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Sara Suarez
Sara Suarez

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Ionic App Development - The Pros and Cons in 2023

A decade ago, not enough options were available for mobile application development. Businesses used to develop two separate applications for Android and iOS mobile platforms. This simply means that two different development teams and two codebases were required resulting in high expenses and more development time. However, things have changed completely these days. Today, instead of developing two native applications, you can go for a cross-platform app that works smoothly across all the mobile platforms. The real challenge is to find out the best cross-platform application development framework since there the options are in abundance. If you are also in a conundrum about what cross-platform app development framework you should opt for, read this insightful piece right away until the end.

Amid all the cross-platform frameworks, Ionic has been making waves across the world. Built on top of Apache Cordova (formerly known as PhoneGap) and AngularJS, this open-source mobile UI toolkit is leveraged by Ionic app development services for building advanced and highly-functional cross-platform applications. Thanks to the single code base of Ionic, written in Angular, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, which makes it shareable up to 90% across the major mobile OS. Now, let’s take a quick peek at some pros and cons of Ionic app development.

Pros of Ionic Framework

1. Developer-friendly

Ionic allows mobile app developers to build applications in a quick turnaround time. Having sound knowledge of JavaScript frameworks, HTML, CSS, and Angular makes cross-platform application development a breeze. For an Ionic app development company, it is easier to switch to this open-source framework for developing robust and scalable hybrid mobile applications.

2. Better UX/UI

UI/UX is the core fundamental of mobile apps that determine their success or failure. The best part of choosing Ionic over other cross-platform frameworks is that it offers a host of eye-catchy themes, designs, and smooth animations that are highly customizable. Furthermore, Ionic is recognized as a frontend framework (UI interaction) since it contains Angular, JS, CSS, and HTML. This enables user-friendly and interactive application development.

3. Cordova plugins

Another great advantage of the Ionic framework is that it leverages Cordova plugins that enable web designers and developers to access different components and features such as Flashlight, GPS, Camera, and many more. When you hire Ionic app developers, they will utilize these plugins to build feature-rich applications.

4. Trusted by enterprises and loved by developers

Today, over 5 million developers in more than 200 nations across the globe are using the Ionic framework for mobile app development. Not just this, brands both small and large trust this framework. Some of the top brands that love the Ionic framework include Nasa, Mastercard, General Electric (GE), McLaren Automotive, MarketWatch, McDonald’s Turkiye, Sworkit, and many others.

5. Supported by an active community of experts

Ionic is actively supported by a strong community of seasoned developers. Since this framework is free and open-source, anyone can make their contribution and help in improving it. That’s why this app development framework has been evolving incessantly and becoming better day by day.

Cons of Ionic Framework

  • Not ideal for developing a gaming application
  • Builds can crash randomly with no reason
  • Building in-app navigation using Ionic can be challenging
  • Native plugins may conflict with each other and aren't stable as well
  • Security issues can be a concern and you have to deal with it
  • Debugging of mobile applications developing using the Ionic framework can be challenging.
  • Performance won't meet native mobile applications. In short, Ionic mobile apps are slower.

Final Words

After going through the pros and cons of Ionic, hope, you can easily decide whether you should choose this cross-platform framework for your mobile application development or not. If you think this framework is ideal for your business needs and want to go ahead with this, it’s wise to hire Ionic app developers from a trusted company.

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