Categories: AngularJSJavascriptMobilityWeb

5 Reasons to Choose Ionic Framework over Xamarin

Are you one of them wondering about which framework to use out of Xamarin or Ionic Framework for developing your next mobile app? Well, rightfully so. You could get some opinions on this stackoverflow page.

For a person like me who does not have much knowledge on C# although I could get started with it fast, I would choose Ionic framework as all it requires is a good knowledge of HTML/CSS & Javascript (AngularJS).

Checking out quick google trends, here is what it looked like:

Xamarin vs Ionic Framework

From above picture, one could quickly figure out that Xamarin (blue) is the clear winner. However, here are the 5 reasons why you would want to choose Ionic Framework over Xamarin:

Ionic comes Free. Xamarin comes with a free developer license. However, one would need to buy a commercial license for production release.
Great for Web Developers: If you are a Web developer with good knowledge of HTML/CSS & Javascript, Ionic is for you. That said, you may need to learn AngularJS to make best use of it from perspective of writing custom directives, services etc.
Faster learning curve: As the Ionic framework is around web technologies, you may experience a quicker learning curve than learning C# programming (Xamarin).
Develop using Free Web IDE: You could get started with IDEs such as ATOM, Bracket etc and develop Ionic app easily.
Ease of installation and configuration: No need to have Visual studio components etc installed (as like Xamarin) for working with Ionic Framework.

Above said, if you are a C# developers and could afford to buy Xamarin license, you could as well go for Xamarin.

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Ajitesh Kumar

I have been recently working in the area of Data analytics including Data Science and Machine Learning / Deep Learning. I am also passionate about different technologies including programming languages such as Java/JEE, Javascript, Python, R, Julia, etc, and technologies such as Blockchain, mobile computing, cloud-native technologies, application security, cloud computing platforms, big data, etc. I would love to connect with you on Linkedin.
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View Comments

Ewald Horn says:

September 13, 2016 at 9:20 pm

Surely this information is incorrect or, at the very least, not accurate? For a small dev team, you get everything you want from Xamarin, including the ability to release to production, without having capital expenditure. Comparing Ionic, as good as it is, with native development, is unfair to both camps as it serves completely different application markets.