NativeScript vs. .NET

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
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
.NET
Score 8.5 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft's .Net is an open source, freeware application infrastructure.N/A
Pricing
NativeScript.NET
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NativeScript.NET
Free Trial
YesNo
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level 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
NativeScript.NET
Best Alternatives
NativeScript.NET
Small Businesses
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
Enterprises
Visual Studio
Visual Studio
Score 8.8 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.2 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
NativeScript.NET
Likelihood to Recommend
4.8
(13 ratings)
8.0
(27 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
7.0
(7 ratings)
Support Rating
1.0
(2 ratings)
9.7
(8 ratings)
User Testimonials
NativeScript.NET
Likelihood to Recommend
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.
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Microsoft
.NET is well suited for any general purpose solution to a business problem, though if we are talking strictly the framework version - you have to be more or less tied to Microsoft Windows to run it. If this isn't a problem, then it will be able to address and solve any programming project you have.
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Pros
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.
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Microsoft
  • Visual Studio is one of the best IDEs and .NET is the best framework to use with Visual Studio.
  • There is a large network of support for the .NET framework.
  • The .NET framework encompasses a very large area of the programming stack.
  • The .NET framework is flexible and can be used for desktop applications or web development.
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Cons
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
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Microsoft
  • .NET is heavily Microsoft Windows oriented, and while .NET core tried to resolve that with MacOS and Linux support, .NET Core is still waiting for wider adoption.
  • While free for small projects, additional features for big projects can be a little expensive.
  • Can be resource-heavy upon deployment. We continuously have our more senior staff optimize the code of our junior developers for performance. Other languages are a little bit more forgiving in comparison.
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Likelihood to Renew
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.
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Microsoft
No answers on this topic
Usability
Progress Software Corporation
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
The full .NET Framework is an amazing thing and is very robust. We have used it to create console apps, Windows apps, and online apps. When coupled with Visual Studio, development, testing, building, and deploying our applications has become 100 times easier as compared to doing those things manually before. The automation of this process has helped us push out changes to our applications faster to adapt to the ever-changing business requirements.
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Support Rating
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.
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Microsoft
You don't often need to reach out to Microsoft for .NET support. If you do, there are forums and websites that have active Microsoft support folks where you can provide feedback or get help. Microsoft support in general is quite good as well, but not cheap. The best support is from the community like StackOverflow.
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Alternatives Considered
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.
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Microsoft
The .NET platform has a much longer and broader history than Laravel, so we chose to go with it as the support will be far superior. Additionally, Laravel is tied to PHP, while you can use multiple different languages in .NET. The additional flexibility that .NET provides in the range of types of applications you can build with it sealed the deal.
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Return on Investment
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.
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Microsoft
  • There are few factors we needed for our custom development. Below are each of them. We were able to get a satisfactory outcome for each of these factors which made .NET platform a very good choice in developing enterprise applications.
  • Reusability of codes- Microsoft has given many re-usable codes and components in the framework to help developers do their job effortlessly. With the help of default features, developers can create end-to-end solutions and make the business operations more efficient. As codes and components are reusable, .NET reduces development time and if applications take less time to develop, they cost cheaper and you get faster return on investment.
  • Easy to maintain- Development cost is one time, but maintenance cost is incurring. .NET apps are easily maintainable, thanks to the configuration settings that can be modified without any need to rewrite the code.
  • Deployment is hassle free- Deploying software is always challenging and the most common problem developers face in this process is the existence of multiple DLLs. It’s hard to make sure that all DLLs will co-exist in the same machine. .NET framework solves this problem by allowing different versions of the same DLL to exist side-by-side on the same machine.
  • Security- .NET is one of the most secure web and application development frameworks available in the market. As it’s made by Microsoft, you can be absolutely sure about the security measurements. Hackers can never steal valuable data from your website or apps.
  • Cross platform friendly- What if you had developed an app for desktop and laptop computers and now after seeing the growth of mobile apps in the market, you want it in mobile version as well? You can easily develop an app that runs on the desktop and PDA without any issue. As you can re-use the codes and utilize the same development environment, your job becomes a lot simpler.
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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