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If you’ve ever sat down to research mobile app development technologies, you’ve probably felt the frustration of choosing between native and cross-platform app development. While native apps offer better performance and design features, cross-platform development provides faster time to market and cuts costs. But if you read further, you find out that modern cross-platform frameworks manage to circumvent most of the performance issues to the point when they become minuscule.
So how does one choose between cross-platform and native development, and which factors are actually important? Does the ability to launch across multiple platforms at the same time trump the marginal advantage in load speed? Are the cost savings worth the potential security risks? In this article, we’ll investigate both types of development, discuss their benefits and drawbacks, and try to choose between cross-platform and native mobile development.
Before we dive into comparing native vs. cross-platform, native app development needs to be defined. Native app development refers to building applications specifically tailored to a particular operating system like iOS and Android. This process allows developers to take advantage of the system’s native features and capabilities to provide a seamless user experience. However, everything comes at a price, and native mobile apps demand higher costs compared to cross-platform app development.
Native apps are built using platform-specific languages and frameworks delivering optimal performance, load time, and experience. The industry-standard technology for iOS development is Swift, while Google’s Android is run on Kotlin.
Due to the elevated costs of native app development, this type is mainly used for applications that depend on high performance and premium user experience. For instance, audio and video editing software require exceptional performance and minimal latency.
Some primary examples of native apps include WhatsApp, Spotify, and UberEats. These apps often require access to your hardware features like geolocation and camera and can handle heavy loads of traffic and computing.
Before we launch into native vs. cross-platform comparison, let’s first discuss the benefits that native apps can bring to your business.
When debatingnative vs. cross-platform development, improved application performance always comes up. There’s a reason for this praise as complex and data-heavy digital solutions do tend to operate faster on a native app. However, the difference is becoming more and more marginal as cross-platform app development technology advances. Modern tools like Flutter and React Native showcase competitive performance metrics and allow developers to create efficient applications.
At the same time, if you’re building a solution with advanced animations, native app development can be more beneficial in the long run. Being smaller in size, native apps provide superior performance and faster downloads, even when dealing with a heavy load.
Native app development also enhances the system’s stability and security by enabling developers to access updates sooner. Although updates can be deployed on a cross-platform app, native apps can be upgraded faster. Both Android and iOS platforms provide software engineers with respective SDKs allowing them to build apps more efficiently and securely.
Even though cross-platform mobile apps can deliver an excellent user experience, native apps have more opportunities to impress the user. Having access to all the functionalities and native features of the device, native app development can provide a more sophisticated user experience. The native approach allows access to AR and VR tools, hardware features, and many other vital factors that ultimately make the user experience better.
Essentially, while cross-platform development guarantees uniformity across apps, native apps have more room for customization and creativity. Whichever is better is hard to say as it depends on your goals and target audience, among other factors.
The nature of native mobile app development also enables better scalability, especially for large-scale projects. Designed to handle platform-specific resources, native apps can seamlessly grow and shrink as the demand requires. For instance, features like background processing and efficient memory management allow you to build mobile apps that deal with large datasets and complex computations.
It’s important to mention that cross-platform app development also offers a wide range of customization capabilities through an array of frameworks and libraries. While native apps might be slightly faster to tailor using pre-set user interface components, cross-platform mobile apps aren’t far behind. However, when it comes to native vs. cross-platform development, the former is still considered marginally superior to the latter in terms of customizability.
In this part, we’ll take a look at some of the shortcomings of native mobile development.
This drawback of native mobile app development encompasses numerous criteria: human resources, cost, and time. While building two apps for two operating systems will clearly take more time, it’ll also require more developers and finances to complete.
The process of building two native apps will also demand an alignment between the iOS and Android teams, which can lead to longer development cycles. The lack of code reusability in cross-platform mobile app development forces developers to create two different source codes, slowing down the development cycle even further.
Although we mentioned the improved stability of application updates, they do take more effort to execute on two separate native apps. As a result, not only are the app development costs higher, but the post-release maintenance expenses also increase.
Cross-platform development allows developers to create a single codebase and deploy it to multiple mobile platforms. Using various cross-platform frameworks and SDKs, you can build a unified code source that can be used for both systems. Popular cross-platform frameworks include React Native, Flutter, Kotlin Multiplatform, .NET MAUI, and many others.
