Native Application or Hybrid Application-Which is the right choice?

In the present era our world is viewed through the glasses of technology and we are trying to enhance everything using it. In this tech savvy, mobile first world we are trying to revolutionize and make our lives easier by indulging smartphones in every possible way.

According to The International Telecommunication Union "Over five billion mobile subscribers about 77% of the world’s population are most of the time online", these high stats of mobile users to be this active on the world wide web is made possible by the seamless and wide range of Applications. Mobile Applications are now considered to be the most severe usage of smartphones, these vast genres of applications can do everything and anything from booking a seat on a flight to getting a cab anytime.

There are endless advantages of Mobile Applications but it often gets mind boggling for a non-techie entrepreneur to decide even the first step for getting a Mobile Application developed. The moment you decide to get an application developed, there are many vital scenarios that are faced where you have to make many important decisions concerning the success of your application and in course the success of your business. The decisions to be made are of distinct categories, incorporating-Technical, business, design, marketing, branding and all of them carries a certain weight and impact towards the success of your app.

The first and the foremost most decision is to decide the platform on which the Application is to be built on. It's an integral part of development, changing your mind about the platform, technology or app type late in the development process can undo hundreds of hours of work and exponentially increase the overall costs. But if you get them right immediately, you will speed up your app development and benefit in the long run.

So, Let's dive in to know more about Application and its types,

Mobile Applications are broadly divided into 3 categories, which are

1. Web Applications

2. Native Applications

3. Hybrid Applications

We'll give a brief intro to Web Applications and let go of it as the title fairly says the blog is about Native Applications and Hybrid Application and which of the two have upper hand and WHY?

Web Application

According to Wikipedia, "a Web Application or Web App is a client–server computer program in which the client (including the user interface and client-side logic) runs in a web browser" ,web applications can also be explained as the Apps which aren't real applications; they are really websites that in many ways, look and feel like native applications, but are not implemented as such. They are run by a browser and typically written in HTML5. Users first access them as they would access any web page: they navigate to a special URL and then have the option of “installing” them on their home screen by creating a bookmark to that page.

We'll further proceed with topics of our interest and would discuss them thoroughly.  

What is Native App?

When applications are built for a specific operating system (OS) and can be accessed only from the dedicated app store. For example, if you want to develop an application for iOS, it needs to be developed on swift and no other operating systems can access it. Same is with an Android application, it can only be accessed by Android users and is developed using Java, Windows, C++ etc. whereas app meant for an iOS application uses XCode/Objective-C etc. These applications are usually comparatively expensive and time-consuming, as complete development process happens for a specific app store at a time.

What is Hybrid App?

Contradictory to Native Applications, A hybrid app is designed to work on multiple platforms. It’s written using a single standard code language (such as C# or a combination of HTML5 and Javascript) and then compiled to be executed on each platform. Device specific interactions will normally be managed by the use of plugins for that operating system. The biggest advantage of developing a hybrid app is consistent, cross platform UI that is compatible with most devices. This is less expensive app development method but cannot be used for can't be used in all type of App.

The choice of right Application can make your business reach zenith but when deciding between which app you should get, it’s important to consider the different factors related to your business as required

Some of the factors are mentioned that should be considered when choosing the correct Application for your business or your product

Development Time

Hybrid Apps can be created at much faster speed than that of Native Apps using HTML, CSS, Javascript, Mobile App Development Framework (such as Ionic, Phone Gap etc). Building a hybrid app means maintaining just one code whereas with native code you need an app developer for each platform using Objective-C, iOS SDK, Java, Android SDK.

Development and Maintenance Cost

Both the costs are much higher for a hybrid application. Since it is built exclusively for each platform. Hybrid apps take are developed at a fairly cheaper price as compared to the native app and even the maintenance cost for hybrid application is much lesser.

Free or Paid App

Since UI of Native Apps is far better than Hybrid Apps. So the paid applications are usually considered to be built on Native and due to exquisite interface and user-friendly feature that can be customized according to the consumers and they don’t mind to pay a little for it even.

User Experience

Everything comes down to whether users like the Application or not and its success is based on it. Native Applications provides exclusively tailored experience for different platforms and is really fast to load while Hybrid Applications are slow and crashes often as they aren't device dedicated. Due to lagging in these areas Hybrid Applications aren't mostly considered if application plays a vital role for anyone's business.

Some of the questions that need to be answered for considering the right Application

Should the quality of the application or time of development be considered?

We as a user don't care about the type of Application or the time or money that has been indulged in its development but what matters the most is the experience that the application provides to the users. The best user experience as is mentioned above can only be provided by Native App. If your firm has around 6 months time before the release of your Application. Go for Native Application without a doubt else you can choose otherwise and can go for Hybrid App.

Which application is easy to take care of after you have released the Application?

With a hybrid application, unless a company adds a totally new feature that dramatically changes the user experience, the user doesn’t need to update the app in the app store. If the update in question is on a page that is loaded from the server, as the user navigates through your app they will instantly see the update. It’s that simple.

In contrast, for native applications, the user needs to update the app to see the changes. For most users who set up auto-updates when their phones are on wi-fi, this is acceptable, but it doesn’t work for everyone. Nobody wants to exasperate their user by having him/her update the app every month or so. It attracts unnecessary negative attention to the app which could make the user to simply uninstall it.

Additionally, when you’re deciding whether to go native or hybrid, you need to bear in mind that native has certain advantages which simply aren’t currently supported by the hybrid mode of development. The following graphic was designed to give you access to the most important native benefits that are simply not (yet) fully optimized for a hybrid approach.

 After having the whole discussion, we can say there are distinct advantages and disadvantages of both the types of applications. But Native Apps have the upper hand any day. Hybrid Applications have its own advantages be it being less expensive or taking far lesser time and efforts for development. It totally depends on what role does application plays for your business, if it has a major role in your firm's development go for Native App and spare a few extra pennies without batting an eye but if it doesn't play such huge consideration than you can go for Hybrid App.RW Infotech is a award wining top web development, web design, digital marketing & mobile app development services provider. We have a team of professional web developers/designers, UI/UX experts, Digital Marketers. We are a dedicated bunch of tech enthusiasts, who would love to help you have all types of Web Applications and much more.