Planning to build a mobile app for your business, you must consider hybrid app development in 2022. Building mobile applications using a hybrid app development approach can be a perfect choice as they use hybrid development technologies, which have been becoming more and more popular in delivering modern mobile app development solutions.
It used to be that native apps development was the end-all and be-all of mobile development techniques, but this is no longer true today. A hybrid mobile app development approach can compete and claim the prize as any other approach.
You must be wondering what is hybrid app development and how should you approach it for building your dream application? If you want to create a mobile app, this is the less convenient, but riskier, alternative to native app development.
If you are not sure whether hybrid mobile app development will address your business needs, then you’re landed at the right place.
Well, in this article, you’ll learn everything about hybrid app development and the reasons why many leading mobile app development companies are choosing hybrid app development over native app development.
Table of Content:
- Hybrid vs Native App Difference
- What is Hybrid App Development?
- What Are Hybrid Apps?
- Why Choose Hybrid Mobile App Development?
- Benefits of Hybrid App Development
- What are The Most Popular Hybrid Mobile App Development Frameworks
- Hybrid App Development Cost
Hybrid vs Native App Differences
Hybrid apps are used across all platforms while native apps can only be developed based on a specific platform, which is one of the biggest differences between hybrid and native apps. Hybrid apps and native apps both are different in many ways so it is best to look at them separately and then compare them accordingly.
Hybrid Apps Overview
Although hybrid apps make development faster and easier, they reduce the time and cost of app development and offer better scalability to the application. Several differences in devices and operating systems result in lags and discrepancies.
Business-grade apps can be extremely problematic in this regard. If hybrid apps are likely to give similar results, it might be worthwhile to take a look at native app examples before making your decision.
Native Apps Overview
In addition to being fast, native apps are more tailored to the needs of the user, and they fit the device’s features. Despite this, native apps require a lot of development, which can increase time and money expenditures. Furthermore, it is best to take a look at some of the native app examples to see what others are doing for inspiration.
What Is Hybrid App Development?
Hybrid app development is a method of creating mobile applications using native and web technologies at the same time. To better understand hybrid app development in 2022, you must first understand what is native app development.
The native app development approach allows software developers to use native languages for building mobile applications based on the platform.
For example, Android app developers use Java, Kotlin, and other official languages for Android app development. And if they are building Android applications using these languages then it comes in the part of native app development.
The same applies to iOS app development, as iOS developers use Swift, Objective, and other official languages. And iOS developers who are building native mobile applications for iPhone, use these platform-specific.
As a part of hybrid app development, some bits of an app is coded natively, while other parts of the app are coded using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to provide the look and feel of traditional mobile applications using WebView components.
What Are Hybrid Apps?
Hybrid applications refer to software applications that combine elements of both native apps and web applications. Generally, hybrid apps are web apps that have been kept within a native app shell. The popularity of hybrid applications is significantly increasing as they allow developers to write only a set of the codebase and works across all platforms.
Therefore, hybrid mobile apps reduce time and cost in developing mobile applications using web technologies such as HTML5, CSS, CSS3, JS, and jQuery with one set of codebase, instead of writing separate native code for all platforms.
Major Benefits of Hybrid App Development
Hybrid app development offers numerous benefits and is convenient to use as compared to native app development.
Here are the major benefits of getting hybrid app development for your business in 2022:
Cost
Talking about the top benefits of hybrid app development is its reduced cost of development. If you want to make your applications available on different platforms, you need to create multiple distinct applications for different platforms in native app development, resulting in an increased cost of development.
Hybrid app development provides a top-level of code shareability, which makes it easier for developers to write only a few lines of code. Therefore, the cost of mobile app development and maintenance is significantly reduced and often counts as a reasonable cost.
Efficiency
As hybrid app development requires developers to write only a set of codes, making it more efficient and qualitative compared to native app development. In hybrid app development, you can share the code from platform to platform employing a more agile and modern software development approach for creating, executing, and managing the code is pretty easier.
Time-To-Market (TTM)
Quickert time to market is another great advantage of hybrid app development, which results in improved efficiency and productivity during mobile app development. Building the mobile app using hybrid app development can help to save a lot of time, cost, and resources compared to native app development.
Hybrid app development allows the developer to easily build, test, and deploy mobile apps and release them on the app platform quickly and more effectively. It also makes the application reading process faster, making your hybrid app quickly available on both Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Thus, giving you more time to market and promote your application and turn it into a profitable business, as well as improving its functionality or any bug further after getting customers’ feedback.
Scalability
Hybrid applications are easy to scale as they are made from a single codebase. They are found to be more scalable, efficient, and powerful and their popularity of simplicity is yet growing in the world of application.
For instance, even their version updates are found to be pretty similar to one codebase and the same comes with integrations and other applications. Hybrid apps are more reliable and provide high compatibility when scaling up due to their single codebase.
Why Choose Hybrid Mobile App Development?
