20 best alternatives to Ionic Framework as of 2018 - Slant

Onsen UI

Top Pro

Open source and free

Onsen UI is open source, and completely free to use. See More

Top Pro

Can be used for web apps as well

Onsen UI is usable for classic web development as well as mobile. See More

Top Pro

Large selection of components

Onsen UI provides a wide selection of components that are ready to use out of the box and are easily customizable. See More

Top Pro

Easy to use

Onsen UI provides very clear, well-written and detailed documentation. It uses popular technologies that are likely already familiar to developers (such as jQuery and Angular). The framework is semantic and intuitive to use, making it quite fast to learn. See More

Top Pro

Supports React

React is the most trending front-end UI framework, naturally supporting that is a plus. See More

Specs

License:Apache 20.0

Mobile targets:iOS, Android

18 1

React Native

Top Pro

Allows you to develop native apps

React Native allows you to create native apps by generating native views with JavaScript instead of using a web wrapper. See More

Top Con

If core team doesn't use a certain feature, it's not developed

Whenever there's functionality you need that they don't use in their apps, it's not going to get developed by them, even if it's obvious it should be in the core. They always say to either submit a PR or create a separate module. See More

Top Pro

Backed by Facebook

Facebook writes their mobile apps in React Native so the code base gets pretty thoroughly used in some highly demanding scenarios. See More

Top Con

Steep learning curve

React Native is not the most beginner-friendly framework for creating mobile apps with JavaScript. It requires that the developer know React, which is known to have a steep learning curve. See More

Top Pro

Large, supportive community

Despite being such a young framework (early 2015), the support for React Native grew quickly. There is a forum, active tag on Stackoverflow and many other ways to get help from the community. See More

Top Pro

More predictable control of the state

The one way data flow, makes it more predictable and easy to control. See More

75 21

Flutter

Top Pro

Great developer tools debug/hotreload/analyser

Top Con

Still in development

According to the website, Flutter is still in its early stages of development. See More

Top Pro

Based on Dart language

Dart is a Java like language, easy to learn and startup fast for millions of Java developers. See More

Top Con

Dart is unpopular and never gained serious community traction like Kotlin or Java

Top Pro

Open source

Top Con

Does not support 32-bit iOS devices

If you plan on targeting iPhone 5, 5C or earlier, you can forget about Flutter. See More

Top Pro

A single codebase for iOS AND Android

Top Con

Google has a bad history with product loyalty

Top Pro

Fast

The developer's goal is to allow people to make apps running at 120 FPS. See More

Specs

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac and Linux

Mobile targets:Android and iOS

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103 6

Polymer

Top Pro

Based on web components

Web Components are a collection of specifications released by W3C as a way to reduce the complexity of web apps by creating reusable components. Browser support is currently poor for web components, however Polymer is developed to make web components compatible with modern browsers. See More

Top Con

No server-side rendering

Polymer does not support server-side rendering. This results in higher loading times, more HTTP requests and it's not very SEO friendly, since search engines have no way of indexing a page if it's not rendered in the server. See More

Top Pro

Various basic components

It provides a base component. See More

Top Pro

HTML markup is not string

HTML markup as it can be a non-string. See More

Top Pro

CSS is easy to apply

CSS can be applied far more comfortably than React. See More

Top Pro

Flex layout components

It provides Flex layout components. See More

Top Pro

Excellent documentation

Polymer guides you as with tools (cli, build environment, app templates,..) as with complimentary documentation on all phases of app development from creation of app as progresive web app to production deployment instructions. As Polymer is standards based, the whole community around those standards also helping in documentation and support. See More

Top Pro

Complete web app stack support

Full app stack from data tier to routing, progressive web app, responsive layouts makes no need to seek outside of Polymer ecosystem for application features. In addition to waste set of mature web components in Polymer Elements along with Vaadin Elements there are thousands of web components in the wild comparable to jQuery plugins set. See More

Top Pro

API is easy to understand, based on standard

The Polymer APIs are split on application layers and follow standards on all possible ways: Web Components, CSS variables, async API via Promises and so on. See More

Top Pro

Excellent routing

The router is embedded into CLI for project creation and covers as web as Progressive web app, also fused with Polymer layouts out of the box. The shop template for CLI has a complete solution including the routing. See More

