JavaScript in Plain English

New JavaScript and Web Development content every day. Follow to join our 3.5M+ monthly readers.

Follow publication

Is React Native A Good Choice For A Startup?

Sophia Martin
JavaScript in Plain English
8 min readDec 4, 2020

--

Starting up a business is more like driving a sports car that ensures you fun and triggers excitement. But soon that excitement can be turned into blunder if your car is running out of fuel before it reaches the final destination. So to successfully win the race, you need a vehicle and engine that comes with it wisely.

Making a decision to develop a mobile application also goes in the same way! And this piece of the blog will guide you choosing React Native platform for your startup is a worthy decision.

While selecting the best framework for your startup app development is a battle that has outgrown since the day having your presence on Android and iOS platforms has become the urgent need of the hour.

So, I did a market survey and find that a significant amount of businesses are using React Native App development solutions!

And it turns out React Native is one of the leading technologies used by 42% of developers in 2020 from all across the globe when it comes to developing a cross-platform application for your business.

Image Source

Despite being launched in 2015, React Native has become a popular framework due to its cost-effectiveness and outstanding features that empower developers to build a highly interactive and engaging application for your business.

React Native is indeed a great cross-platform framework for creating mobile apps that seamlessly run on multiple platforms by leveraging the basic principle of “Write Once Run Anywhere”.

Another fact that I’ve discovered is that React Native brings a greate choice of widgets that allow developers to migrate the fully developed Native mobile application into a React Native application without integrating any third-party APIs.

With all these facts, it won’t be wrong to say that React Native has become the most popular technologies in a short span of time that even industry giants including Netflix, Facebook and more, have started using this framework.

That’s not all! This blog has rounded up everything that helps startups to make an informed decision to develop a mobile application.

How To Make An Informed Decision Whether Using a React Native Platform For Startup’s Mobile App?

  • Understand the Basics of React Native
  • When to Consider Choosing React Native?
  • Positive Potentials and Downside of React Native

Let’s elaborate and understand each point in detail:

1. Overview of React Native: Understanding The Basics of this Framework

React Native is a Popular open-source cross-platform app development framework that is maintained and launched by Facebook in March 2015. Being integrated with various features and a wide choice of plugins, React Native works like an engine for your startup’s app and allows the developer to save 40% to 80% of development time with the framework. And final cost estimation is largely based on how many hours a development team has devoted to the project.

In addition, React Native is based on JavaScript that is widely used to create the beautiful user interface of the app. This framework has a set of components for Android as well as iOS that allow startups to build a mobile app with a native look and feel.

2. When to Consider Choosing React Native?

Choosing the right technology for your app development is one of the most complicated tasks. But, with a clear understanding of the estimated budget, needs and available time of the framework, you can easily determine how perfectly React Native fits your needs.

  • React Native Can be a Great Choice if:

You already have an iOS/Android application, then you can easily change it to React Native in a quick turnaround. Developers don’t have to re-write the entire coding, which makes migration a lot easier, faster and efficient.

  • You Need to Create MVP Fast:

Having a million-dollar app idea is not enough, you must test it in real market conditions. So for that, you can create MVP with React Native in the quick time frame.

  • You have a Strict Deadlines:

When it comes to developing an app for a startup, you need to move fast to keep your step ahead in the competitive market. And it’s not about developing MVPs. It’s about making constant changes and updates with least efforts and in quick time limits.

  • You Have a Limited Budget:

When developing an application, the project cost is one of the most important concerns for investors. And, having just an idea about the minimum budget is not enough for the businesses. At least you need MVP, but with various technologies, there is a chance of getting out of the budget before you complete the development process. But React Native will minimize this risk and help you save a great amount on app development solutions.

3. Positive Potential & Downsides of Choosing React Native for Startup’s App development

Now gone are those factions that you need to battle with while choosing between native or hybrid applications. With React Native, now developers can bypass the faction of choosing between Native or Hybrid apps by leveraging the same coding blocks developers can create an application for multiple platforms including iOS, Android and more.

Apart, here are the few reasons why choosing React Native for startup’s app development is a worthy decision:

Positive Potential of Choosing React Native for Startup’s App development

  • Reusable UI Component To Expedite Development Process

While developing an application with React Native for your startup, the first thing that you need to focus is to define the UI components which will appear at the different areas of the app. And these components are basically reusable blocks that work the same across Android and iOS platforms.

Each component has its own logic and control, so reusing some of the components also makes app development and maintenance easier and faster for the developers. And in case, there are changes in any component, all you need to do in just one place and it takes effect everywhere.

