Why is it advisable for Start-ups to pick Ionic for App Development?

Why is it advisable for Start-ups to pick Ionic for App Development?
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Success is not very easy for the start-ups who are planning to go for mobile app development as these entrepreneurs need to look into multiple aspects like envisaging an app with unique selling points, targeting the right set of audiences at the correct time, developing the app quickly while keeping the expenses low, and the list goes on. Therefore, it’s important to pick frameworks and technologies that will ease out app development and allow the app owners to focus on core business operations.
The Ionic SDK is an ideal option that helps start-ups to save time, effort, and costs, and sail through developmental challenges with ease. Besides, this framework is suitable for architecting apps for diverse industrial domains. This post explores the distinct offerings of Ionic that make it a popular pick amongst newbie entrepreneurs developing an app.

Reasons why Ionic App Development benefits Start-ups

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Open-sourced Nature & Enterprise-friendliness
Open-source frameworks are an ideal pick for start-ups owing to budgetary constraints and the core of the Ionic SDK is open-sourced, free, and possesses MIT authorization. As such, Ionic provides several cost-effective app development options. This framework is robust steady, reliable, and supports agile software developmental methodologies. While most of the open-source frameworks are likely to face developmental issues like sudden architectural breakdowns, Ionic is well equipped to tackle such challenges.
The framework is well-maintained and periodically updated by the Ionic team. The Ionic team also promises enterprise-friendly offerings.
A Captivating UI/UX
The UI/UX is a driving factor for an app’s success regardless of whether the app is used for marketing products/services or improving in-house employee productivity. Ionic perfectly meets this requirement as it offers loads of high-end UI elements along with multi-lingual capabilities that lead to the creation of an app with a pleasant and easy-to-use interface. Ionic app developers enjoy access to a wide range of components like themes, paradigms, etc. that help them to create visually attractive apps with a rich UX. Also, the JavaScript and CSS feature offered by Ionic allow developers to customize the app with different kinds of color schemes, menus, cards, and buttons of the app imparting a native-like look to the app.
Handy Native Plugins including Cordova
Plugins are small pieces of code written in JS format that is appended to an application and enable one to carry out tasks like in a native app. This way, plugins enhance the performance of a mobile app. Ionic app developers can access a host of native plugins and APIs to create a native-like UX. Developers can utilize as many as 120 native device features including AUTH, HealthKit, Bluetooth, and Fingerprint.
One of the most crucial plugins available in the Ionic eco-system is the Cordova plugin that allows access to OS features like camera, logs, pro-location, etc.
No need for Specialized Developers
Ionic app development uses popular technologies and programming languages such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS. Moreover, the base of the Ionic framework is built with the outstanding technology AngularJS and Apache Cordova. So, Ionic app developers can leverage web technologies for building an app and then convert the app into an advanced and fully-functional mobile application. Owing to the use of well-known technologies there isn’t any need for developers to be trained in specific skills or SDKs. Thus, the app owner can save on hiring specialized developers and the app can be developed by regular developers with generic skillsets. That’s why most start-ups hire Ionic app developers for executing their project.
Presence of a strong CLI & Widgets
Ionic offers a built-in CLI (Command-Line-Interface). The CLI is a text-based interface that allows users to activate the “prompt” command to interact with an Ionic app through various commands.
The Ionic framework supports widget creation. Widgets help users to embed the frequently used apps to the home screens of their mobile handsets and the app can be directly triggered from the home screens.
Dynamic Community Support
Start-ups using Ionic enjoy the support of a huge dynamic community. The community lends a helping hand whenever Ionic app developers are struck or have any queries. And, as Angular and Cordova form Ionic’s base, the communities of these two technologies are also quite helpful to Ionic development teams.
A Future-proof App Development Process
Several business enterprises need to act promptly to fulfil their customers’ demands and requirements. But, making any modification, even a minor change, involves extra efforts and added expenses. Hence, companies must choose technologies and frameworks that future-proof the development process. In such scenarios, enterprises that have opted for Ionic app development are able to quickly respond to the modifications demanded by the market, users, or regulatory bodies.
For instance, an enterprise is required to update its branding style or logo. If the enterprise maintains different codebases for three different platforms – an iOS app coded in Swift, an Android app coded in Kotlin, and a web app coded using JS framework – all three codebases need to be updated separately in their respective languages. This is going to be not only time-consuming but also costly. Contrarily, if the company uses Ionic, there’s only one codebase for all three platforms; changes need to be executed on this codebase for updating all the three apps in one go.
Effortless Testing
Ionic offers effortless testing options. Ionic app developers utilize Cordova commands to perform Android app testing on the PC and simulators at the same time. For iOS apps, testing is conducted either on the Safari web browser or a mobile browser. The app can also be directly tested as a native or hybrid app, to gather clearer insights on the app’s functioning. These testing capabilities ensure the creation of a high performant and bug-free app.
Faster Deployment & Reduced Development Costs
Unlike most other frameworks, Ionic doesn’t require specialized developers to create separate codebases for native apps that target the Android and iOS operating systems. Ionic developers need to build a cross-platform app with a single codebase and then customize that codebase to function on Android and iOS. Furthermore, as Ionic involves web technologies and requires widely-practiced skills; it’s quite easy to find the necessary expertise.
On account of fewer codebases, smaller development teams, the availability of robust components & powerful plugins, lesser bugs, and effortless development; Ionic app development is speedy as well as cost-efficient.