Top Pro

No need for special debugging tools

The presence od specialized debugging tools are advertised by competitors. The all features of web components are natively supported by browser embedded development tools. See More

Specs

v2.0 GZipped size (Chrome):10K

v2.0 GZipped size (Safari):13K

v2.0 GZipped size (Edge):36K

v1.0 GZipped size:53K

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59 15

Sencha Touch

Top Pro

Native feel

Sencha Touch is well known for its ability to provide a native app experience through it's native-like themes and widgets. See More

Top Con

Commercial and expensive

Sencha Touch is targeted towards enterprise-level development, and the price tag reflects that. There are many different product options available by Sencha. Most licenses start in the thousands of dollars, and require a minimum purchase of 5. See More

Top Pro

Detailed documentation

Sencha provides exhaustive documentation that covers all aspects of developing with their products. They also provide a well written getting started guide that's easy to follow. See More

3 0

Kendo UI

Top Con

Expensive commercial tools [$699, $1,499]

The other core tools developed with Kendo are the commercial tools. There is the Professional version for $699 that will result in more jQuery UI widgets and client support. The $1499 "DevCraft" Complete edition gets developers the DevCraft .NET toolbox, testing and debugging frameworks and applications, as well as priority support. See More

Top Pro

Free Core tools

Kendo UI is separated into a commercial and open source frameworks. The core of Kendo UI is in the open source frameworks, but some usability and benefits of Kendo UI are lost without the commercial version. See More

Top Pro

Platform-based UI

Kendo knows what device it is being viewed on so it can adjust the UI accordingly. If a user is on a PC the user will see things differently than on a mobile device. Between iOS and Android the user will also notice a different as it pulls from the core UI of those core systems. See More

Top Pro

Theme Builder

An interactive tool that has been created to customize an apps theme. Users are able to select from many pre-defined themes, edit them, and download the theme to bring into a project. See More

13 2

jQuery Mobile

Top Pro

Download Builder

To optimize application development jQuery Mobile provides a tool to allow the user to customize the framework. It contains the ability to pick and choose which modules to include and then bundles the framework so it contains only what is needed. See More

Top Con

No MVC support

There is no included MVC support in jQuery Mobile. It is possible to achieve this, however, using other frameworks such as BackboneJS in combination with jQuery Mobile, but there are a few limitations. Specifically that MVC frameworks, such as BackboneJS or KnockoutJS, are not compatible with jQuery Mobile page routing. See More

Top Pro

ThemeRoller

An interactive tool that has been created to customize an apps theme. Users can import a current theme, make changes, and export the theme back to the app for integration. See More

Top Pro

Resources

With HTML5 development being relatively amateur jQuery Mobile has a vast selection of resources to assist. These resources include websites, books, apps and other frameworks, 3rd party plugins and extensions, and more. All of these can help ramp up and excel the project development cycle. See More

9 3

Codename One

Top Pro

High performance

Top Pro

Open source

Top Pro

Highly customizable

By utilizing lightweight component architecture and the built in graphical designer and theming options you are able to customize a good looking app on any platform. See More

Top Pro

Java 8 support

Top Pro

Works with all IDEs

Works with NetBeans, Eclipse, IntelliJ, etc. See More

Top Pro

Multi-platform development environments (via build server)

You can even use Linux desktops to build native iOS apps, no need for a Mac. See More

Top Pro

Vibrant & helpful community

Top Pro

Attractive pricing

It is possible to build production grade apps even with the free version. Pricing is decent when compared to competitors like Xamarin. See More

Specs

License:GPL with Classpath Exception, allows you to build proprietary applications

Languages:Java, Kotlin

Dev platforms:Windows, Mac, Linux

Desktop targets:Windows, Mac, Linux

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18 7

AIDE

Top Pro

Checksums stored in plaintext

Allows for cross-compatibility, redundancy and portability. See More

Top Pro

Calculates multiple checksums

It gives you an added security against attacks on the hash function. See More

Top Pro

Supports complicated file excludes

You can exclude folders, files, filetypes, etc. See More

18 0

RAD studio

Top Con

Big price tag

With a price tag going between 2700$ to 6500$ for the latest version RX10 See More