The inherent code reusability of cross-platform development creates unique business benefits in terms of resource allocation. Instead of hiring two separate teams to build an iOS and Android app individually, you can rely on cross-platform tools to create a single codebase. This approach enables considerable cost savings and allows companies to publish their apps sooner.
Examples of cross-platform apps include Duolingo, Discord, and Slack.
So what are the advantages of choosing the former when it comes to cross-platform vs. native mobile development?
Arguably the most important feature of the cross-platform development approach, code reusability allows coders to rely on the same code base when building both Android and iOS apps. Additionally, the unified codebase fosters a smoother UX/UI design as it displays the same interface and functionality across the systems. This, in turn, also simplifies updates, allowing developers to issue new features and patches faster.
Although cross-platform development is not cheap, you can save up to 30% by choosing this route through unified maintenance, and shorter development cycles. The ability to deploy two apps from one source code aids you in reducing human resource expenses, cutting the development cycle, and consequently decreasing development costs. Moreover, code reusability helps you launch your app before your competition, which is a great advantage in today’s saturated market.
Unlike native app development, which oftentimes requires two separate development teams, cross-platform mobile applications can be run by just one team. Aside from offering cost savings, this allows you to preserve design, functionality, and update consistency without any additional steps. In native vs. cross-platform development, native app developers have to cooperate to align their strategies. In cross-platform apps, this consistency comes naturally, making the process simpler and faster.
Cross-platform apps are great for testing and validating your project ideas and hypotheses. A more affordable type of mobile development, cross-platform allows teams to create prototypes and minimum viable products (MVPs) without investing too much money. Moreover, you can continue your development using cross-platform technology and expand your application from an MVP to a fully-fledged solution.
Finally, cross-platform apps have a much broader potential reach when comparing native vs. cross-platform. Building an iOS or Android app will give you access to only users of one specific OS. However, cross-platform apps can be deployed across operating systems, allowing you to reach anyone who has a smartphone.
However, both platforms are important to maximize your reach and monetization—while Android has a larger user base, iOS users tend to spend more money on their apps. With 71%, Android apps have far outpaced their Apple counterparts making targeting only iOS users quite unfeasible. And studies show that iOS users are more likely to spend money on the app market. In other words, launching on both Android and iOS operating systems is ideal, as it allows companies to target the majority of smartphone users and create revenue if needed.
Finally, let’s discuss the drawbacks of choosing cross-platform vs. native apps.
Since cross-platform apps are meant to be universal, they do require some tweaking to perfectly fit into the specific platform, device, and operating system. This is usually done by hiring native development specialists who address individual differences and make the apps consistent. These extra steps demand an additional abstraction layer that interprets the codebase into platform-specific instructions, ultimately hindering performance.
However, it’s important to mention that current cross-platform technologies have minimized the performance discrepancy. Ultimately, unless you’re building a complex app that relies on heavy animations, the difference in performance is virtually negligible.
Another essential difference in native vs. cross-platform is access to native APIs, which cross-platform development lacks. Modern platform-agnostic frameworks don’t offer complete access to native APIs, which can restrict the solution’s functionality and require custom plugins. This drawback can potentially limit the capabilities of your mobile app and harm the user experience.
In native vs. cross-platform mobile development, the former gets access to updates faster, allowing better stability and security of the applications. It doesn’t mean that you can’t issue new features or patch bugs—on the contrary, cross-platform apps make it easier with a unified codebase. However, they will require additional time and effort to execute.
Now that we’ve learned about the pros and cons of each type of mobile app development, let’s compare native vs. cross-platform in more detail. In this section, we’ll go through each factor to determine which type of development is suitable in which specific case.
When it comes to performance, the choice between cross-platform vs. native development depends on your goals and the project itself. We’ve already mentioned that native mobile app development allows for higher performance in apps with high computing requirements. On the other hand, cross-platform apps provide competitive performance across multiple platforms for simpler applications.
In other words, if you’re building a complex application, especially in video editing and streaming, and would like to maximize your performance metrics, native mobile apps are the way to go. If your priorities lie in reaching a broader audience and cutting costs, cross-platform development offers sufficient computational power.