  • Compatibility to Support 3rd Party Plugins

Being an open-source platform, React Native supports the integration of 3rd party plugins for the app development. With the compatibility of the 3rd party plug-in, developers can easily use 3rd party libraries to enhance the functionalities and eliminate the risk of developing the complex functionalities right from the scratch.

  • Multiple Platform Compatibility

Developing a cross-platform mobile application has become an urgent need of the hour, and React Native can be a perfect approach to create your startup application. React Native app development solutions can be developed in half of the time that you spend on building two native apps. This framework allows developers to develop a code that is compatible with all platforms including Android, iOS, and Windows.

  • Availability of Talent Pool

Finding the best mobile app developer is another challenging job for businesses. While React Native is pretty easy to learn, as it is based on one of the pretty old programming languages- JavaScript. Therefore, it is easier to find React Native developers. According to the survey report, 67% of developers are using JavaScript for app development, therefore, it is pretty much easier to hire an developer with the capabilities to handle React Native Framework in no time.

  • Hot Reloading to Tenfold App Development Speed

Hot reloading is the most potential reason for using React Native as it allows developers to make instant changes in the app code even while it is running. This feature of React Native makes it highly popular as it tenfold the app development speed because there is no need for saving the file after changes. The app can automatically reload the changes whether it is still up or running.

  • Lower Development Cost

React Native majorly focuses on “Writing once and running anywhere” on multiple platforms, therefore, it takes less time to develop an application as compared to the native app development approach. In addition, if you are developing a mobile app with typical features, then also React Native developers can successfully build your entire mobile application for both platforms even at the same cost that you invest to develop a native app for a single platform.

  • Stability and Credibility of the Framework

All thanks to the huge community of the active users and Facebook for its continuous support, that makes React Native a very stable framework. In fact, the most leading social media applications including Facebook and Instagram are itself using this framework for the mobile application.

In addition, a team of Facebook consistently works on the framework to keep improving it and launch new features and functionalities to developers. Overall, all these practices leave a positive impact on businesses and encourage them to hire React Native developer.

Potential Downsides of Choosing React Native for Startup’s App Development

There is no framework that exists in the industry with all the rainbows and butterflies, so React Native also has some flaws that startups should understand before making a final decision. However, these downsides are nothing, if you will evaluate it with its benefits:

  • Performance Is Not As High As Native Apps

While React Native apps perform pretty good if it is developed with the native approach. But developers have to be very careful with React Native development since it’s common to make mistakes during development and it will directly affect the app’s performance.

However, if you are comparing it with the native applications, then surely there is a difference in-app performance as native apps are solely developed with the dedicated codebase. But, at the same time, you can’t ignore the fact that native apps take double development time and cost.

  • Complex App Scalability

Making changes in the code base is fairly easy with Hot Reloading, but keeping the cross-platform app updated with latest versions of React Native is a big challenge for developers. While Native apps are developed for a single platform, so making changes according to the platform is much easier.

But on the other hand, the giant applications including Facebook, Instagram, Netflix and many more are built using React Native. And, it won’t be wrong to say that the scalability of React Native App is enough to sustain most upgrades.

So there is a scope of making updates in the cross-platform applications, but all you need to do is to keep in mind the architecture of your mobile app. The complexity of integrating updates in the app is depending upon the way you have built your application, another scalability will be a serious challenge for the developers.

Conclusion

Undoubtedly, React Native is an optimum choice of the framework if you want to go quickly to the market with the scalable, robust and feature-rich solution that is perfectly built at a lesser cost.

Since, React Native solutions ensure you high performance, compatible to develop heavily animated yet complex apps by leveraging the wide choice of widgets, therefore, majority of the developers are choosing this framework for the app development. Rest above mentioned key points are fairly enough to explain why React Native is an appropriate technology and a great add on the success of a startup. However, still, we recommend you to analyse everything before choosing the react native mobile app development company for your project.

Sign up to discover human stories that deepen your understanding of the world.

Free

Distraction-free reading. No ads.

Organize your knowledge with lists and highlights.

Tell your story. Find your audience.

Membership

Read member-only stories

Support writers you read most

Earn money for your writing

Listen to audio narrations

Read offline with the Medium app

--

--

Published in JavaScript in Plain English

New JavaScript and Web Development content every day. Follow to join our 3.5M+ monthly readers.

Written by Sophia Martin

Sr. Business Analyst & Tech Writer— Xicom.biz | Write on Trending Technologies | Sr. IT Consultant. 14+ Years of Exp. | LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2TVwiBW

No responses yet

Write a response