Introduction
React Native is one of the top-performing multi-platform frameworks in the market. Every business owner, whether small or large, has atleast once come across the choice of deciding if React Native is the ideal framework for their cross-platform business application development. In this blog post, we will dive into the React Native Pros and Cons to help you decide if React Native is your go-to choice.
React Native Pros and Cons
React Native is a popular JavaScript-based mobile app framework that enables the development of mobile applications on multiple platforms, including iOS and Android. Though React Native outperforms many cross-platform frameworks within the market, it has its own advantages and disadvantages. You can Hire React Native App developer from Bacancy to learn how React Native can benefit your business, based on which you can make the right choice for your next mobile app development project.
Pros of React Native
Business owners often face a dilemma if React Native vs Native Development is the right choice for their business applications. However, looking at the React Native pros and cons, we will help you make the right call, starting with React Native pros.
Faster Development
React Native enables the development of multi-platform applications using a single codebase with little or no alterations. It also provides many add-on components that help speed up the development process, making it ideal for MVP development. You can quickly deploy and test within the market to gain user feedback and suggestions and make informed decisions and improvements. This process saves both time and resources.
Easy Learning Curve for React Developers
For developers who are already familiar with React, understanding and learning React Native is a breeze. The core concepts and syntax are similar, which enables the React developers to transition quickly and become productive with the React Native app development.
Quick OTA Updates
React Native apps can receive updates “over-the-air” without app store approval for minor changes. This allows for faster bug fixes and feature rollouts, keeping your users engaged with the latest version. The OTA updates area is downloaded automatically to the user’s device during the startup screen. The updates here only work with the JavaScript bundles; making more notable changes has to be examined by your digital distribution services before launch.
Cross-Platform Functionality
React Native was first launched for the iOS platform only. Still, with its growing popularity and the comprehensive set of features that it offers, Meta platforms made a call to introduce it to Android platforms as well. React Native follows the develop once, deploy twice approach, meaning React Native lets you build a single codebase that works on Android and iOS. This saves time and resources and helps maintain a consistent user experience across platforms.
Fast Refresh
With React Native, you get total freedom from waiting for code changes to reflect within your application. The fast refresh feature lets you see and observe the updates instantly, leading to a more streamlined development process.
Single Team Working on Multi-Platforms
With React Native, you can ditch the need for separate development teams for Android and iOS platforms. A single team with React Native expertise can handle both platforms, improving communication and project management and making launching the app within the market easier and faster.
Efficient Native-Like Performance
React Native is cross-platform but is ideally efficient in offering native-like development, bridging the gap between cross-platform and native development. Your development team can quickly achieve smooth performance that rivals native applications, keeping the users happy and engaged. However, to achieve this performance as a native, your development team has to put extra effort into the JavaScript code.
Simple and Almost Native UI
React Native uses native UI components to render the app, ensuring a familiar and seamless experience for users on both Android and iOS. React Native leverages declarative programming, which is generally outdated in the order of implementing the actions; this makes it easier to find the bugs during the development process.
Live and Hot Reloading
React Native supports both Live and Hot Reloading, though they fall differently from each other. Live Reloading is like restarting the entire computer each time you make a change, which makes it tedious and more time-consuming. However, with Hot Reloading, you only have to update the specific parts you have changed and see the changes in real time without restarting the app; this saves time and resources.
Extensive Community
React Native is an open-source platform, and thus, it benefits from a large and active developer community that contributes its expertise and experience to the framework’s development. This also allows you access to many resources, tutorials, and forums to help you troubleshoot problems and find solutions. We can also realize this popularity based on GitHub, which boasts 115k Stars and 23.8k Forks in React Native. Also, according to StackOverflow, on March 18, 2024, there are 136,727 active questions.
Cons of React Native
As we just observed, React Native is a powerhouse of pros that come alongside with it, however, it is not a definitive reason to choose React Native for your business app as it has its own set of challenges:
Compatibility and Debugging Issues
The React Native applications rely on a bridge for communication with the native modules. The bridge can sometimes lead to compatibility issues and debugging challenges, especially on older devices, which hampers overall functionality and performance.
Upgrading Issues
Upgrading React Native itself or third-party libraries can sometimes introduce compatibility issues with your applications as relying on third-party, and often, the libraries are deprecated. Staying on top of updates requires careful planning and testing before you move ahead with the process.
Lack of Custom Modules
While React Native offers a rich set of pre-built components, there might be situations where you need highly customized functionalities specific to a platform. Developing these custom modules requires native development expertise, which is critical for your business applications.
Need for Native Developers
Despite code reuse, complex features or interactions might require native development skills to bridge the gap between JavaScript and the underlying platform. Though React Native is a cross-platform framework, this drawback generally voids the overall reason for the cross-platform functionality.
Requires More Focus on Performance
While React Native offers good performance, achieving optimal results might require more effort than purely native development. Optimizing performance is especially crucial for complex apps with multiple features and functionalities. Also, the codes across platforms require separate bud fixing and performance improvements to ensure optimal performance across iOS and Android platforms.
Few Third-Party Components
While the library is growing, compared to native development frameworks, React Native might have fewer third-party libraries and components readily available for use. Many third-party libraries being maintained by the community can at any time be deprecated, which would hamper the overall functionality of your app, as you would be required to ideally move ahead with the older version or find a new library that fulfills the said requirement.
Feature Lag
Since React Native relies on native APIs, there might be a lag in adopting the latest platform features compared to purely native apps. This leads to hiccups during your development phase, which again goes against having a single codebase.
Conclusion
React Native offers a powerful solution for building cross-platform apps quickly and efficiently. However, it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution due to the need for native expertise and components under various circumstances. If you are a business owner, consider your project’s specific needs, development team expertise, and desired functionalities before making the final call. By understanding React Native pros and cons, you can make an informed decision and leverage its strengths to build successful mobile applications that outperform the expectations of your end-users.
