Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Ionic
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Ionic empowers teams and businesses to build, secure, and deliver enterprise-grade mobile and web apps. The vendor states that with Ionic, enterprise development teams can speed up and simplify app development, including: Build app experiences with over 100 UI building blocks Edit and customize using familiar web languages (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) Connect to new or existing cloud services or backend systems Deploy directly to app…N/A
NativeScript
Score 4.8 out of 10
N/A
NativeScript is an open source framework that allows you to create native iOS and Android apps, with one codebase, using ​the web skills you already have (JavaScript and CSS) and ​the libraries you already love​.N/A
React
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
React is a JavaScript library for building user interfaces. React enables users to create interactive UIs. Design simple views for each state in an application, and React will update and render just the right components when data changes. React is available free and open source under the MIT license.N/A
Pricing
IonicNativeScriptReact
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IonicNativeScriptReact
Free Trial
YesYesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesYesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional DetailsThe NativeScript framework and CLI are completely free and open source. NativeScript Sidekick is a free download to improve developer productivity with optional paid tiers for power users.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IonicNativeScriptReact
Considered Multiple Products
Ionic

No answer on this topic

NativeScript
Chose NativeScript
First and foremost, the codebase on which the project application was developed in NativeScript on 90% can be shared with React Native framework. Moreover, the documentation of the framework is extensive in a manner to allow developers the easy low-level entrance for the …
Chose NativeScript
NativeScript was indeed a better experience at first than Ionic. But the real game-changer in 2022 for cross-platform applications is Flutter now. We changed to it shorty after NativeScript, as it is much more stable, more widely supported, has a ton of extra features, and does …
React

No answer on this topic

Top Pros

No answers on this topic

Top Cons

No answers on this topic

Best Alternatives
IonicNativeScriptReact
Small Businesses
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.9 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Medium-sized Companies
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.1 out of 10

No answers on this topic

Enterprises
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Quickbase
Quickbase
Score 9.1 out of 10