Final Words:

Ionic app development is the one-stop solution for modern-day start-ups planning to develop a highly performant app in the least possible time and at a minimal cost. Outsourcing your development project to an experienced Ionic app development company would be a super-convenient option for entrepreneurs as it will reduce their burden to a considerable extent and allow them enough time to oversee core business functions.
Biz4Solutions, a prominent Offshore app development company in India having an industry experience of more than eleven years in Ionic app development would be a wise pick in such cases. We will remain your technology partner right from app ideation to deployment and even offer maintenance & support services post-launch.

The reasons why Ionic is the perfect pick for developing PWAs?

The reasons why Ionic is the perfect pick for developing PWAs?
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A progressive Web Application (PWA) is a disruptive innovation that has redefined the basic tenets of the web experience in smartphones. It is an ingenious blend of the best of both worlds – responsive websites and native mobile applications. Needless to say, PWAs are gaining momentum and are predicted to be the next big thing in the realm of mobile app development. Switching to PWAs turned out to be highly profitable for several biggies as users started to spend more time on PWAs. Take a look at some of the success stories of PWA adoption.
Flipkart experienced an increase of 40% in the re-engagement rate and 70% in the conversion rate!
Twitter succeeded in getting down the bounce rate by 20% and increasing the pages per session by 65%!
The click rate in “trivago” shot up by 97% and there was a 50% hike in user engagement!
Hence, the rate of PWA adoption is rising and it has been observed that most businesses prefer to hire Ionic app development services for executing their Progressive Web App development project. Business enterprises like Facebook, Tinder, BookMyShow, Starbucks, Forbes, Pinterest, and Uber have successfully expanded their customer base with the help of Ionic PWAs.
In this blog, I have penned down the reasons why Ionic has gained a lot of traction amongst the software community for being one of the best frameworks for progressive web app development. But before we dive deeper, let me enlighten you about Ionic and PWAs.

Ionic in nutshell

Ionic is an open-sourced SDK for creating Hybrid applications. It is built in JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5 and has AngularJS as its base. It not only possesses TypeScript extensions and Cordova plugins but also offers numerous native device features like Fingerprint Authorization, HealthKit, Bluetooth, etc. This enables the Ionic app developers to architect futuristic apps with ease. No wonder, Ionic mobile app development has gained immense popularity these days.

Insights on PWA

A PWA is an application software that is delivered via the web and works like native apps. Introduced by Google in 2015, it has been built using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, and designed to work for platforms using standard-compliant browsers. PWAs are easily accessible and discoverable like web apps, are convenient like mobile apps, are easy to install, affordable, and display unparalleled performance. A PWA installed in your device, utilizes the cached data from earlier interactions to function in an offline mode and thereby addresses problems like connectivity issues and lack of a stable connection.