Top Pro

Latest and greatest cross platform compiler for delphi

Currently featuring iOS, Android and windows cross compiler. See More

Top Con

Subscription updates

If you want your bugs fixed, you will need to pay. Most other companies offer those for free. See More

10 0

Project Rider

Top Pro

New C# IDE based on ReSharper and the IntelliJ platform

ReSharper is a popular Visual Studio Extension for .NET Developers. IntelliJ IDEA is a popular and fully featured JAVA IDE. See More

Top Con

Not free

Project Rider has a trial version available, but is not free. See More

Top Pro

Superior "quality of life" features

Extremely good at filling in all the mindless boilerplate type code while you stay productive. See More

Top Con

Relatively young project

Some bugs are to be expected since it's still a relatively young project. See More

Top Pro

Multiple runtime support

Project Rider supports the .NET Framework and Mono, with CoreCLR support in the works. It also includes templates for creating new projects, and when you create an empty project, it's literally empty See More

Top Pro

Cross-platform

As well as running and debugging multiple runtimes, Project Rider itself runs on multiple platforms. It runs on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. See More

Top Pro

Version control integration

Intellij plugins for Git, Mercurial and TFS plus Local History of files See More

Top Pro

Supports all the development lifecycle

Project Rider can build MSBuild and XBuild solutions as well as DNX/.NET CLI projects, and allows debugging .NET and Mono applications. DNX/.NET CLI debugging and CoreCLR support are coming. See More

Top Pro

Decompile code for any .net library

Specs

Platforms:Windows Linux Mac

Price:Free (30-day Trial)

Latest Version :2018.2

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77 17

V-Play

Top Pro

Mature cross platform IDE

Qt-Creator IDE with Code Completion, Debugging and Profiling, integrated Quick Help, Version Control and more. See More

Top Con

No 3rd party tutorials

There are little to none amount of tutorials for V-Play other than what was made by V-Play themselves. See More

Top Pro

Easy to learn

V-Play is among the easiest cross-platform tools to use according to a survey done by research2guidance. See More

Top Pro

In-game level editor

With the Level Editor components, you can let your players share their levels with the whole game community which is cool because you don't need to create new levels on your own, but the community helps you with it. There are other community features like rewards for good level creators that helps getting more downloads. See More

Top Pro

V-Play game network

Leaderboards, Achievements, Challenges are available across platform, even on Desktop. You can also use Cloud Syncinc of your game data that makes it easy to start a game for example on iPhone and then continue on a Nexus Tablet or the other way around. It is also convenient because sharing to all kind of game services & networks like Facebook & Game Center is possible with a single API call. Custom hosting of Game Network servers is also possible if you want to keep the player data. See More

Top Pro

Native performance

Although game logic is provided in JavaScript by you, performance-critical parts of the engine like OpenGL ES rendering or particle effects are implemented in rock-solid C++, providing the ultimate performance your game deserves. See More

Top Pro

Advanced gaming components

Advanced Gaming Components for handling multiple display resolutions & aspect ratios, animations, particles, physics, multi-touch, gestures, path finding and more. See More

Top Pro

V-Play build server

No need for native SDKs, Build in and Install from Cloud with the V-Play Build Server. See More

Top Pro

Rapid development

Cut your development time in half. Using the QML language allows for some powerful features that cut code lines and time. Another helpful feature that can help in this area is that there are more than 50 game demos of all genres that come with full source code, meaning one can easily check to see how something was done. See More

Top Pro

Support can be found in forums and via e-mail

V-Play has friendly forums where core developers participate as well as fast & helpful email support. See More

Top Pro

Based on Qt framework

The Qt framework is a great and mature framework on it's own. Using Qt as a game engine base is a smart idea. See More

Top Pro

Runtime-balancing

You can use ready-made components to balance any of your game properties at runtime, so also on mobile devices which is great for adjusting forces or input parameters. See More

Top Pro

Lots of learning resources

Helps get started and improve with lots of tutorials, demo games, examples. See More

Top Pro

Social services and monetization

In-app purchases, game and social network integration (such as Game Center and Facebook), ads (with Chartboost and AdMob) and analytics (such as Flurry) are all available across platforms. See More

