When you are building your mobile app, choosing between native app vs a cross-platform app is a very important decision to make. For those who have not encountered these terms before, cross-platform mobile app refers to the mobile apps that can be built once and can be used on multiple mobile platforms while for a native mobile app, a separate app needs to be available for each individual mobile platform. Most of the startups try to solve this dilemma by asking themselves these questions-
What platforms are used by a majority of my users?
Which among the cross-platform and native mobile app would attract more users?
While this is what conventional wisdom recommends, this approach is no better than deciding by tossing a coin. Taking a call on which platform to choose for your mobile app is really difficult. More so because your choice can make or break your company. But, we have a way to get to the right answer here. Keep reading.
It all depends on the business you are in, let’s get into it right away.
Building a cross-platform can be an economical way to test waters and can help you grow your business without lots of investment, at the same time, getting a native app helps build a user experience which is drooling worthy.
Isn’t it a no-brainer, if a cross-platform app is cheaper, just build that and launch it in the market? There are other factors to consider as well before you take that dive. Let me take you through them.
Cost and Time
Cross platform is the clear winner here, native apps will be costlier to build and maintain as well. For native apps, the two major platforms – Android and IOS – have completely different architecture, platform and languages used, so the development effort is two-fold and maintenance and update of the apps need to done twice, once on each platform.
Cross-platform mostly uses HTML5, CSS, Javascript which is easier to learn and work with, hence the development cost is lower and maintenance and updates need to done once only for all the platform.
Time to get the apps ready also follows the same fundamentals as cost, with cross-platform apps requiring very little tweaking to be ready for both Android and ios.
Is UX Critical?
Is user experience of the app most critical part of your product? Does your product need lots of animation and graphics? If the answer to these is a yes. You should take the native route.In addition to that, both android and IOS have their individual UI characteristics, leveraging those feels natural to their users.
While a cross-platform app will get the work done, it can not promise an excellent user experience.
Do you need to access built-in capabilities of the device?
Since cross-platform apps more often than not run on web views and use devices internal browser to run the app. Any device capability that is not exposed to the browser will be difficult to be tapped into a cross-platform app.
At the same time, native apps have no problem accessing the built-in capabilities of the device e.g. microphone, Bluetooth, GPS etc.
User interaction and games
Does your app have loads of user interaction or are you creating a game?
You should invariably choose to build your apps on native platforms.
But, for a content publishing app, where you just want to serve content to your users, you can do a good job with a cross-platform app as well. So for utility, productivity apps we can safely build a cross-platform and serve users on all mobile platforms.
How does performance vary?
Cross-platform(or hybrid) apps are usually slower and less refined, which makes running a game or high-complexity app on this technology a very poor experience.
The advantage that a native app gives is their performance. Native apps are compiled into machine code(e.g. Dalvik bytecode for Android), which gives the best performance that the mobile device can afford.
While the decision to choose between a cross-platform and native mobile app is critical, we have successfully dissected the problem. Next time you are caught up in this dilemma, you can simply use the following golden rule:
If the app needs very frequent updating like news, utility, or productivity app, cross-platform is a good idea. While if your app needs – animation, videos, photos – which is resource intensive for the mobile device, building a native app will be a wiser choice in the long run.
Cross-platform is a good strategy for initial product launch where you are not sure of market acceptance of your product, but for a long lasting impression on your users, nothing beats native apps.
For those who have been through this grind, do share your experiences sharing what has worked for you and what helped you to get to the decision of choosing a particular platform in the comment section below.