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Depends on the problem you're solving. I've seen a ton of ionic apps written for in-house use at large enterprises. Often the lower cost of maintenance and deve

Depends on the problem you're solving. I've seen a ton of ionic apps written for in-house use at large enterprises. Often the lower cost of maintenance and development costs more than justifies the slightly poorer UX that usually comes with cordova apps. That tradeoff isn't always acceptable in a direct to consumer app, which is why you don't see a ton of popular apps in the app/play store backed by ionic framework.

bogomipz 9y ago
Thanks for your feedback. Would it make sense then to prototype an app in Ionic/Corodva before paying someone to replicate the functionality natively using Java/Swift? Or is that really just false economy? My use case is really just a proof of concept at the moment.
- wkrause 9y ago
  I'd start even simpler and use a tool like Figma to prototype the UI and workflows that are at the core of your app. Then start actual development based on the feedback from showing it to potential users. A lot will depend on why you need cross-platform support at launch. For most direct to consumer apps, your intended user base should skew to one platform or the other and should be large enough to support a beta and launch on a single platform. Not launching with both platforms supported won't make or break your app and launching with both without much mobile experience to begin with could even prove to be a distraction while you try to iterate on you're app's design. If you're selling an app to businesses, then not supporting both iOS and Android at launch would be a real roadblock. In that case starting and maybe even staying with Ionic could make sense.
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    Thanks, yeah I am looking at a B2B project right now. Given that, is there value in using Figma as a first step or would that be redundant?
    - wkrause 9y ago
      My only recommendation would be to not skip the prototyping phase, even if it's just a pen and paper. No matter how fast you are mocking things up in html, you'll almost always going to be faster sketching it out. When I started mobile development for the first time, I jumped right into coding and I feel like I wasted a lot of time re-arranging things I could have avoided if I just took the time to sketch it out.

bogomipz 9y ago

Thanks for your feedback. Would it make sense then to prototype an app in Ionic/Corodva before paying someone to replicate the functionality natively using Java/Swift? Or is that really just false economy? My use case is really just a proof of concept at the moment.

wkrause 9y ago
I'd start even simpler and use a tool like Figma to prototype the UI and workflows that are at the core of your app. Then start actual development based on the feedback from showing it to potential users. A lot will depend on why you need cross-platform support at launch. For most direct to consumer apps, your intended user base should skew to one platform or the other and should be large enough to support a beta and launch on a single platform. Not launching with both platforms supported won't make or break your app and launching with both without much mobile experience to begin with could even prove to be a distraction while you try to iterate on you're app's design. If you're selling an app to businesses, then not supporting both iOS and Android at launch would be a real roadblock. In that case starting and maybe even staying with Ionic could make sense.
- bogomipz 9y ago
  Thanks, yeah I am looking at a B2B project right now. Given that, is there value in using Figma as a first step or would that be redundant?
  - wkrause 9y ago
    My only recommendation would be to not skip the prototyping phase, even if it's just a pen and paper. No matter how fast you are mocking things up in html, you'll almost always going to be faster sketching it out. When I started mobile development for the first time, I jumped right into coding and I feel like I wasted a lot of time re-arranging things I could have avoided if I just took the time to sketch it out.