Are you thinking of creating an app for your business? With the increasing reliance on smartphones and the trend of companies creating apps for their businesses to reach the largest number of customers, business owners face an important question: what type of app should they choose when starting the development and creation phase? There are two types of mobile apps: hybrid apps and native apps. The decision to choose depends on several factors, including budget, performance, user experience, and other factors.

In this article, we will help you understand the difference between native and hybrid apps, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and how to choose the right type of app for your project.

What are native apps?
Native apps are developed for a specific operating system using native programming languages and the official tools provided by the system. For example:

Android apps are developed using Java or Kotlin, with the Android Studio development environment.
iOS apps are developed using Swift or Objective-C, with the Xcode development environment.

What are the advantages of using native apps?
High and fast performance: Native apps rely on the system's native programming languages, allowing them to perform quickly and responsively, while taking full advantage of the device's capabilities.
Excellent user experience (UI/UX): Native apps offer the best user experience due to their reliance on the underlying system's design, such as Material Design on Android devices and the Human Interface Guidelines on Apple devices. This makes them more compatible with user expectations.
Full access to device features: Native apps can access all device features, including the camera, GPS, notifications, Bluetooth, and sensors.
Compatibility with official stores: The App Store and Google Play support native apps due to their full compliance with system guidelines.
Higher security: Native apps enjoy higher and better security technologies due to the use of strong encryption factors and reliance on system-specific security tools.
What are the disadvantages of using native apps?
High development costs: Native apps require a larger budget. This is due to the need to write code specific to each operating system, which requires a team of developers to implement it.
Longer implementation time: Developing native apps takes a significant amount of time, due to building the app from scratch and focusing on user interface details, performance speed, and testing specific to each platform before launching the app.

Maintenance and updates: Having two versions of the app for each operating system, whether Android or iOS, presents complexities in releasing and tracking continuous updates.

What are hybrid apps?
Hybrid apps are apps that can run on both iOS and Android operating systems, relying on a single codebase for each. The app runs through an in-app browser (WebView) or using playback engines compatible with these platforms.

Hybrid apps are developed using web technologies, including HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, and then converted into a mobile app using various frameworks such as Flutter or React Native.

What are the advantages of using hybrid apps?

Lower cost: Hybrid apps rely on a single codebase for both Android and iOS, which contributes to reducing time and cost.

Ease of maintenance and updating: Hybrid app versions are updated on all operating systems at once, without the need to update each system's version separately.
Access to some device features: Some features can be accessed indirectly through plugins such as Cordova or Capacitor.
Compatibility with official stores: Hybrid apps work through the official operating system stores, Google Play and the App Store.
What are the disadvantages of using hybrid apps?
Poor performance: Unlike native apps, hybrid apps are not characterized by speed and smooth performance. This is due to their reliance on in-app web browser engines, which makes them slower to respond.
Less-smooth user experience (UI/UX) due to the inconsistency of hybrid app designs with the design guidelines of each operating system.
Restricted access to some device features: Hybrid apps cannot access all features specific to each device, and plugins are required to access some required features.
Reliance on external frameworks: Hybrid apps need to work with external frameworks, which can affect the app's performance in the event of any updates or problems with the technologies of those frameworks.
Security vulnerabilities: Hybrid applications are no less secure than native applications, but relying on some third-party add-ons may cause some security vulnerabilities. Therefore, it is important to continuously ensure that add-ons comply with security and data protection standards and that they do not contain any security vulnerabilities.
How can I choose the right application?
Choosing the right application depends on several factors, including project needs, the specific budget, the application's functionality, the timeframe for deploying the application, etc. Choosing the right application can be based on the following:

What are the factors for choosing native applications?
The need for high and fast performance, such as gaming applications or video and image processing applications.
The desire to provide an excellent user experience that meets user expectations.
The application's need to access the full features of the device without the need for any external add-ons.