2021 Best Cross-Platform Tools for Mobile Application Development

With more and more businesses going digital with mobile applications and websites, the competition in the digital world is increasing. The developers are continuously trying their best to offer unique applications with modern and user-friendly features. The mobile app development companies are on a hunt for tools and frameworks that can make app development an easy task by minimizing the job and it's time & cost. And to offer the best results to the clients, the use of cross-platform app development tools has increased as it enables the creation of applications that can run on multiple platforms with minimum changes in the code.

So, in this article, we are going to talk about such cross-platform tools that one can look out for in the year 2021 to offer the best app to their clients.

What is a Cross-platform App Development Tool?

The cross-platform development tool allows mobile app developers to create applications that can work on multiple platforms at once. The developers use third-party languages while writing code in these tools and then they compile the code into a native app for each operating system. The two main advantages of cross-platform app development are that it makes it very popular and also ensures continuous growth. 

7 Best Cross-platform Mobile Development Tools for both Android and iOS

The development of cross-platform apps enables mobile app development companies to speed up the process and reduce the cost of the entire process. Besides, it is easy to target the audience and interest any business. Here we will go through some of the tools that can help mobile app developers cross-platform applications 

1) Xamarin

Xamarin is one of the most popular cross-platform mobile development tools by Microsoft. It is a tool that enables developers in creating software for both desktop and mobile operating systems. Xamarin uses the C# programming language to write the programs to create cross-platform mobile apps. Xamarin is known as one of the best choices when a developer needs to come up with a relatively simple app. Xamarin enables in creating a good set of features for UI/UX design and also reuse up to 70% of the code of other mobile apps. The mobile app development team keeps testing the performance and functionality of the app using virtual devices as it can allow them to ensure that everything works well.

2) Flutter

Flutter is an advanced-level UI kit that was launched by Google in the year 2018. It is a tool that perfectly suits the modern mobile app development environment. Flutter is an open-source toolkit that provides a wide range of UI widgets, elements, and a high-performance rendering engine that enables the mobile app developers to customize the app with some animations. Besides this, Flutter is a tool that comes with a Hot Reload feature that offers the development team a view live changes option with the coding part and there is no need of saving the code. And the most advantageous thing about Flutter is that it is a product of Google which makes it guaranteed for mobile application development.

3) Ionic

Ionic is a tool that has a significant market share and a good amount of web usage statistics and this is the main reason behind the mobile app developers aggressively choosing this framework to create a progressive web app and native applications. Being an open-source and a free-to-use tool, developers tend to choose Ionic. Besides, it is a tool that provides a library of mobile-optimized UI components that are reusable and have highly interactive tools for creating an engaging application in no time.

4) Appcelerator for Mobile Apps

Appcelerator is a top choice of cross-platform app developers as it provides 99% user satisfaction and enables the development team to create native applications in less time. The mobile apps created with this tool are compatible with all the platforms like Windows, iOS, and Android. Besides, Appcelerator is a tool that can help developers in reusing 90% of the code from different platforms which come with the best advantage when it comes to developing native apps. Appcelerator is a tool that offers access to various APIs via its Hyperloop feature. This feature enables the developers to use APIs of Android and iOS by using JavaScript directly.

5) Corona

Corona is a cross-platform app development tool that is majorly used to develop games and applications for devices like TV, Mobile, and Desktop. It uses the same code base for developing an app for all these platforms. This tool enables the developers to speed up the coding process and easily update the code whenever required, save the changes, and instantly see the output on real devices. Besides, the development team uses this tool to optimize the performance of the app. The reason behind it is that Corona has a lightweight scripting power that offers better app performance. It is a free to use tool that offers high-speed development and high-quality graphics for gaming applications and enterprise applications

6) React Native Framework

React Native enables the app development team to create native mobile applications. While working with React Native, the developers use JavaScript as a programming language. The best part of this framework is that it enables the experts to write modules in languages such as Java, Swift, and C. Basically, it uses DevOps concepts to create cross platform apps with more security functions. Besides this, it allows working on video processing and image editing and that isn’t possible with any other API frameworks. This tool interprets the source code and then converts it to native elements. Popular applications like Facebook and Instagram have used this tool.

7) Adobe PhoneGap

Adobe PhoneGap is a cross-platform mobile development tool that is used by developers to create unique applications for various businesses. PhoneGap is based on the open-source framework called Apache Cordova. It offers complete access to the PhoneGap toolset to the mobile app development company which can help the experts streamline the process of mobile development. It also offers options to PhoneGap users like debugging tools that enable inspection of CSS, HTML, and debug JavaScript codes. All these make PhoneGap a better choice.

Conclusion

After learning about all the tools, it can be concluded that all the cross-platform app development frameworks offer major coding benefits and are best option for every enterprise. These tools don’t compromise on the performance of Native and cross-platform applications. Therefore, when any mobile app development company is creating an app for any enterprise that wants to save the app development cost and time, the development team goes for the above-listed cross-platform toolsAfter learning about all the tools, it can be concluded that all the cross-platform app development frameworks offer major coding benefits. These tools don’t compromise on the performance of Native and cross-platform applications. Therefore, when any mobile app development company is creating an app for any enterprise that wants to save the app development cost and time, the development team goes for the above-listed cross-platform tools.