Top Pro

Frequent updates

Every 2-4 weeks new updates provide additional features and fixes based on what users wanted the most. See More

Top Pro

Level store

You can even monetize these user-generated levels with in-app purchases with the V-Play Level Store component if you like. See More

Specs

License:Proprietary

Dev platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Desktop targets:Windows; OSX; Linux

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40 10

Komodo IDE

Top Pro

Built in Version Control

Since Version Control features are very frequently used these days, having them built right into your IDE seems quite the right thing to do. With Komodo, you can perform your Git push-es and pull-s right while you're coding. See More

Top Con

Not free

Komodo IDE costs you $89 for a personal license. Even though they have a Free basic version (that's also opensource), but this lacks most of the functionality that the paid version has. See More

Top Pro

Collaboration tools

If you're working with a remote dev team, you'll quickly realize the importance of code collaboration while programming. With the Komodo IDE you don't have to setup a separate teamviewer session, or even share code via dropbox with other devs. All you need is an ActiveState account (+ a partner with the KomodoIDE ofcourse) and your remote team could see LIVE and contribute to your changes in the source files of your app See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows; OSX; Linux

Cross Platform:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

Multi Language Support:Yes

53 13

Xamarin.Android

Top Pro

Cross-platform

Xamarin is a platform on which you can build cross-platform mobile applications for Android, iOS and Windows Mobile and use only one codebase. See More

Top Con

Lacking third-party library support

Having to use third-party libraries in Xamarin can be a real pain. Since Xamarin uses C# and third-party libraries are written in Java, you have to create bindings to use them in a Xamarin app. Which is cumbersome and wastes a lot of time. Especially considering that the Xamarin docs are not very good when it comes to this part. See More

Top Pro

Programming in C#

Allows you to write your programs in C#, a language much superior to Java, regarding expressiveness, readability and overall productivity. See More

Top Con

Too large to download

Since core Visual Studio comes about in 543 MB of download size, the Mobile App Development with C++ workload comes about ~4 GB, the issues with your bandwidth and internet connection can cause the components to re-download, wasting a considerable amount of internet. See More

Top Pro

Allows .NET programmers to write Android Apps

Allows .NET programmers to write Android Apps. See More

Top Pro

Open source

Xamarin.Android and the whole Xamarin SDK is free and open source and released under the MIT license. See More

Top Pro

Fast build

Faster compared to Gradle-based systems. See More

Specs

Cross Platform:Yes

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33 9

NetBeans IDE

Top Pro

Cross-platform

NetBeans is a free, GPL-licensed IDE. It can run on any computer with a Java virtual machine. If a computer has a Java virtual machine (JVM), Netbeans can run on it. Netbeans can, therefore, run on a variety of operating systems such as Windows, *nix, and Mac OS. See More

Top Con

Little support for UML

Unless you load extensions. See More

Top Pro

Fantastic Maven support

NetBeans has out-of-the-box support for Maven (NetBeans 6.7 and newer), which includes a repository browser. See More

Top Con

Slow

The Netbeans IDE is known to take a large memory as compared to other lighter IDE's available on the market. The slowdown can decrease productivity and frustrate programmers. See More

Top Pro

Multiple revision control system integration

Top Pro

Good refactoring

Top Pro

Good support for integrated Database e Servers (E.g. Tomcat)

Top Pro

Easy to learn

Very easy to learn, unlike e.g. Eclipse (which is probably the most flexible). See More

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92 22

IntelliJ IDEA

Top Pro

Smart refactorings

IDEA places an emphasis in safe refactoring, offering a variety of features to make this possible for a variety of languages. These features include safe delete, type migration and replacing method code duplicates. See More

Top Con

Somewhat expensive

IntelliJ IDEA is fairly expensive, with a pricetag of $149/year. However there is a free community edition available. See More

Top Pro

Fast and smart contextual assistance

Uses a fast indexing technique to provide contextual hints (auto-completion, available object members, import suggestions). On-the-fly code analysis to detect errors and propose refactorization. See More

