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
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
When Apple rolled out Swift back in 2014, Objective-C was set to be replaced. Even nowadays, however, there are plenty of apps and projects that still use Objective-C, and developers are faced with the prospect of either starting again from scratch or attempting to convert them to Swift. Swiftify for Xcode is designed to automate much of the conversion process, handling the task of replacing syntax while letting you focus on other aspects of migrating your project to…
$5
per file
Pricing
NativeScript
Swiftify
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Pay As You Go
$5
per file
Cloud 30 (Monthly)
$49
30 files per month
Cloud 100 (Monthly)
$99
100 files per month
Cloud 300 (Monthly)
$199
300 files per month
Cloud 1000 (Monthly)
$299
1000 files per month
Cloud 30 (Yearly)
$399
300 files per year
Cloud 100 (Yearly)
$799
1000 files per year
Cloud 300 (Yearly)
$1,599
3000 files per year
Cloud 1000 (Yearly)
$2,399
10000 files per year
Offline Converter
custom pricing
per seat
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
NativeScript
Swiftify
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
Yes
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
The 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.
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.
It is recommended to use Swiftify in any situation that requires iOS development because even if you develop just in Swift or just in Objective-C, it could be helpful for researching and investigating purposes. Additionally, if you need to convert big quantities of code from Objective-C to Swift, this tool will optimise that work. It will not translate a whole class of 2000 lines perfectly, but after converting it you can review the code and modify the lines that have not been properly converted, making you save more than the 50% of the time in that case. I've not been able to test it properly as I only used the trial version and it is really limited.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's not much to compare - we haven't found any proprietary like it. Existing OpenSource solutions are unmaintained and Swiftify supports the latest versions of Swift.
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.
For now the impact has been small, considering that I used the trial version, it was helpful for small conversions. Summarising: Saving time on researching process