Why You Should Build PWAs Using Ionic Framework

If you know anything about mobile app development trends, you must have heard of both Ionic and PWAs. While Ionic is the stalwart of current hybrid app development practices, PWAs represent the future. If you are struggling to follow that line of thought, let us take a step back and have a quick round up of both:

Ionic

Launched in 2013, Ionic is a framework for building interface of mobile apps. It is an open-source tool and mainly relies on web-based technologies like HTML, CSS, and SaaS to deliver a native-like experience. Some of the key reasons behind its wild popularity, particularly Ionic framework 4 include:

• Large collection of components

• Fully customizable and portable

• Powerful Command Line Interface

• AnguarJS support

• Relatively good performance

Now given that it helps developers quickly build high-quality apps, it is natural for it to become their defacto choice. But what’s that got to do with PWAs?

PWAs

As a concept, PWAs are actually older than iOS and Android apps themselves but is only in recent years that it has started gaining serious momentum. They are essentially web applications masquerading as mobile apps and are built using common web-based technologies like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. Few of the reasons PWAs are gaining such popularity include:

• Cross-platform capability

• Lightweight

• No bottlenecks of device resources

• Lower cost of app distribution

Now you closely look at both their features and capabilities, they converge at most of the key factors that businesses care about the most:

Technology base

Both Ionic and PWAs rely on the same web-based technologies like HTML and JavaScript. This means, for businesses looking to build PWAs, Ionic developers bring all the requisite skills and there is little or no learning curve.

Cross-platform

Both Ionic and PWAs are platform independent and thus are built on the same basic principles. Further, the large collection of components on Ionic can help PWAs bring in features that are otherwise available only on mobile apps. For instance, hardware features like Bluetooth or TouchID are generally available only through native components bit if Ionic is used to build PWAs, there are numerous Cordova libraries that can enable such features.

Low cost

One of the key motivators for businesses to opt for cross-platform apps is the low cost. That is precisely why Ionic too has gained much popularity because Ionic app development is much cheaper than traditional native app development. With PWAs, that cost is not only contained but also to some degree reduced.

Angular apps

As PWAs are essentially web apps, they are closely tied to their web application. And because Angular is one of the most common technologies for web development, it's supported in Ionic means that the PWAs too would be able to exploit all its features with little integration issues.

CLI

Since PWAs are still in the early adoption phase, there are many sophisticated tools available for its development. Ionics’s CLI can be a major asset in this regard. It allows PWA developers to build, test, and deploy apps just like the native apps and thus adds to overall quality and productivity.

Closing remarks

Overall, though Ionic is largely seen as a tool for building cross-platform apps, it is an ideal fit for building PWAs as well. After all, these apps too are at their core cross-platform apps for mobile. Yes, you can obviously build PWAs using other technologies like React or Xamarin, but that won’t be as convenient as Ionic. So if you are out to hire app developers for your PWA, make sure they are proficient in Ionic.