1. Home
  2. App Development Platforms
  3. NativeScript Reviews
  4. User Review of NativeScript
NativeScript - Mobile App Development on Steroids
April 10, 2018

NativeScript - Mobile App Development on Steroids

Shiva Prasad K | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with NativeScript

I work at a fitness based startup. Our app, "AnyGo" is built entirely using NativeScript. I was the one who proposed to the team, to use NativeScript. And today when I look back, I'm glad that I found NativeScript. We were able to launch our app in 6 months, all thanks to NativeScript. I worked on the app, while 3 other developers built the backend on NodeJS.
  • NativeScript has a large repository of plugins at market.nativescript.org for the times when you want to boost your development speed.
  • NativeScript gives you 100% day zero Native API access.
  • NativeScript doesn't use any webview to render the UI. So you get Native UI, and therefore better performance, when compared to things like ionic or phone gap.
  • With NativeScript you get 4 architectural choices, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular and Vue. Choose the one you are comfortable with.
  • Nativescript runs everything on a single thread. i.e., the UI thread. If you want to offload some processing, you have to use web workers. This experience can be improved in the future releases.
  • Currently NativeScript only have hot reload when you change the UI file or Css file. There is no hot reload when you change Js/Ts file, unlike Google's Flutter. This is also something which NativeScript will get in the future releases.
  • In current version of NativeScript, there is no livesync when building with webpack. This feature will be added with NativeScript 4.x. (an RC version for 4.x is already available)
  • 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.
Unlike its competitors, NativeScript offers its users 4 architectural choices.
It shines in the area of offering 100% day zero Native API access.
The development experience is great and feels like you are home, if you are a web developer coming from Angular or Vue background, or even vanilla JS.
When you want to target Web and Mobile (iOS + Android), using a single code base. Then you can use NativeScript Angular or NativeScript Vue.

If your app is going to do a lot of heavy lifting in the background, requires building widgets that can be added on homescreen, or simply is going to be a service, which doesn't require UI, then NativeScript is not an ideal fit for that project.

NativeScript Support

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.
ProsCons
Quick Resolution
Good followup
Knowledgeable team
Problems get solved
Kept well informed
No escalation required
Immediate help available
Support understands my problem
Support cares about my success
Quick Initial Response
None
No - Although paid support is available, I don't pay for it. Because the community support is already top notch. Also I work at a bootstrap startup, which can't afford any paid support plans yet.
Yes - I have reported serveral bugs on Github, for NativeScript. All of those were resolved in time.
Since it is open source, they even support community PR.
I had reported a bug in the side drawer once, which caused a jaggered feel when slowly opening the drawer on android.
The nativescript ui team let me in on their private repo, and i was able to fix it and submit a PR.