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NativeScript

NativeScript

Overview

What is NativeScript?

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​.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

NativeScript has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers across various industries. For a fitness startup, NativeScript enabled …
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Awards

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Pricing

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What is NativeScript?

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​.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://www.nativescript.org/nativescri…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Product Demos

NativeScript Realtime Development

YouTube

How to Build Apps with NativeScript

YouTube

7 - Optimizing the Startup time of NativeScript Angular Apps

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NativeScript & WordPress REST API Demo LiveSync

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How to Build Enterprise Apps with Kinvey & NativeScript Demo

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Optimizing startup time of NativeScript Angular apps

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Product Details

What is NativeScript?

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​.

NativeScript Features

  • Supported: Reuse web skills (JavaScript, CSS) to create truly native mobile apps for iOS and Android
  • Supported: Deep integration with popular JavaScript frameworks like Angular or Vue to minimize learning curve
  • Supported: Extensive code sharing between mobile platforms (including UI) and web apps (when used with Angular)
  • Supported: Deliver high-quality mobile apps to multiple platforms faster, using web developers you already have

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

NativeScript Video

This spring and summer have been full of new NativeScript features, tooling options, and improvements. NativeScript is evolving into something more than just an open source framework. In this webinar, we'll talk about all the new goodies for you and show you how you can crush it in mobile app development

NativeScript Competitors

NativeScript Technical Details

Deployment TypesOn-premise
Operating SystemsWindows, Linux, Mac
Mobile ApplicationApple iOS, Android
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(18)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

NativeScript has proven to be an invaluable tool for developers across various industries. For a fitness startup, NativeScript enabled them to launch their app in just six months, providing a fast and efficient solution for their mobile development needs. Another company in the e-learning education industry is testing NativeScript as a potential alternative to their current app built on Ionic v1, with the goal of achieving an offline-first experience and improved performance.

Customers in the customer service industry have found NativeScript to be particularly useful due to its compatibility with the Angular web framework. This has allowed them to implement mobile and web-based cross-platform applications seamlessly, leveraging their existing knowledge and skills. Additionally, NativeScript's access to system APIs and seamless integration with third-party libraries has empowered developers to have full control over platform-specific functionalities, enabling them to build robust and feature-rich applications.

Countless developers have also turned to NativeScript for its ability to reuse existing frameworks and achieve native performance. It has been successfully used by consulting companies looking for a mobile app development platform that offers native performance, native UI generation, and ease of cross-platform development. These companies have praised NativeScript for allowing them to leverage their existing skills in Angular, TypeScript, and CSS, resulting in faster development cycles and cost savings.

Notably, NativeScript's versatility has made it an excellent fit for organizations that need to develop mobile applications for different platforms. By avoiding the need for separate codebases, they can save significant time and effort while still achieving native performance on both iOS and Android. This has made NativeScript a go-to choice for many developers working on projects at various stages of development.

Overall, NativeScript has garnered positive feedback from its users who appreciate its compatibility with modern web frameworks like Angular, its access to system APIs, and its ability to achieve native performance while maintaining cross-platform capabilities. It is clear that NativeScript offers a powerful solution for mobile app development needs across diverse industries.

Extensive repository of plugins: Many users appreciate the extensive repository of plugins available in NativeScript, which allows them to enhance their development speed. This feature has been praised by numerous reviewers as it enables developers to quickly add functionality to their apps without having to build everything from scratch.

Flexibility of architectural choices: The flexibility of NativeScript's four architectural choices - JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, and Vue - is highly valued by users. This flexibility has been mentioned by a significant number of reviewers who appreciate being able to choose the framework they are most comfortable with and easily transition from prototype to final product.

Native API access and performance: The fact that NativeScript offers 100-day zero Native API access is seen as a major advantage by many users. Multiple reviewers mention this feature as it allows them to leverage the full power of native UI and achieve better performance compared to other frameworks like Ionic or PhoneGap. This capability gives developers more flexibility and control over their app's performance.

Lack of ready-made UI collections: Several users have expressed frustration with the absence of ready-made UI collections in NativeScript. This means that users have to build their applications using default UI elements and then manually style them, which can be time-consuming and require additional effort. Users feel that this limitation hampers the ease and convenience of designing user interfaces for their applications.

