With a varied range of Mobile Application Development Tools available, choosing the mobile app development tools for your project is an important one-time investment. Given that the app development tools play a crucial role in the mobile landscape and cross-platform app development, the selection of an appropriate tool becomes essential.
Making a wrong choice and choosing an inappropriate tool not only impacts the quality of your deliverable but can also burn a hole in your budget. That is why we decided to evaluate different mobile app development tools and rate them for you. In this article, we try to sum up the pros and cons of the top 5 mobile app development tools in an effort to make your choice easier.
Top 5 Mobile App Development Tools
Through Appcelerator, the app development process gets a move on by letting the developers create apps as quickly as possible in iOS, Android, Windows, and browser-based HTML5 applications. Irrespective of the native or cross-platform application, this tool can be one of the best choices for developing reliable mobile applications.
- Appcelerator is better for rapid application development. It helps developers to quickly build a prototype of the app in an easy way to evaluate the user interaction with the UI. ArrowDB, the schema-less data store available with Appcelerator lets you deploy data models with zero setup efforts.
- Appcelerator’s Titanium uses JavaScript and XML to build native and hybrid mobile applications which are also useful in building mobile web apps.
- This mobile app development tool facilitates a seamless integration to existing SCM and MDM solutions.
- This tool is equipped with pre-built connectors for MS Azure, MS SQL, Salesforce, MongoDB, Box, etc.,
- Since this tool’s code is platform targeted, it ensures easy usage and enhanced performance.
- Also, the Open Mobile Marketplace available in Appcelerator connects the vast community of developers and users, where they can buy, sell, and share the templates, modules, as well as extensions.
- This mobile app development tool is said to be little laggy, and there may be SDK related issues due to versions. However, this can be chosen based on the importance, objectives, and strategies of your project.
Xamarin is a mono framework, which enables communication with the API of mobile devices, and it also reuses business logic layers and data access across platforms. Xamarin believes in collaboration, and so, it allows the developers to select from a host of free and paid components. This tool can be preferred for native applications.
- Sample apps that are available in Xamarin help you to get started easily and quickly.
- By using Xamarin, you can curtail not just the development cost, but also the TTM as most of the code can be shared across major mobile platforms.
- Xamarin supports functionality testing and quality monitoring across a wide range of devices. It does have its Android emulator.
- Xamarin tends to result in fewer bugs and provides faster time to market.
- It also allows mobile application developers to create scalable and robust applications with the help of its QA and testing features.
- Xamarin allows the user for Android App Development and iOS app development through C# and .NET framework.
- Backends like Microsoft Azure, Salesforce, and others can be integrated easily with Xamarin.
- Though this Mobile app development tool allows the users to reuse the coding across different platforms, UI development is more time-consuming. Also, there is a marked delay in support from this Mobile App Development Company.
This MVC-based JavaScript framework is the next-gen tool that has a unique ability to use it through the touch of fingertips. It is one of the effective tools available for developing native apps without any loss of time. It has improvised the user-friendly interface, which enhanced the use of the tool. These offer a high level of responsiveness for your application, and that would help you to improve your customer satisfaction.
- Allows for a built-in native-looking theme for every major platform.
- Sencha supports Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, and much more.
- Sencha’s backend data package works independently with different data sources.
- It supports PhoneGap/Cordova integration for native API access and packaging.
- Importantly, this particular mobile app development tool comes with high-performance UI widgets.
- However, users argue that Sencha is not as same as the native applications in speed and performance.
This mobile app development tool is an open-source tool comprised of a compiler, debugger, and testing tools. Web technologies (HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript) are at the core of PhoneGap. The app development tool was released as the software with the name, Apache Cordova. The application built on this tool enables the supervisors to stay connected with their workforce.
- An application built with PhoneGap makes instant messaging and instant progress available to the users, which helps them in getting the updates with no time.
- Since, the web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript are at the core of PhoneGap; it can assist the developers in making use of their existing skills only.
- Code reusability across multiple as well as different OS enables in decreasing the time-to-market. It supports in-app purchases across the App Store as well.
- Phonegap possesses a plugin-able architecture that helps you to create featured apps with the utilization of the device’s capabilities through APIs.
- Though the mobile app development tool is one of the best in terms of functionality and flexibility, it comes with some cons. Limited UI widgets, slow data processing speed, background processing, and poor APIs support impact the requirements of the deliverables.
Unlike the other tools we have seen, Framework 7 is primarily used for native iPhone applications. However, they have started offering support for Android app as well in recent days. This mobile HTML framework helps developing application faster as it is easy to understand.
- Framework 7 is an open-source HTML framework for mobile makes application development faster.
- Comparatively simple as the tool has an HTML layout attached with CSS framework and JS files.
- UI elements visualization, animations, and touch interaction is another additional benefit.
- Availability of ready-to-use UI elements and widgets
- The possibility for custom styles as well as video intelligence.
- Though this is one of the best available mobile app development tools, it could not be compared with all the tools mentioned above, as this primarily focuses on iOS.
Take the plunge!
All the tools have their advantages and strengths. The evaluation of any tool has to be done as per the requirements of your project. If you seek the best mobile application development tool, first, list out the requirements. Compare your requirements with the listed tools and choose the best that matches your project requirements. In case you have doubts or would rather leave the development to the experts, you can Talk To Us! With more than 2 decades of IT Services track record and specialists in digital transformation services, we can fulfill your mobile development objectives.
