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Friday 29 March 2024
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What are the Difference between a Native Application and a Web Application?

With the rapid growth in technology, application development has become a centralized plan for all businesses. It includes detailed planning, designing, and development, testing, and finally publishing the application.

As a lot of time and effort is taking you are needed to decide how you want to invest in the app and how you want to build it. You may choose from whether you want to build a native mobile app or a web app.

Difference-Native-Web-Application

Native App
When apps are designed precisely for a specific mobile OS and are installed right onto the device itself these apps are characterized as native apps. Native apps are intended for one platform and don’t work on any other OS. These apps are available on their particular app stores like Apple users can download these apps from Apple App Store whereas an Android user can download the app from a Google Play Store.

Web App
These apps are not real applications and are stored in a remote server, but give a native application impression and are basically internet enabled. You are not needed to download it on your device in order to use it. They are written in HTML5 and run on a web browser. Users can access these apps as they would for any webpage and install them later which will create a bookmark on their browser home screen.

Native Apps vs Web App
Wondering what benefits you more while developing an app? To know which suits you, here are some key points to brief you on the pros and cons of native and web applications.

User Interface
It all depends on whether you want to build an user-centric app or an application-centric app. If you want to provide a user experience that is consistent all along with their operating systems then a native app will be much suitable. But if you want to lessen the mobile limitations with not more precise graphics and visuals then go with a web app.

Development Cost
When it comes to development cost it’s much less and doesn’t require that much of high skill to develop a web app. But to develop a native app specialized skills are needed and are expensive as they are assured of quality and performance.

Features
Features of a native mobile app are far better than that of a web app. As it can alert users using push notifications when a background app is running. In the case of a web app, these features are not possible as it is needed to take device permissions. But it can use some other possibilities to use features like notifications.

Maintenance
A native app may be much of a challenging task in terms of maintenance when they are needed to deal with multiple versions of the same data on different platforms. Whatever changes are used in the upgrade are to be integrated with the new version before uploading to the particular app stores.

In the case of a web app, it is not so difficult as if you want to update any content, all you need to do is publish the update to the server and the updates are visible immediately. So, any changes that are needed in a web app can be done as frequently as needed.

App Development
Although for developing a native app all developers use a software development kit designed for the particular mobiles. So that they can develop a app compatible for that specific design. When it comes to developing a web app you don’t need a particular development kit. So, you are free to develop apps but are needed to consider whether the app is compatible with different browsers or not.

Accessibility
Native apps have unlimited access rights to features like accelerometer, GPS, camera, compass, contacts lists, etc. They can also work offline and can incorporate gestures. In web apps, the access rights are limited but can use some features like image uploads, tap to call feature, and some. But you need major accessibility features its good thing to consider a native app.

Bottom Line
Whether it comes to a native mobile app or a web app, each has its own pros & cons and provides users with unique features and experiences. But overall it all depends on the developers time, effort, business needs, and flexibility which are needed to be considered before actually building a particular app.



By Profession Java Programmer and Blogging is Hoby. Working as Java tech Lead @ Aegis Infoways. Like To Blog About Latest Technology Updates, Development Tips, Tricks and Solution sharing.