Time and money also play an integral role in choosing between cross-platform and native. With cross-platform development, you can save up to 30% of your costs, which can be a huge portion of any budget. What you’ll sacrifice is performance and user experience, but only slightly so. Unless your app relies on heavy real-time processing and complex video graphics, the difference in performance will be barely noticeable.
If your goal is to develop an app quickly and target both operating systems simultaneously, cross-platform development is the right choice. However, if you don’t have any significant budget constraints and can afford to spend more time on the stages of app development, native mobile apps are a great option.
Both iOS and Android app development allow developers access to platform-specific programming languages, design guidelines, and UI components. In the iOS ecosystem, these are the Human Interface Guidelines, and in Android, it’s the Material Design Principles. Unlike cross-platform development that works with third-party services, native mobile app development facilitates a seamless experience for users. This is especially important for apps with a lot of animations that can suffer from slow load times.
All in all, with native development you can create a custom design that fits your unique set of requirements, while cross-platform tools will deliver a unified look across operating systems. There is no such thing as the right choice in all cases, as it’s highly contingent on the type of business you have and the app you want to build.
Post-production app maintenance is a balancing act when it comes to cross-platform vs. native app development. On one hand, native mobile apps are easier to debug and optimize due to access to native APIs and features. On the other, releasing updates becomes more complex since it involves maintaining two separate codebases for iOS and Android apps.
In turn, cross-platform development facilitates simpler updates, since they can be simultaneously deployed across the multi-platform system. But problems arise when we deal with debugging, as the abstraction layer forces developers to utilize third-party tools to ensure compatibility. In the end, you have to compare these bottlenecks and choose the lesser evil.
Scalability is another major factor in our native app vs. cross-platform app comparison. Native mobile apps are easier to scale and optimize for each operating system. Their native nature allows them to handle large datasets and perform complex computations without jeopardizing performance. This is all thanks to platform-specific features like efficient memory management that help native applications effortlessly deal with high traffic.
That is all not to say that cross-platform apps are inherently unscalable. Top mobile app development technologies like Flutter and React Native showcase enhanced scalability through specialized tools for handling large datasets. However, such apps still suffer from bottlenecks when it comes to scalability and struggle to manage resource-intensive solutions. If you’re working on a small or medium-sized app, cross-platform development can be quite sufficient.
In native vs. cross-platform app development, native apps have full access to all features specific to the mobile operating systems and devices. Although there are plugins and libraries available that facilitate such access for cross-platform apps, compatibility issues often arise. Cross-platform frameworks may lack access to the latest updates, putting a halt to your innovative project. In the long run, this may disadvantage your application and pose a risk to your reputation.
Ultimately, if your project requires advanced features, going with native mobile development is probably the right move. Especially for solutions that demand AR/VR support or machine learning tools, native apps provide more mechanisms to create a high-performance product. If not, cross-platform apps can be a more affordable alternative.
When discussing security in cross-platform vs. native mobile development, it’s vital to point out the balance between simplicity and stability. While cross-platform development provides easier maintenance due to its shared codebase, native app development fosters more stable and timely support. As a result, cross-platform apps are slightly less secure than their native counterparts, but are easier to update.
However, this doesn’t mean that cross-platform apps aren’t safe and cannot protect your data. In comparison with native mobile apps, they do pose a slightly higher risk due to various translation layers. For that reason, it’s recommended to rely on native mobile app development when building vulnerable solutions like banking or healthcare apps.
Before we dive into the cross-platform vs. native debate, we can’t leave out a third option. While native and cross-platform development are often seen as separate paths, there are compelling reasons to combine these approaches. This flexible strategy allows you to leverage the strengths of each, maximizing efficiency and optimizing your development process. For instance, you can utilize a cross-platform framework like React Native or Flutter to build the majority of your application, taking advantage of code reusability and faster development cycles. Then, for features that require specific device capabilities or deeper platform integration, you can seamlessly incorporate custom native modules. This is particularly beneficial when dealing with platform-dependent features like accessing device sensors.
