10 Best Cross-Platform App Frameworks to Consider for Your App Development

Mobile app development is time-intensive and complex. For developers, it’s a challenge to build an app that’s efficient and could also run on several platforms. Cross-platform app development helps organizations have a better reach to the target audience.

Cross-platform is a framework through which a mobile application runs on various platforms. Developers should write code just once and run it anywhere for any platform of choice. Cross-platform application development has its own merits, which play a critical role in its popularity today.

As its reach grew, several development tools and frameworks started coming out in the market. Gradually, and then suddenly, mobile app developers, including a Nodejs development company are trying their hands at this one-of-a-kind technology.

The Pros Of Cross-platform Apps

1. Reusable codes. Rather than writing fresh codes for each platform, developers could reuse the same code across platforms. Furthermore, this cuts down on tasks that are repetitive, eliminating hard work. This however is not a new concept. It’s been used in software development for several years now, and the benefits of being able to reuse code have been witnessed too.

2. Faster development time. Developing cross-platform apps is quicker when a single script is deployed. On the other hand, increased speed in development results in a product reaching the marketplace much sooner. Time could be allocated on working out codes for a brand new app. The situation is a win-win for all concerned, such as developers, marketers, and users.

3. Seamless implementation. Today, many technologies offer cross-platform solutions, making it easy for developers to do changes. A tool like Appcelerator for instance is used, codes could be written easily in HTML5, and converted for various platforms. This makes app development faster, and also easier to synch updates across different mobile devices.

4. Cost control. Thanks to cross-platform mobile application development, and the services of developers, like for instance NodeJS development services, companies now only need a one-time investment to have their app developed, in contrast to earlier times when they need to heavily spend on various technologies and tools. They need not spend on separately developing apps for every platform. Furthermore, the same team could be made to work on different platforms for app developers.

Top Ten Cross-Platform App Frameworks 2020

As technology continues to evolve, the IT field and business organizations need to keep up with the changes to remain relevant. When it comes to developing cross-platform apps, there are numerous frameworks to choose from. Here, I have gathered an in-depth view of the top cross-platform app frameworks that are highly used by service providers.

1. React Native

When it comes to cross-platform app development, it’s not easy to not include React Native. Created on JavaScript, it’s great for writing real code and providing a native-feel to mobile apps.

Features

• Has huge community support, boosting it via introducing and improving features, and bug fixing.
• The one-time coding reduces development time instantly, along with keeping the cost at its lowest.
• No need to require developers to separately code twice for the same application on various platforms.
• To a big extent, focuses on the UI, rendering an interface that’s very responsive.

2. Ionic

One of the most popular and astonishing cross-platform app frameworks, which is AngularJS-based. Developers could combine several languages. Moreover, developers could build a flawlessly creative UI, along with adding features that are user-friendly.

Features

• Based on a SAAS UI framework, it’s especially designed for mobile OS. It provides several UI components for robust apps development.
• A front-end and open-source framework, which means that it enables code structure alterations, suitable to every developer and saves time.
• AngularJS-based offering HTML syntax extensions is easy.
• Provides a native-like feel to the app, making it a favorite among developers.
• Utilizes the plugins of Cordova, allowing access to built-in features of a device, such as camera, GPS, and audio recorder.

3. Xamarin

Is considerably different from the other frameworks discussed so far. It’s a simplified framework for the development of Windows, iOS, and Android, with the help of .Net and C#, rather than HTML and JS libraries. Developers are able to use 90 percent code to build an app for various platforms.

Features

• Apps are built using C#, a modern language with leverage over Java and Objective-C.
• Reduces cost and time of development since it supports WORA, or the write once, run anywhere, and with humongous class libraries collection.
• Has an astounding native UI and controls assisting, enabling developers to design a native-like application.

4. NodeJS

For developing cross-platform apps, this is a wonderful framework. Essentially, it’s a JavaScript runtime framework made on the JavaScript Chrome V8 engine. An open-source environment, it supports developer scalable and server-side networking apps. A NodeJS development company could develop highly effective solutions using the numerous rich libraries of JavaScript modules, which simplify web apps development.

