When comparing Ionic Framework vs Sencha Touch, the Slant community recommends Ionic Framework for most people. In the question“What are the best frameworks for developing cross-platform mobile apps with JavaScript?” Ionic Framework is ranked 1st while Sencha Touch is ranked 15th. The most important reason people chose Ionic Framework is:
Large quantity of plugins to access native APIs without code nothing in native language.
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Pros
Pro Cordova plugins
Large quantity of plugins to access native APIs without code nothing in native language.
Pro Large, friendly and active community
Ionic Framework is currently one of the most popular frameworks for hybrid mobile app development. This has resulted in a very large community of active users who contribute to the community by writing tutorials and answering questions.
Pro Free and open source
Ionic is free to use and open source, resulting in an active and helpful community of users and contributors.
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.
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.
Cons
Con Can be buggy
Ionic is still a young framework (version 1.0 was released in May 2015). There are still some quirks and bugs in the framework to work out, which you can see a list of on their Github.
However Ionic is under active development and bugs are generally addressed quickly.
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.