Native, Responsive and Hybrid App Development: Which One Should You Choose?

During the design phase of your mobile app, at a point, you will have to make a choice about how you’ll create the app. You want to create a native app, hybrid app or a mobile responsive website. While the choice completely depends on you, whichever option you choose will affect the final product.

But you cannot make a choice just randomly. In order to make a decision it is important to know the features, importance, pros and cons of each of these development types and how will it affect the final product.

To help you make an informed choice we bring you the difference between native, web and hybrid apps.

1. Native Apps

A native app is designed to work on a specific operating system, which means that application won’t run on any other OS.

Developing native apps has several advantages like they can access every functionality of the chosen device easily and they will run properly on the device without any error. But with pros, there are disadvantages to this type. A native app cannot run on a device that doesn’t utilize the same operating system. If you want to make it work for other OS, you need to develop it separately for those operating systems. This takes both time and money. For instance, if you want your app to run on Windows, iOS 7 and Android, you’ll have to develop the app thrice, one for each OS. 

2. Hybrid Apps

 

A hybrid app works on multiple platforms or OS. Hybrid app code is written using a single standard code language (viz. C# or a combination of HTML5 and Javascript) and then consolidated to be executed on each platform.

One of the biggest advantage of hybrid app development is it takes less time and it is more cost effective because they enable support for multiple operating systems. You don’t need to develop different apps for different operating systems.

However, hybrid apps also come with several disadvantages. If the app requires complex interaction from the device - there’s a limit to what plugins can achieve on this front. Also, it is expensive as the cost of supporting a hybrid application is more than of a native application.

3. Responsive Web Apps

Typically, responsive websites is developed using HTML5 and Javascript. Usually developers take a ‘mobile first’ approach to create with the mobile version providing a simpler and pared down experience to the desktop version of the same website.

The main disadvantage is the app can be distributed through an app store. This can cause lot of revenue loss if you are planning to monetize downloads of your app. Secondly, to use the website the user will have to have proper internet connection.

To Conclude

Responsive web apps offer huge opportunity to businesses. Mobile Apps are relatively reasonable and easy to develop. Selecting the right mobile app development platform is crucial for delivering the right experience. It will be easy for you to choose between native, hybrid and responsive apps if you know the difference between these three.

Also, whether your choice will be a success or not depends on the company you choose to get your app developed from. It is always advisable to choose a best app development company in Maryland to get your app idea transformed into a successful product.