Choosing Between Native, Hybrid, and Web Apps

For the success of your business, choosing the right type of app for your business is important in the world of mobile application development. No matter whether you’re talking about native apps, hybrid apps, or web apps, each one has its advantages and disadvantages. This comprehensive guide will cover these three types of mobile apps, their pros and cons, and the key factors that will impact your decision-making process, such as app development costs, performance, UX, and time to market.

Native Apps: The Gold Standard for Performance

Native apps are written by developing on a platform – iOS or Android using platform-specific languages like Swift or Kotlin respectively. The standard languages for iOS are Swift and Objective-C, for Android, Kotlin and Java are more popular. ASO plays a crucial role in the success of these apps, as these apps are downloaded directly from app stores.

Advantages of Native Apps

• Superior Performance: Native apps are built with platform-specific tools and are written in platform-specific languages, thereby allowing the native app to leverage all the hardware and software capabilities of the device. As a result, users have faster and smoother experiences than they would with other types of apps.
• Enhanced User Experience (UX): Native apps follow the platform’s design guidelines which means that the user gets a seamless, easy-to-use experience that they expect.
• Offline Functionality: Offline capabilities differ across native apps and web apps, however, native apps most often have better ways of working offline.
• Robust Mobile App Features: Native development gives you full access to device features such as the camera, GPS, and notifications, so it’s great for feature-heavy apps.

Challenges of Native Apps

• Higher Development Costs: E expenses to development teams and specialization are high, and expenses to ensure building apps for iOS and Android are separate.
• Longer Development Time: Having two separate codebases takes longer to market.
• App Distribution Limitations: Updates and initial launch for native apps will be delayed by the approval process of app stores.

Hybrid Apps: The Balanced Approach

A hybrid app is a type of app that’s constructed on a single codebase and runs on several platforms. There are frameworks (e.g. React Native, Ionic, Flutter) for cross-platform app development. A hybrid app merges native and web apps to give a balanced approach to development.

Advantages of Hybrid Apps

• Cost-Effective: Because you are using the same codebase for iOS and Android, development costs are much lower than for native apps.
• Faster Time to Market: Mobile application development becomes faster as you have one codebase for multiple platforms.
• Simplified Maintenance: Maintaining the codebase is also simpler and the cost of doing so in the long term is lower.
• Access to Device Features: Modern frameworks like Flutter and React Native give you enough access to many device functionalities, while not as comprehensive as native apps.

Challenges of Hybrid Apps

• Performance Limitations: Depending on how graphics-intensive the task is, hybrid apps may not perform as smoothly as native apps.
• User Experience (UX): It’s not as seamless as native apps, as it’s difficult to make the UX perfect to platform-specific guidelines.
• Limited Offline Functionality: The offline capabilities offered between a native app and a framework will differ depending on the framework used.
• Framework Dependencies: Third-party frameworks are heavily relied on by hybrid apps, so performance and capabilities are tied to updates and support of the framework developers.

Web Apps: Simplicity and Accessibility

Web apps are just websites that are designed to behave like mobile apps, but they run in a web browser. Most of the time they are built using common web development technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) are a kind of web app that provide a more powerful set of features, including offline access and push notifications, making the distinction between web and mobile app functionality ambiguous.

Advantages of Web Apps

• Lower Development Costs: With a single app that runs on all devices, costs are greatly reduced. Web apps are a good fit for startups or businesses that want to test a concept.
• Responsive Design: A responsive design is usually used to build web apps that adapt to different screen sizes so that users have a consistent experience across devices.
• Instant Access and No App Store Approval: Web apps can be accessed directly in the users’ browsers without having to download them from app stores, skipping the App Store Optimization (ASO) and reviews.
• Seamless Updates: Updates are propagated to the server directly and users always have the latest version without the need to download updates.

Challenges of Web Apps

• Limited Access to Device Features: Unlike native or hybrid apps, web apps are not restricted in device functionalities, since they have limited access.
• Performance Comparison: Complex, feature-rich applications tend to perform slower in web apps than native or hybrid apps.
• User Experience (UX): This means that the web app UX may be different on the browser and on a device, and feels less integrated than a native app.
• SEO and Reach: Web apps are SEO optimizable, but they don’t have ASO, so visibility is based on web search rankings and not app store listings.

Performance Comparison: Native vs. Hybrid vs. Web Apps

Performance is one of the main factors for mobile app development. However, native apps are looking good in terms of speed and responsiveness. Being compiled with platform-specific languages and running on the device operating system itself, this is the most fluid experience, especially for animations with complex logic and high-performance tasks.

While hybrid apps are getting better with frameworks like React Native and Flutter, they still need web technologies embedded in a native shell. What this means is that although they can offer near-native performance, it is still possible that they will struggle with latency for more resource-intensive functions.

The lowest performance is provided by web apps which are dependent on the browser and internet connection. While PWA technologies have made great strides, they simply can’t compete with the speed and interactivity of native, or even hybrid, apps. Web apps can work well enough for basic applications and content-driven platforms but may be lacking in feature-rich, performance-intensive applications.

User Experience (UX): What to Consider

User Experience (UX) can really make a difference in user retention and satisfaction. Native apps offer the best UX for two reasons: they are built to each platform’s design guidelines and the UX is more seamless and intuitive. It is natural to use, thereby creating higher engagement and a better review on the platform.

Frameworks like Flutter provide a good balance between hybrid apps and native ones, as we can have near-native UI components. However, it can be hard to get the perfect UX that fits the iOS and Android guidelines. Customization may be more work, to be sure, but it is necessary to ensure that users of both platforms have a similar experience.

Despite being convenient and readily available, web apps fail to live up to that experience. Web apps are responsive in design to keep their usability across various devices, but limitations of the browser can lead to an experience that feels less integrated. Choosing which is native or hybrid in apps where UX is key tends to make sense, as with apps like financial or productivity.

Development Costs and Time to Market

When choosing between native, hybrid, and web apps, there are big development costs and time-to-market factors. The main reason that native app development is so expensive is that you have to have separate teams to develop and maintain codebases for iOS and Android. It means a longer development cycle but a better product in terms of performance and UX.

Hybrid apps are a more budget-friendly and time-efficient option. This means that businesses can save money on development time and reduce the number of codebases. Frameworks like React Native and Ionic have robust libraries and pre-built components that help speed up the development process without sacrificing much in quality.

Web apps are the cheapest and fastest way to develop. Businesses don’t need to go through app stores to deploy, so they don’t need approval. However, even with these initial savings, the features and performance limitations can be a bit too much for apps that require deep integration with device functionalities.

Final Thoughts

Depending on your project, you’ll need to decide between native apps, hybrid apps, and web apps. While the higher costs and longer development timelines make native apps more expensive, they offer the best high-performance and optimal UX if high-performance and optimal UX are critical. Hybrid apps are a good choice for a balanced approach, as they are cross-platform compatible and, most importantly, they can get you to market faster.

Oski Solutions is a company that helps businesses navigate the maze of app development, providing tailored advice and expertise on native, hybrid, and web apps. We can help you figure out if you need help with frameworks like Flutter and React Native or if you are weighing the trade-offs between development costs and UX. 

Get started building the right app that will help you achieve your goals and exceed user expectations by contacting Oski Solutions today.