The X Factor in Ionic that facilitates PWA development

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Take a look at the top reasons to leverage Ionic development services for developing PWAs.
Angular Support
Ionic enjoys the support of Angular, which is known for its ability to develop exceedingly interactive mobile and web applications. Angular’s component API forms the foundation of the Ionic framework and AngularJS provides the sentence structure extensions of HTML to Ionic. These goodies help Ionic developers add amazing and user-friendly functionalities to the app.
A Free and Open-Source Framework
As Ionic is open-sourced, managing the code structure becomes super-easy, resulting in a faster, and budget-friendly development. Moreover, Ionic is authorized under the MIT license and is merged with mobile-optimized codes of JavaScript, CSS, and HTML5 components.
Cross-platform Compatibility
Ionic, being platform-independent leads to the creation of apps that run seamlessly on the major operating systems- Windows, iOS, and Android. When these applications are deployed via Apache Cordova with a single codebase, they automatically adapt themselves to the platform or device they are functioning in.
A Captivating UI
Ionic’s re-adaptable and reusable UI elements help to create visually attractive interfaces. Furthermore, Ionic adds pre-defined CSS classes to modify and customize the major components like buttons, caches, navigation, form inputs, sliding menu, and pop-ups.
A Strong CLI
Ionic’s Strong CLI (Command Line Interface) enables creating, building, testing, debugging, and deploying applications with ease. The CLI also ensures faster installation due to reduced dependencies thereby enhancing performance as well.
Cordova Plugins
Ionic is an HTML5 framework and so requires a native wrapper to function like native apps. Cordova, a bunch of command-line tools, and the plugin bridge acts as a native wrapper and also enable easy access to native-like device features such as GPS, camera, etc.
Remote updating
Earlier, the developers followed the traditional approach of posting updates on the App Store and then left it to the client’s discretion whether they are going to update the app or not. However, things changed with the advent of Ionic empowered Hybrid apps. Since Hybrid apps function within a web view, developers can now remotely update the app at the web layer outside the app store, using smart tools such as PhoneGap ContentSync, Ionic Deploy, etc.
Community Support
The Ionic community comprises more than 5 million developers around the globe. Community Forum, World Wide Slack, Stack Overflow, and GitHub are some of the forums that answer developer queries and provide them with the necessary guidance.

Ionic PWA development: Steps to get started

It’s time for some practical advice on getting started! Follow these steps.
  • Downloading Ionic and installing the dependencies that are necessary for it.
  • Downloading Node.js6 LTS and NPM 3+ installers and installing Ionic CLI globally.
  • Using Ionic start to begin a new project.
  • Running ionic serves and integrating Ionic with Cordova.
Now, the Ionic app is ready for use. The next step is to add Service Worker and Web Manifest to convert Ionic into a Progressive Web App. Service workers are nothing but the scripts that provide offline functionality, caching features, synchronization in the background, push notifications, etc. Web Manifest provides info in the JSON text file about the application.

Pieces of advice on Ionic PWA development

Would like some useful tips on Ionic progressive web app development? Well then, this is for you!
  • Gather more insights and go through the basic tutorials from the PWA Resource Page.
  • Whitepaper: The Architect’s Guide to PWAs provides practical guidance on project development and the projects best suited for PWA.
  • PWA Toolkit provides information about the best practices of Ionic PWA development.

The alternative frameworks for PWA development

Other than Ionic, Xamarin and React Native can also be good options to consider for progressive web app development. React Native development uses JavaScript and ReactJS, while C# and .Net are used for Xamarin.

Final Verdict:

This blog must have given you panoramic insights on Ionic progressive web app development and you must have realized why the big market players have opted for Ionic, despite the availability of other options. Ionic creates versatile PWAs with an outstanding UI and UX, using standard tools and a single codebase. Hence, Ionic PWAs enable enterprises to explore new horizons, cater to the demanding requirements of present-day customers, and at the same time ensure a cost-efficient development. Would like to architect Progressive Web Applications with the help of an Ionic Development Company? Reach us! We are a noteworthy outsourcing software development company with a rich experience of 10+years in developing Ionic web/mobile apps.
We hope this blog was enlightening! Please do share your thoughts in the comments section.