Hybrid app development comes with various features and provides complete flexibility, allowing app developers to build applications that run perfectly for both Android and iOS. Whereas in native app development, you will need to create a separate application for each platform, which results in a higher cost of development with increased time.
In the case where you need an application that works well on multiple platforms then, of course, you would like to choose a hybrid app over native app development due to its convenience, ease to use, and significantly reduced cost and time. Following are some reasons why should you choose hybrid app development in 2022, including:
Supports Both Platforms: Hybrid Apps provide complete flexibility for developers to build a mobile application that operates well on Android and iOS. Developers can build applications for multiple platforms using the same single codebase.
Single UI: Hybrid provides an app-like user interface (UI) to improve user experience across all devices even when the user accesses it via the website.
Faster mobile app development: Hybrid app development allows app developers to create mobile applications significantly faster than native app development using one set of codebase.
Scalability: Hybrid applications are more efficient and scalable as they use a single codebase, allowing businesses to scale up their applications faster.
More Cost-effective: Cost-effectiveness is another yet most important benefit of hybrid app development especially for those looking for the best and most cost-effective hybrid app development services in India. They reduce the time of developers by allowing them to use the same code for both Android and iOS platforms.
Faster and Convenient: Hybrid apps are highly convenient for their users, improving overall usability with unmatched experiences on all devices.
What Are The Most Popular Frameworks of Hybrid Mobile App Development?
Below are the top hybrid mobile app development frameworks you should look out for in 2022, including:
Flutter
Flutter framework is another yet most popular hybrid app development framework for building cross-platform applications. Developed by Google, Flutter is an open-source framework that uses the most emerging language called Dart and provides high-performance, scalability, and reliability to build fully functional and attractive applications that are compatible with both Android & iOS platforms.
It provides various other development tools, SDKs, and widgets that are easy to customize, making hybrid apps the development process.
Xamarin
Xamarin framework is the most popular hybrid app development framework acquired by tech giant Microsoft. It is the most preferred and intelligent framework used by various app developers. Written in C, Xamarin provides rich libraries for Java, C++, and Objective-C which makes it unique from other app development frameworks.
React Native
React Native is the most popular hybrid app development framework among app developers across the world. It is not only used for building hybrid applications but also for cross-platform and native applications. React Native provides various in-built tools and functionalities, including native plugins, code reusability, huge community support, live reload, etc.
This framework is a perfect choice for businesses looking for building superior performance applications that deliver native-like experiences to customers.
Ionic
Ionic has been becoming a more and more popular hybrid app development framework for a few years. It comes with in-built tools and powerful features that allow developers to create more efficient and scalable applications.
It provides integrated solutions for native mobile UI components, layouts, and debugging & testing tools to build highly interactive apps. Some features like great UI components, a rich library with front-end building, and other elements enable developers to develop top-notch PWAs.
Native Script
Native Script is the best hybrid app development framework especially for those businesses looking to code their cross-platform apps in TypeScript, JavaScript, or Angular. In the native script, users can access the APIs for both Android and iOS mobile devices.
NativeScript allows app developers to build apps using JavaScript or any other programming language which can transpile to javascript such as TypeScript and Angular. In a native script, features that are added to any native platform API can also be utilized for ReactNative apps perfectly.
PhoneGap
PhoneGap, also called Apache Cordova because it is supported by the Cordova framework and Adobe. PhoneGap is the most popular hybrid app framework, allowing developers to build applications using HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, etc.
It allows developers to build cross-platform applications using a single code for all platforms, therefore, reducing the time and cost of development. PhoneGap framework is best known for its compatibility with and powerful functionality that makes it easier to build cross-platform applications by developers.
Hybrid App Development Cost
The cost of hybrid mobile app development depends on numerous factors, including app size, number of features, platform requirements, application complexity and scalability, location of the development team, and much more. Thus, it’s difficult to determine the cost of hybrid app development without analyzing applications requirements.
However, on average, the cost of hybrid app development may vary from $5000 to $50,000. But remember again this is not the exact cost and it may decrease or increase depending on various factors as discussed above.
Following are some factors that affect the development cost, including:
- App structure and design architecture.
- Different plugin functionalities.
- App size and complexity.
- Scalability of the application.
- Compliance requirements
- App development time
- Expected outcomes from users.
- Different 3rd-party API integrations.
- Development team location
- Custom module features.
Bottom Line
Thus, hybrid app development provides many advantages for businesses by allowing them to build more efficient, reliable, and scalable applications that operate on both iOS and Android platforms. If you are looking to build a cross-platform application with cost-effective mobile app development solutions, then Hybrid app development is the perfect choice for you. It helps to reduce development costs and time and makes your application easier to scale in the digital world.
At Crest Infosystems, we offer reliable hybrid app development services to help clients build platform-specific applications based on their unique business requirements. Planning to build a mobile application that operates well on both Android & iOS platforms and turn your business into more profits and revenue more efficiently. Hire our dedicated app developers to get the most out of our hybrid app development services at affordable prices.