Default UI elements not intuitive or user-friendly: Some users have found NativeScript's default UI elements to be less intuitive or user-friendly than they would prefer. This has made it more challenging for them to quickly and efficiently create applications. They believe that a more intuitive interface would greatly enhance the development process.

Lack of built-in support for customizing UI elements: Another concern raised by users is the lack of built-in support or guidance for customizing UI elements in NativeScript. Users feel that they could benefit from more assistance or resources in this area, as it would make customization easier and faster. They believe that having readily available options for customizing UI elements would greatly improve their experience with the software.

Users have provided several recommendations for Native Script based on their experiences. Based on the feedback, the following are the three most common recommendations:

  1. It is advisable to do a few tutorials and check if the desired functionality is supported through plugins or if the user is willing to create them. This implies that there may be cases where certain features are missing in the software, and users should be prepared to address this by exploring plugins or creating their own.

  2. Users recommend trying Native Script to learn something new and explore interesting features. This suggests that Native Script offers a unique learning experience for those interested in expanding their skills and discovering new capabilities.

  3. However, users do not recommend using Native Script for production-ready applications. While the software has its merits, it may not be suitable for developing applications intended for deployment in a live production environment.

These recommendations highlight the importance of familiarizing oneself with Native Script's capabilities through tutorials, being open to exploring plugins or creating custom functionality, and considering the software's limitations when deciding whether it is appropriate for specific use cases.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-13 of 13)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • It has increased the productivity of the developer's team, which has direct impact on the tasks performed throughout sprints (in terms of Scrum)
  • It decreased the time-to-market of applications by allowing the cross-platform development of the apps
  • Taking into account that it is open-source platform, with great variety of functionalities it directly decreased the operational costs of projects in run
Eric Bewley | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
  • 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.
Evan Payne | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • We had built this particular app once already, during a 6 month time frame, using Ionic. When we hit the wall, we chose NativeScript, and built the whole app from scratch. We estimated another 6 months, but completed the work in 4 months due to the ease of use.
  • We have found collaboration with our client much easier because of the simplicity of releases and speed of development.
  • Having a tool like NativeScript has allowed us to make competitive quotes for mobile app development contracts, where previously that would have been closed to us due to our lack of native development experience. Being able to build iOS apps without a Swift-code expert has opened those doors for us.
Mike Branstein | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
  • The ROI on using NativeScript for app development for us has been approximately a 75% decrease in the price of mobile app development for our customers. When creating native apps on both Android and iOS platforms, we used to need a significantly greater amount of time. Now, we can bring cross-platform mobile apps to our customers at a reduced cost.
Shiva Prasad K | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • With NativeScript we were able to goto market sooner than what we expected. We were in market in just 6 months.
  • Customers are happy with our products, in just a month, we reached 200 active users for AnyGo user app, and 17 active partners for AnyGo Partner app.
  • We were able to build all the features that the business requires, using NativeScript. We even built some new plugins for this app. Example nativescript-paytm for payment gateway integration.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • One of the projects we had to build was a rewrite of an existing mobile application. We could acomplish the complete rewrite in about a month along with general improvements and a couple additions.
  • More and more clients are specifically looking for NativeScript developers, and since we are focused on NativeScript we've had an influx of new clients asking for quotes.
Brad Martin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • While NativeScript allows you to develop for both Android and iOS this is a huge time saver. Which has given us a great increase in time to production for clients.
  • Being a framework written by people, there will be bugs and unforeseen issues that come up, and with the framework not being well known by the developers using it. It can be a challenge to find and help fix the bugs in a framework as large as NS. This is not just an issue with NS, it's an issue with any open source framework/library. The internals are massive on most frameworks and to truly understand it, you'd need weeks of time to dedicate to it.
victor pease solano | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Positive: shorter delivery time because you don't have to go for the usual native workflow and you have a common base code for all mobile platforms
  • Positive: you can start faster to dominate your hardware. From the very beginning, you will be sure about the performance you will get
  • Negative: you can't have your prototype on a browser, you will require an emulator or a real device
  • Negative: training was required at the beginning because web experience is not enough. Not that you need to become an expert but some native knowledge is required. Also, you need to work on a standard way to deal with database and backend communication
Dave Coffin | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Purely positive: I knew we need a mobile app, our customer base for my first app are parents and nannies, always on the go. A web app would not suffice. I was able to complete a cross platform app probably 1000% faster than learning both Xcode/swift and Java/android development tools.
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