Native vs Cross-Platform Mobile Development: What’s Right For Your Business?

When building a mobile application for your business, one of the big decisions is development approach. While development approach is a relatively broad topic and developing a mobile application is a pretty complex endeavour, here we’re talking about the choice to develop a mobile application natively or to go with a cross-platform approach.

Deciding on native development or cross-platform development isn’t an easy decision. There are pros and cons to each approach, and making the right decision is very dependent on what the mobile app is, what the market is, and more.

Here at Red Crow Digital, we have experience in both native and cross-platform development. While we’re always happy to provide tailored advice for your app, this article will explore some of the broader considerations for mobile app development when it comes to deciding between native and cross-platform.

What Is Native Development?

Native development involves building separate applications for different platforms. In the world of mobile applications, this generally means building your application for Android or iOS. These two platforms use different languages and tools designed for them: Java and Kotlin for Android, Swift for iOS.

We’re not going to go into Android versus iOS development, but we will go into the advantages and disadvantages of native development.

Advantages of native development

Performance: natively developed mobile applications tend to have better performance as they’re optimised for that specific platform.
User Experience: most platforms have specific design guidelines for the platform itself as well as the language being used. Native development allows design that adheres to the platform guidelines and provides a more consistent and fluid experience for the user.
Access to Features: since the mobile app is being developed with the specific platform in mind, developers have access to and are able to take advantage of first-class device capabilities and platform specific APIs.

Disadvantages of native development

Cost: since different codebases must be used and maintained, it’s usually more expensive in terms of development time and general resources.
Development Time: building and maintaining separate applications for each platform can often take longer because you’re doing a number of tasks twice.

What Is Cross-Platform Development?

Cross-platform development refers to creating the core of a mobile application in a single language such as JavaScript (and maybe using further frameworks like React Native). Once the core of the mobile app is created, it can then be compiled to run on various platforms or run through an interpreter. This allows developers to work in a single language rather than building the mobile app across multiple languages (as is done in native development), so developers can work in a language they specialise in without having to resort to multiple teams.

Naturally, cross-platform development has its advantages and disadvantages as well.

Advantages of cross-platform development

Cost Effective: since the bulk of the work is being done on a single code base, development time, and therefore cost, is reduced.
Faster Time to Market: by leveraging shared code, developers can often deliver apps more quickly.
Easier Maintenance: a single codebase usually means easier updates and maintenance.

Disadvantages of cross-platform development

Performance: cross-platform mobile apps may suffer from reduced performance when compared to mobile apps because the code isn’t specific to the given platform.
User Experience: a cross-platform developed mobile app may not fully adhere to the design principles of each platform. This can lead to a potentially inconsistent user experience.
Limited Access to Features: some newer features that are unique to a given platform may not be accessible with cross-platform languages, or they may require a native specific module.

Ultimately, It Depends on Your Mobile App

Making the right choice between native and cross-platform development can be difficult, especially if you’re just in the ideation phase of your project. Ultimately the decision depends on various factors such as the project requirements, budget, timeline, and desired user experience.

Native development may be preferable to performance-critical apps that require deep integration with the platform’s features. In contrast, cross-platform development might be more suitable for projects that need to be developed quickly and in a cost effective manner. But you need a willingness to trade off some performance and platform-specific optimisations.

While this article should be a good starting point for your considerations on what development approach to take, ultimately you’ll need to speak to some experts. Whatever phase you’re in for your mobile app project, feel free to get in touch to discuss it with us.