The continued growth in the app market has created a surge in the adoption of various cross-platform app development frameworks. Cross-platform app development has plenty of perks that play a huge role in its popularity today. As its reach increased, many app development frameworks and tools started to float in the market. And today, every other mobile app development company is attempting to get its hands on this unique and intriguing technology.
Cross-platform app development is a business-savvy way to effectively handle customer needs. Using this approach, you can quickly create solutions that run seamlessly on multiple platforms such as iOS, Android, and Windows. According to a statistical forecast, the global app market will generate about $437 billion in total revenue by 2022.
You, as a developer, might find the plethora of these tools and frameworks to be daunting. So, we’ll round up a list of the top best cross-platform app development tools in 2023 as well as their features. Hopefully, by the end of this blog, we’ll be proved helpful in your quest of finding the most ideal cross-platform app development frameworks.
What Is Cross-Platform App Development Framework?
As the name suggests, cross-platform app development is an approach that allows building a mobile solution that is compatible with multiple platforms such as Android, iOS, Windows, etc. simultaneously. Using this framework, developers do not need to code separately for each platform. Instead, they only need to code once for the app to run effectively on all platforms.
Moreover, it is the most popular type of framework today with which all the apps of the future are likely to be built. However, cross-platform app development frameworks possess the below benefits and challenges.
Benefits
- Single sharable code
- Native look and feel
- Quick development
- Cost-effectiveness
- Wider audience
Challenges
- Performance issues
- Updating delay
- Limited functionality
- Poor app design
10 Best Cross-Platform App Development Tools and Frameworks
Whether you want to create an educational app, entertainment app, or more, it’s crucial to pick the best framework. Here’s a list of 10 top-tier cross-platform mobile app development frameworks most frequently used in 2023.
Ionic
Ionic is one of the best cross-platform app development frameworks that run on AngularJS. It uses a library of programming languages including JavaScript, HTML5, CSS, and Cordova wrapper to build highly interactive apps. Besides, this open-source front-end framework enables developers to create an impeccably creative user interface with user-friendly app features.
Features
- Runs on AngularJS making it easy to imbibe useful features and components into the app
- Based on the SAAS UI framework designed specifically for mobile operating systems
- Uses Cordova plugins that allow access to the devices’ inbuilt features such as GPS, camera, etc.
- Give a native-like feel to the apps
React Native
React Native is also among the best cross-platform app development frameworks built by Facebook. It is open-source, lightweight, quick, and robust for creating mobile applications for Android, iOS, Web, and UWP. When it comes to Flutter vs React Native, developers often pick React Native due to its large inclusive library. Besides, the ability to give cross-platform mobile apps native platform features is the main benefit of adopting React Native.
Features
- React-based, which features some of the top JavaScript libraries available
- Highly compatible with third-party plugins such as Google Maps
- Requires one-time coding that eventually lessens the development time
- Apps built with this tool are known for having a pleasant UI/UX
Flutter
Flutter framework is a Google-owned, open-source tool that has gained massive ground in the app development market. Moreover, it is one of those cross-platform app development frameworks that allow the creation of high-performance applications for iOS, Android, Linux, Fuchsia, macOS, and Windows from a single codebase.
Features
- Promotes portable GPU to execute graphics code from the Flutter engine
- Eliminates the need to update apps’ UI components manually
- Great tool for developing MVPs because it matches speed with cost-effectiveness
- Easily traces code changes when remaking a widget tree
Xamarin
Xamarin is another one of the free, leading, open-source cross-platform app development tools. Xamarin-based solutions are compatible with Android, iOS, and Windows. They build apps with the help of C# and .NET, instead of HTML or JS libraries. Besides, it allows developers to use 90% of the code for developing apps for different platforms.
Features
- Uses C#, a modern cross-platform app development language highly compatible with Visual Studio
- The tool is effective at removing hardware compatibility issues
- The framework makes it simple for developers to employ third-party codebases via the incorporation of Objective-C, C++, and Java
- Native libraries give the freedom of native-level customization
- Speeds up and minimizes the cost of app development due to compile-time checking
Appcelerator Titanium
Appcelerator is a Titanium SDK development framework and online platform for creating robust mobile APIs. It creates native and cross-platform mobile apps using just a single code base. By using native components found in JavaScript code, it primarily aims to accelerate the app development process and work following the trends in mobile apps.
Features
- Appcelerator is a powerful tool that includes real-time analytics, benchmarking, data testing, code reusing, database integrations, and more
- It includes ArrowDB, a schema-less data store that enables developers to deploy data models with no further setup work
- It makes it possible to integrate current continuous delivery systems, such as SCM solutions and more
NativeScript
NativeScript is a free cross-platform framework based on JavaScript. It is a preferable choice for developers in search of the WORA (write once, run anywhere) functionality to work on the trends in mobile apps. Additionally, it provides access to all native APIs, enabling developers to incorporate pre-existing plugins directly from NPM into their applications.
Features
- It has a complete web resource that comes loaded with plugins of all kinds of solutions
- Customizable UI to fit specific screens and devices
- Easy access to native Android and iOS APIs, thus, eliminating the need for additional knowledge of native programming languages
Node.js
Another well-liked cross-platform app development tool that can run code outside of a web browser is Node.js. It is based on the ChromeV8 JavaScript engine. Besides, scalable networking applications, as well as server-side development, are its prime uses.
Features
- It supports asynchronous programming as servers running Node.js do not wait for API data
- Comes with a huge library of JavaScript modules that help simplify the development process
- It also includes libraries and buffers classes like stream buffers to facilitate quick access to upstream data
Corona SDK
Corona SDK is a popular framework based on the scripting language Lua. The language is designed with speed, portability, flexibility, scalability, and ease of use in mind as its primary development considerations. Also, the Corona SDK enables 10X faster development of 2D mobile game apps.
Features
- It has over 1000 APIs giving developers the ability to sprite animations, audio/music, Box2D physics, native elements, etc.
- Corona SDK supports real-time testing
- Features 200+ plugins, including media, hardware features, analytics, and in-app advertising
Sencha Touch
Sencha is a well-known, reliable, HTML-based, cross-platform app development framework for building mobile user experience and interfaces and web/mobile applications using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. Sencha/Sencha Touch focuses on the creation of touch-based applications for iOS, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms.
Features
- Famous for providing built-in native-looking themes for all major platforms
- It has a large code as well as a component library
- Loaded with customizable and 50+ built-in UI widgets
- Utilizes hardware acceleration to boost performance and provide the fastest possible operating speed
PhoneGap
Adobe Phone Gap is yet another cross-platform tool and open-source distribution of Apache Cordova. It makes use of HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript to produce impeccable cross-platform apps almost indistinguishable from native mobile apps. Additionally, Phone Gap has features and capabilities beyond those of Apache Cordova to build apps of the future.
Features
- Supports in-built device features such as GPS, camera, phonebook, storage, etc.
- Uses existing web technologies like HTML 5, CSS3, and JavaScript to construct cross-platform apps
- It has a plugin-able design, which means that the access to native device APIs may be expanded in a scalable way
The Final Words
In this blog, we have listed the 10 top-tier frameworks for cross-platform app development in 2023. All of these are built with efficiency and scalability in mind. But which one will be the best fit for your business?
There is no simple solution. Instead, it all depends on your business needs as well as the app features you wish to incorporate.
So, to gain the favorable outcomes of cross-platform app development, you need to avail of app development services by qualified app developers only!