Top Con

Slow startup

Startup can be slow deepending on system configuration See More

Top Pro

Android support, JavaEE support, etc

A very complete development environment support. See More

Top Con

Uses a lot of RAM

Top Pro

Stable and robust

IntelliJ IDEA hardly ever crashes or has any issues that plague other Java IDEs like file corruption or slowness. See More

Top Con

Standard hotkeys behave differently

Seems like hotkeys assignment in Idea has no logical consistency. Like «F3» is usually next match, «Ctrl+W» - close tab, etc — they map to some different action by default. There is a good effort in making the IDE friendly for immigrants from other products: there are options to use hotkeys from Eclipse, and even emacs. But these mappings are very incomplete. And help pages do not take this remapping into account, rather mentioning the standard hotkeys. So, people coming from other IDEs/editors are doomed to using mouse and context menus (which are rather big and complex). See More

Top Pro

Lots of plugins

Many plugins are available for almost any task a developer may need to cover. Plugins are developed by Jetbrains themselves or by 3rd parties through the SDK available for writing them. See More

Top Con

Bugs are not solved as often as they should

They are more interested in adding new features or issuing new versions than solving bugs. See More

Top Pro

Support for many languages

IntelliJ supports many languages besides Java, some of these are: golang, Scala, Clojure, Groovy, Bash, etc. See More

Top Con

Cannot open multiple projects in the same window

Top Pro

Intuitive and slick UI

IDEA has a clean, intuitive interface with some customization available (such as the Darcula theme). See More

Top Con

Built with closed source components

The version with full features is not opensource. Parts of the code are under apache licence though. See More

Top Pro

Clear and detailed documentation

The documentation is exhaustive, easy to navigate, and clearly worded. See More

Top Con

Lack of plugins

IntelliJ supports a very small amount of plugins. Although these are 'quality approved', many features are missing and can't be implemented because of that. See More

Top Pro

Free version available

There is a free community edition (open source) and an ultimate edition, which you can compare here. The ultimate edition is available for free for one year for students but must be registered through an .edu e-mail account. See More

Top Pro

Many convenient features

These simplify the daily work, e.g. copy/cut a whole line without the need to select it. See More

Top Pro

Very powerful debugger

With ability to step into a certain part of a large method invocation (Shift+F7), drop frame, executing code snippets, showing method return values, etc. See More

Top Pro

Gradle support

Top Pro

Buit-in Git support

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linux

Price:US $ 499. 00-US $ 649. 00 year

Cross Platform:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

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391 80

Eclipse Che

Top Pro

Docker runtimes

You can choose from pre-configured environments for Java, Javascript, C++, PHP, C#, etc., or you can define your own by dropping in a Dockerfile - makes it easy for simple and complex projects. See More

Top Con

Slow runtime

Online IDE is much slower than desktop one. See More

Top Pro

SSH + terminal

Built-in terminal with root access so you can make changes to your running machines. Being able to SSH into the workspace so you can use a desktop IDE is handy. See More

Top Pro

GIT and SVN VCS support

Projects can be easily imported from any Git or Svn repository hosting service. See More

Top Pro

Reproducible environment

Top Pro

Custom commands

You can package up custom commands with your workspace and then use them (or share them) with everyone else. See More

Top Pro

Portable workspaces

The workspace in Che includes project sources, IDE and the runtime. So if you hand your Che workspace definition to another user and they execute it they will get everything they need to build, run and debug the project. Also the runtime is in a Docker container so it will work even if the second user is on a different OS than the original user who shared their workspace with them. See More

Top Pro

Previews

Che does a nice job to automatically map the service:port running in the Docker container (e.g. tomcat on 8080) to the Docker port it actually uses (something in the ephemeral range). You never need to figure that out - it's just made available when you run your server. See More

Top Pro

Merge tool for VCS

Top Pro

Open-source

Specs

Platforms:Browser-Based

Cross Platform:Yes

Auto Complete:Yes

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86 36

Android Studio

Top Pro

Officially supported by Google

Android Studio is the software built by Google themselves to be used for Android Development. As such, it's certain that support for it will never drop as long as Android apps are still being developed. Studio is also the tool that Google recommends using for Android development and it's the IDE that gets updates related to Android first. See More

Top Con

Many errors that are almost impossible to remove

Gradle sync fail Render problem Class can't be found Layout Reinstall repository Update SDK (even with latest version) See More

