Ionic vs. React Native - Which Framework to Choose in 2023?

Choosing a framework for your mobile application development has never been an easy task. When it comes to cross-platform application development frameworks, you’ll be spoilt for choice. If you are indecisive about what framework you should opt for your mobile application development, this informative post is for you. Go through this piece to make an informed decision.

Amid all the cross-platform application development frameworks out there, Ionic and React Native have stolen the thunder. Both the frameworks have earned their brownie points from businesses of all sizes for their immense potential. Now, let’s dig deeper to find out their strengths and weaknesses.

Ionic

Launched back in 2013, Ionic is a popular framework that is leveraged by app developers for crafting progressive web apps (PWAs) and cross-platform mobile applications. Built on top of JavaScript, HTML5, and CSS, this open-source mobile UI toolkit has earned over 44k Stars and 13k+ Fork on Github. Based on the principle of “write once — use everywhere”, this framework allows an Ionic mobile app development company to write codebase only once and use it across all platforms. Some of the top brands that are using the Ionic framework include MarketWatch, McLaren Automotive, McDonald’s Turkiye, Electronic Arts (EA), Southwest Airlines, NASA, IBM, Mastercard, Untappd, Sworkit, and many more.

Strengths of Ionic Mobile App Development

• Driven by Angular
• Powerful command-line interface
• Utilizes Cordova plugins
• Free and open-source
• High performance application
• Easy testing
• Cost-effective application development
• Supported by a developer-centric community

Weaknesses of Ionic Mobile App Development

• Security issues
• Native plugins aren’t stable
• Builds can crash all of a sudden with no reason
• Application debugging requires more time and can be challenging

React Native

Launched back in 2015, React Native is another popular open-source mobile application framework developed by the technology giant, Facebook. This promising cross-platform app development framework allows developers to reuse codebase so that they don’t have to write the code from scratch when building an application for another platform. The mobile applications developed using React Native work smoothly on both the iOS and Android platforms however, it’s mandatory to have sound knowledge of React Native mobile app development. Some of the top brands that are using the React Native framework in 2023 include Bloomberg, Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, Walmart, Uber Eats, Pinterest, Skype, Salesforce, and more.

Strengths of React Native App Development

• Easy to debug
• Budget-friendly app development
• Delivers personalized UI
• Less complex framework
• Native-like performance
• Less memory utilization
• Third-party plugin compatibility
• Handy solutions and libraries
• Hot reloading support
• More stable applications

Weaknesses of React Native Mobile App Development

• Unstable memory management
• Longer development time
• Higher development cost
• Hard to debug
• Testing is more challenging
• Lack of some custom modules
• Large application size

Final Words

If you are still on the fence and wondering whether you should choose React Native or Ionic, here’s a rule of thumb you can follow- if you are targeting traditional native app development, you should choose React Native over Ionic, however, if you are targeting PWA, you should choose Ionic over React Native. Hope, the confusion between the two has cleared now.