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Even though the tech world is moving towards mobile-first, there are a lot of misconceptions about app development, confusing a large number of businesses. As one of the hottest trends at the moment is creating mobile apps, several businesses are choosing to invest their resources in applications. However, they come across the following technologies – native, hybrid, and web apps. How do you know which one is best for your company? To help you decide, here is a complete guide to native, hybrid, and web apps:

Web apps

Web apps are those applications you can access through your browser with the help of the Internet. In other words, it is quite similar to websites, but when you interact with them, it feels like you are using a mobile app. To build a web app, you will need to know languages such as CSS, HTML5, and Javascript. Although there isn’t any Software Development  Kit (SDK), you can use frameworks and templates such as Vue.js, React, and Angular to get started quickly.

As web apps didn’t possess functionality like the native apps, it led to the development of progressive web apps. Due to the progress of browsers, progressive web apps have the following features:

• Ability to send push notifications
• Use specific parts of the phone’s hardware (vibration)
• Utilize accelerometer and touch gestures

Advantages

Web/Progressive web apps have the following advantages:

• It is quite simple to build
• Maintenance is quite easy
• If you are working on a budget, it is the cheapest option available
• It works on all platforms that support browsers such as Android and iOS

Disadvantages

Given below are some of the disadvantages of web/progressive web apps:

• Not interactive, like other types of apps
• Unable to utilize all smartphone features
• User experience suffers as the users have to know the URL
• Unlike native apps, web/progressive web apps are slow

Native apps

When you think about mobile applications, you usually think about native apps. These are the types of apps that you can get from the Google Play Store or Apple App Store. The difference between web and native apps is that the latter works on devices running a specific mobile OS. To code apps that are native to iOS, developers use Objective-C or Swift. For Android, they have to use Java. Google and Apple give developers access to SDKs, allowing them to create apps at a much faster rate.

Advantages

Native apps come with the following advantages:

• As they can use touch gestures, accelerometer, compass, microphone, and the camera, their functionality improves significantly
• By distributing them through various app stores, you can reach out to a larger target audience
• The user interface and user experience are on point as you can stick to the rules and regulations of the mobile OS
• They are extremely responsive and fast, offering the best reliability
• You can use push notifications to gain the attention of users
• Your users don’t need an internet connection to use these apps

Disadvantages

Although native apps have a lot of pros, there are also some cons that come with them:

• If you want to make the mobile app work on different platforms such as Android and iOS, you will have to use multiple codebases
• It takes a longer time to build native apps
• They are more expensive to build as they require developers to have a good command over a single platform

Hybrid apps

When you combine web and native apps, you get hybrid applications. They are quite similar to native apps as you can download them from the App Store or Play Store. The best thing about hybrid apps is that they run on multiple platforms. You can code hybrid apps in CSS, HTML, and Javascript.

The reason why most businesses go for hybrid apps is that it allows them to test out their ideas. When you need to build a usable app quickly to find out whether it will fare well with your target audience, you can’t rely on web applications as they lack the necessary features. The best thing to do is build a hybrid app as it offers the best of both worlds.

Advantages

Some of the advantages of hybrid apps are as follows:

• As they use Javascript, CSS, or HTML, it is easy to build them
• Developing hybrid apps is faster as you only need to use one codebase
• It is much cheaper to build a hybrid app instead of a native one
• It works on different platforms
• You can use the internal APIs of smartphones giving you access to the camera, storage, microphone, and phone

Disadvantages

They have the following disadvantages:

• If you need to customize the user interface to match the requirements of various platforms, your expenditure will rise significantly
• It requires a lot of time and effort to get the app work on different platforms
• They are not as fast as native apps

The type of mobile app you choose to develop depends on your requirements. Are you looking to develop a mobile app for your business but you don’t have the patience to do it yourself? If yes, then contact Robust Tech House today as our developers and designers have immense amounts of experience to satisfy all your requirements!

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