Top Pro

Live code updates and renderings of app

Layouts are built and can be observed in real time and are automatically updated after every change. You can even see these changes on different screens. See More

Top Con

High memory use

Top Pro

Based on the powerful IntelliJ IDEA

Unlike its predecessor, which is based off Eclipse, Android Studio is build on top of Jetbrain's Flagship Java IDE which offers over a number of features. It's also open-source too (Community Edition only). See More

Top Con

Apps run slow on the ARM version of the emulator

While the Android team have recently fixed issues that had to do with emulation on an x86 architecture and greatly improving emulator speeds, emulating an Android device and running apps on an ARM architecture is still pretty slow. See More

Top Pro

Uses the powerful Gradle build tool out of the box

Android Studio uses Gradle as the official build tool for projects, moving away from the now outdated Apache Ant. Gradle is a powerful build tool, especially for Android development with which it's very easy to do things that are otherwise impossible or very hard to do on other build systems, thing like: upgrading the build system without breaking the project itself or allowing you to separately define the development and production versions. See More

Top Con

Many offline issues

Top Pro

Intelligently replaces values

References are automatically replaced with their real values, so you can easily view which color you are using for example. See More

Top Con

Android development only

Android Studio is the official IDE for Android and it works great as an Android IDE. Unfortunately, that's the only thing it can do. If you want to develop applications for other platforms in Java, you have to learn another IDE as well. See More

Top Pro

Supports many platforms

Linux, Windows, and Mac are supported. See More

Top Pro

Extremely easy to integrate Google Services

Because it's made by Google to be the tool to be used for Android Development, it's also very easy for Google to add great support for their services in the IDE and make it easier to integrate Google Services into Android applications built with Studio. See More

Top Pro

Allows GPU tracking

For graphics-intensive apps or games, Android Studio has a GPU profiler baked in. With this you can see exactly what is happening inside the device when a new image is drawn on the screen. See More

Top Pro

Extremely fast preview

Since Android 2.0, Google have been focusing more and more on the IDE's speed, going so far as making it 2-2.5 times faster than older versions. But the greatest feature when it comes to speed though is the new feature called "Instant Run". This is comparable to writing HTML, where you write the HTML and just refresh te page to see the changes. On mobile though, updating anything would take a lot of time for the system to rebuild. Instant Run allows developers to build their app once (on physical devices, emulator or both) and as they change their code, AS does hot code swapping where it only updates the parts of the code that have been changed and the developer can see those changes after a second or two. See More

Top Pro

Pushes fast to the built-in emulator

Pushing to the built-in Android emulator can be up to 10 times faster than pushing to a physical device. See More

Top Pro

Can test Google Play Services API straight from the emulator

Since the built-in emulator has Google Play Services like a physical device, you can test a lot of API calls without having to deploy your application to a device. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, macOS, Linus

Latest Version :3.0 (Stable), 3.0RC (Preview)

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139 56

Eclipse + Android Development Tools plugin

Top Pro

Good offline capabilities

Top Con

Plugins can be unstable

Though there are plenty of plugins to choose from, they aren't always reliable. Some aren't maintained, bug fixes can be slow, and you may need to download plugins from multiple sources. See More

Top Pro

Free and open source

Eclipse is a free and open source software, it's released under the Eclipse Public license. See More

Top Con

May lose support in the future

Google recommends moving away from Eclipse for Android Development, plugins and features are adopted much later from Eclipse than from Android Studio or IntelliJ IDEA and in the future the ADT plugin may be abandoned altogether. See More

Top Pro

Java programming language and XML editors

Has full support for both Java and XML. See More

Top Pro

Large selection of plugins

Eclipse has a large and active community, which has resulted in a wide variety of plugins. See More

Top Pro

Graphical interface

ADT provides GUI access to many of the command line SDK. See More

Top Pro

Highly customizable

Thanks to the large variety of plugins and various configuration options, Eclipse is very customizable. See More

Top Pro

Good font rendering

Because Eclipse is based on SWT, it uses the native font rendering and thus looks better than other IDEs on some Linux systems, where the Java font rendering is not optimal. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Mac(OS), Linux

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27 18

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