This blended approach offers a strategic advantage, especially when your app needs to balance cost-effectiveness with performance and access to native functionalities. By strategically combining native and cross-platform development, you can leverage the strengths of each, resulting in a high-quality, feature-rich application that meets your specific business needs and user expectations. For example, imagine a social media app where the core functionality, such as user profiles and news feeds, is built using a cross-platform framework. However, to provide a seamless camera experience with advanced filters and augmented reality features, a native module can be integrated for optimal performance and access to device-specific capabilities. This strategy not only accelerates development but also ensures a polished user experience.
However, native vs. cross-platform, which is best for you? Making the right choice between cross-platform and native can be quite challenging, as there are a lot of factors to consider. However, if you focus on the following factors, you’re likely to make the best choice.
Budget: In case of budget constraints, cross-platform mobile applications can be a great alternative as they provide virtually the same deliverables while saving up to 30% in costs.
Target Audience: In the discovery phase, study your potential audience to identify which operating system they’re more likely to use. For example, if a bulk of your user base is in India, investing in native Android apps can be a more beneficial approach as 95% of Indians use Android-based smartphones.
App’s Complexity: As already discussed, native apps excel at handling complex computations that utilize device features. If that’s the case for your project, it’s highly recommended you go with native development.
Timeline: If for some reason faster time to market is an essential factor in your app idea, consider building a cross-platform app. A shared codebase will significantly speed up the development process and allow you to release your app sooner.
In addition to the aforementioned factors, let’s take a look at use cases to help decide between cross-platform and native.
Let’s start with app ideas that would be better realized with native app development:
Audio and Video Editing and Streaming Apps: Similarly, professional audio and video editing and streaming tools like Spotify and Netflix require large volumes of computational power and memory and can certainly benefit from native development.
AR/VR Apps: AR/VR tools cannot function without access to a camera, gyroscope, and other sensors that require native APIs. Although they can be developed as a cross-platform mobile app, a native mobile development ecosystem delivers a smoother experience.
Enterprise-level Apps: A project that operates with a lot of sensitive data and requires robust scalability and security can benefit from native mobile development. Enterprise tools also demand platform-specific features like biometric authentication, making native apps a more preferable choice.
Machine Learning-powered Apps: ML apps are designed to understand speech and images in real time, which requires fast processing speed and efficient memory system. Such solutions are often developed as native apps.
Let’s move on to use cases that benefit from cross-platform app development:
Social Media Apps: Solutions that require consistency across multiple platforms, social media apps are usually built on cross-platform technology. Flutter and React Native facilitate fast development while offering a competitive user experience.
Productivity and Utility Apps: Prioritizing functionality over design features, utility and productivity apps are perfect for cross-platform development. Apps like Trello can also reach a much wider audience as they cater to people from across the world.
E-learning Apps: Duolingo and similar education tools were built on cross-platform technology to guarantee consistent experience for students across devices and locations.
Startups and MVPs: Finally, startups looking to test their idea and build an MVP could definitely benefit from cross-platform frameworks. Offering lower costs, cross-platform apps allow small businesses to validate their idea without heavy investments.
If you need further assistance in choosing between native and cross-platform mobile development, reach out to specialists at NIX. As an IT company with decades in mobile development, we have honed our skills across platforms, frameworks, and use cases. Get in touch with our experts to learn more about the differences in app development and begin your project as soon as possible.
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While a native app is specifically developed for each operating system like iOS and Android, cross-platform apps deploy one source code across multiple platforms.
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Native apps tend to be quite a bit more costly compared to cross-platform apps since they require two separate development teams to create two separate native apps. While cross-platform mobile apps use the same codebase to launch apps on iOS and Android, native apps can only be published on their respective operating systems.
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Neither is better or worse, they simply have different use cases. If you work under budget constraints and don’t require full access to hardware features, cross-platform apps are a great choice. If your project depends on heavy datasets and animations, native development could be a better option.
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When it comes to cross-platform vs. native development, the latter provides a better performance and user experience. However, it’s imperative to remember that the difference is marginal in smaller and medium-sized apps and becomes significant in complex apps that require a lot of computational power.
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Although it’s possible to migrate your project from a cross-platform environment to a native further into the app’s development stages, this process is not easy or cheap. The migration requires code refactoring which can only be done by a professional. All in all, it’s recommended to make the choice between cross-platform and native mobile development early in development. Alternatively, you can at least keep in mind that migration might be required in the future to minimize its complexity and execute it gradually.
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