No answers on this topic

All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
IonicNativeScriptReact
Likelihood to Recommend
9.0
(1 ratings)
4.8
(13 ratings)
9.7
(14 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
1.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
User Testimonials
IonicNativeScriptReact
Likelihood to Recommend
Ionic
- Inexpensively and rapidly creating multi-device (Android, iPhone) native apps. - Quick ramp-up time allows for rapid development. - Open source tools can be used to develop. - Lightweight code-based can be easily shared and developed in a team environment. - Use of React, Vue, and angular leverages well-known coding and application design frameworks that are transportable.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
I gotta be honest, after a PoC period, we choose to rewrite the whole application in a different cross-platform app. Our developers had to invest a lot of time and effort to debug a lot of plugin-related issues, which we needed to utilize the android mobile phone capabilities. QR reader, special visualizations, and fine-tuning were really hard and often resulted in writing native Android code instead of using the shared Angular code. In the end, we think that writing a standalone Android app and an Angular app would have been a better alternative, as the shared code base was so unreliable that it did not save us any time.
Read full review
Open Source
React is a JavaScript user interface construction library that works well for:
  • Developing web apps with dynamic and complicated user interfaces.
  • creating reusable UI elements that may be used in other applications.
  • creating single-page applications with dynamic content updates that don't require a page reload.
  • The Virtual DOM's effective updating mechanism allows it to handle large volumes of data updates.
React, on the other hand, might be less suitable for:
  • Websites that are simple, stagnant, and have no interaction. Other libraries or simple HTML, CSS, and JavaScript may be a better fit in such circumstances.
  • Web sockets may be a better choice for applications that need real-time updates, such as chat or gaming apps.
  • When creating mobile apps, React Native is a better option.
  • Server side rendering only, as React is designed to run on the client side.
Read full review
Pros
Ionic
  • Nice command line interface for repetitive development and deployment tasks.
  • Realtime preview (in web browser) during development.
  • Easy to update and keep current (open source) via command line.
  • Provides nice set of mobile widgets for consistency across devices.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
  • True native app. The app uses native components and that is quite noticeable in the overall performance of the app. NativeScript is also awesome in the way we can access the native APIs, so we are never really constrained by the framework. If we need, we can just dive into the native APIs without leaving our environment and language (JS).
  • Cross-platform. Builds for Android and iOS. It deals with the platforms differences very well.
  • Support for Vue.js. Even though it is just a community effort, the NativeScript-Vue plugin is the best alternative to build native Apps with Vue.js. That was a major factor to go with NativeScript.
Read full review
Open Source
  • React is fantastic for building performant user interfaces. Our web app is snappy and great for our customers.
  • React has the philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well which is the view layer of the application. This makes it incredibly intuitive and flexible for developers to use.
  • React has lead the way in being able to write modular and structured code. It is a drastic improvement since the days of spaghetti jQuery code.
  • React has an unmatched community. The amount of tools and libraries available is fantastic, and there plenty of solutions available online for common problems.
Read full review
Cons
Ionic
  • Slightly better documentation when it comes to command line build troubleshooting.
  • Increased widget library (even though it's much improved today).
  • Native chart/graphing widgets.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
  • The need to know the native Android and iOS APIs to access device hardware and other platform-specific functionality
  • Not all user interface components are available for free
  • NativeScript has no HTML and DOM, which requires some deep knowledge of different UI tools to be implemented instead
Read full review
Open Source
  • Debugging React is challenging. Bugs in react code generate stack traces internal to React and it is often totally unclear how it relates to the code you actually wrote.
  • Relating your React elements to corresponding DOM elements is difficult. The intentional separation of virtual and actual DOM also makes it difficult to map the elements to the structures in the DOM. This is partially ameliorated by the use of the React dev tool, which provides a DOM-like view of the React elements, but the tool still does not provide a direct correspondence with the DOM that is often necessary to figure out why something isn't right.
  • Because JSX is React-specific and not a language feature, a special compilation process is necessary to convert JSX code to normal JS. Coming from a C++ background, compiling things doesn't bother me, but many JS developers are used to a less structured development.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Ionic
No answers on this topic
Progress Software Corporation
The hybrid is ok but native is better for performance and the right use case I want to go for is the performance without dealing with too many development tools.
Read full review
Open Source
No answers on this topic
Usability
Ionic
No answers on this topic
Progress Software Corporation
No answers on this topic
Open Source
React is just a bit of a different animal. I was avoiding it for the longest time. I thought for sure I would land on Vue or something else with a more approachable and familiar appearance. But after taking an online course in React, I started realize what people were raving about (and complaining about) and decided to implement it at our office for one of our products.
Read full review
Support Rating
Ionic
No answers on this topic
Progress Software Corporation
The community support is excellent.
They have a slack community as well as a discourse forum
forum.nativescript.org
Both of these offer community driven support.
The forum is more for a threaded discussion. The slack community is more for a quick talk.
Read full review
Open Source
Since it's open-source and very popular, the community support for React and related tools and libraries is excellent. There are a lot of people using the same tools, and so issues tend to get fixed quickly and "recipes" are easy to come by. And since it's backed by Facebook, they have a dedicated engineering team working on the progression of React.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Ionic
Android Studio
  • Busy
  • Confusing
  • Marginal IDE
  • Large footprint
  • Single device development
IonicFramework
  • Lean, no IDE needed
  • Web browser preview
  • Multi-device development
  • Scripting of build packages for deployment
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
Ionic Ionic is an excellent Angular-based framework for mobile, and it does give a lot of access to the native device api's. However, the technology is based on Cordova, which means the apps being built are just webviews, with html, css and JS all running on the UI thread, and potentially creating very slow experiences for users. NativeScript is a truly native solution, and so provides a faster user experience. ReactNative We evaluate ReactNative, and found it much the same as NativeScript. The main difference is that your JS is all written with React, while NativeScript lets you choose between normal JS, Angular, and Vue. For our team, Angular was the most appropriate choice.
Read full review
Open Source
While this is a widely contested debate with various blog posts and benchmarks all over the place, its really a personal choice to determine what works for the team. Coming from a Angular 1.x background, I decided to try a new framework when Angular 2.x was announced and at that time React is gaining popularity and Vue hasn't taken off yet. Compared to Angular 1.x and Vue (hybrid of React and Angular) that split the logic from the html templates, I loved the way React breaks code into components using the jsx syntax. In my mind, this allows for cleaner components and easier maintenance
Read full review
Return on Investment
Ionic
  • The ability to create a mobile app quickly by a single developer (saving $20K).
  • Increased customer satisfaction.
  • Avoids outsourcing costs of $10k-$20k.
Read full review
Progress Software Corporation
  • The poor quality of NativeScript documentation has the potential to weigh heavily on development timelines, budgets, and QA resources in a NEGATIVE manner.
  • The poor interoperability of NativeScript plugins can significantly increase development time.
  • The need to seek out professional instruction to learn how to use NativeScript effectively may become a burden on your budget.
  • The number of breaking changes between versions of NativeScript, may cause your development efforts to lag further behind the most recent releases of NativeScript and your other chosen environments than you are accustomed to.
  • NativeScript still does not support the latest major version of Angular. Any significant changes to the other environment components of your systems may hold you back even further while NativeScript plays catch-up.
Read full review
Open Source
  • Our web applications now run much faster because the whole page doesn't reload
  • We spend less time developing UI components because a lot of them are readily available on NPM
  • We don't have to optimize apps for multiple browsers since React natively supports it.
Read full review
ScreenShots

NativeScript Screenshots

Screenshot of Example of a styled NativeScript list viewScreenshot of Charts and graphs available as part of NativeScript UIScreenshot of Groceries – the app you build as part of the getting started tutorialScreenshot of Leverage native mapping systems with NativeScript