Features

• Amazingly fast library in the process of executing code, because it’s built on the Chrome V8 engine.
• Apps don’t buffer, but instead it output data in chunks.
• Deliver perfect and smooth functioning apps. It makes use of a single-threaded model that has an event looping functionality.

5. NativeScript

A free, terrific cross-platform framework, which is based on JavaScript. It’s right to say that it’s the preferred option among developers looking for a WORA functionality. It moreover offers all native APIs in which developers could reuse existing plugins right from NPTM towards projects.

Features

• Renders accessible, beautiful, and platform-native User Interface. It only requires developers to define once and allow it to run everywhere.
• Gives developers a complete web resource, packed with plugins for all sorts of solutions. This inevitably eliminates third-party solutions.
• Provides the freedom of accessing native APIs seamlessly, meaning that developers need no further knowledge on native development languages.
• Uses TypeScript and Angular for the purposes of programming.

6. Electron

Electron, a wonderful framework for building desktop apps with all emerging technologies today, which include HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The framework basically handles all the difficult aspects so you could concentrate on the core of the app and make a design that’s revolutionary. Designed as an open-source framework, Electron combines the best web technologies today and is also a cross-platform, which means that it’s very compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux.

It has automatic updates, notifications, native menus, and debugging, crash reporting, and profiling as well.

Features

• Helps in developing feature-loader, high-quality, cross-platform desktop apps.
• Support for the Chromium engine
• It’s app structure and business logic.
• Secure access to storage.
• Hardware-level APIs of high-quality.
• Seamless management system.
• Support for different UI/UX tools.
• Compatible with the different libraries and frameworks.

7. Flutter

Flutter, an impressive cross-platform app framework was introduced by Google in 2017. It’s a software development kit that’s designed to help in iOS and Android app development.

Features

• Does not need to manually update the UI, since it has a reactive framework. Developers only have to update variables and changes in the UI becomes visible after.
• Poses as the perfect choice for the development of MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, since it initiates a fast development process and cost-efficient as well
• Promotes a portable GPU, rendering UI power, allowing it to function on the current interfaces.

8. Corona Software Development Kit

The framework lets programmers develop 2D mobile apps for all major platforms. Furthermore, it provides ten times faster mobile and game application development, delivering remarkable results. The focus of the framework is on the key elements of development, namely, portability, extensibility, speed, scalability, and usage ease.

Features

• Responds to changes made in code almost instantaneously, while providing a review of app performance in real-time, the same as on a real device.
• Provides developers the ability to sprite music, audio, animations, and so on with more than 100 APIs.
• Supports nearly 200 plugins, which include analytics, in-app advertising, hardware features, and media.

9. PhoneGap Framework

One of the cross-platform frameworks that’s flawless for mobile apps development using HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS. Furthermore, it has a cloud solution for developers with an option to share apps in the development process to derive feedback from other developers.

Features

• Considered a great cross-platform framework since it enables creating cross-platform apps with existing web technologies.
• Follows an architecture that by nature is plugin-able, which means that access to native device APIs is possible and could be extended modularly.
• It has support for the use of a single code base to build apps for various platforms.

10. Sencha Touch Framework

The framework is great for the development of cross-platform, web-based applications, which are typically used to create efficient apps with hardware acceleration methods. With Sencha Touch, developers could build securely integrated and well-tested UI libraries and components.

The features

• Known to provide themes that are built-in and native looking for all the major platforms.
• The Cordova support is one of its most celebrated features, for native API access, along with the packaging.
• Created with an agnostic backend data package that’s effective.
• Packed with customizable and over 50 built-in widgets.

Conclusion

The top ten frameworks mentioned here are just among the many frameworks you can choose from to develop cross-platform app frameworks. With the continuous evolution of technology and the constant updates, new frameworks would soon emerge. In the meantime, for all your cross-platform app development requirements, the ten that are mentioned here are among the best you can find available nowadays.

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