the winners in terms of native performance. It’s probably best to turn to TypeScript when you’re planning for utilizing Angular/Vue ecosystems and create for web and mobile quicker — or when you already have an Angular-based project and want to expand to mobile.
Flutter
This UI toolkit is free, developed by Google, and loved by enterprises and small businesses all over the world.
Pros:
- Support of web and desktop development, so you can build, like, for seven platforms at the same time.
- Native rendering: Flutter-based apps’ performance gets as close as possible to the native.
- Wonderful looks, made possible with plenty of native UI components that are boxed in Flutter’s plugins.
- Dart, a language the platform uses, is full of debugging/cleaning tools that run in the background while devs write code. Dart programming is very efficient time-wise.
Cons:
- Flutter is young, so in terms of community, a more mature framework will win.
- Learning Dart can be challenging and there are not as many developers who know the language well (unlike the JS case).
So, use Flutter if you a) have an eye on devs who know Dart, b) don’t want to migrate from the platform you used for MVPs / pitches to something else, c) are already more or less sure with how your value proposition will translate into a solution. Flutter is good for full-blown engineering projects, but if you don’t have access to Dart devs, it’s probably better to engage RN devs for the engineering of the app’s raw test versions for hypothesis validation.