Ionic Reviews

The last project I worked on with Ionic was for a popular medical company. We had to build a platform that could work in both mobile and web environments, and we chose Ionic because it allows you to do a one-code deployment to all kinds of solutions.  It was easy for us to deploy to the stores and web.

The most valuable feature is the one code deployed to all solutions, which means you do not need to have multiple teams. Your web team can be the mobile team, and it can be the iOS team. It reduces the number of overheads and the amount of cost per developer.

As a developer, I would say one of the improvements is more plugins. More plugins give you the ability to do more interactions with the framework over the library. As a user, I would say more flexibility in terms of look and feel. So far Ionic is very fluid. You might not really know, it is web-based technology. I know recently it has gone through a lot of updates, but it can also be improved and become stronger. Ionic allows you to get the best customization ever, but there is nothing like having more. The more customization you get, the easier it is for you to be able to build more quality apps.

I have been using Ionic for the past ten years.

I find Ionic to be a very stable product and is one of the reasons I have spent eight years with it.

Ionic is a scalable product because it uses web technology and web technology scales every day.

I have a direct connection with technical support. They reply quickly.

Positive

I have used Xmarian and React Native.

The initial setup of Ionic is very straightforward and easy.

Deployment depends on the type of infrastructure you are using and the type of security level attached to the deployment scope. I would say on a simple scale, it is between thirty seconds to one minute to deploy. But again depends on the security. Some people have to do a security check on the code, and some middle checks before going to deployment.

Ionic is open source, however, the enterprise solution is a paid service. If you want extra security, custom plugins, direct communication from technical support, customization, they have these services.  The entry-level cost for this is around one hundred dollars per month.

Compared to Xmarian and React Native Ionic has great user acceptance and reliability. How easy is it to get solutions if you hit a roadblock? Their customer service is very prompt. We have a direct connection with them. We can ask them questions and they reply to us or give us solutions and we are able to fix the issues very fast. The community is very stable. Their communications skills and the fact that they are updating frequently with precise and stable updates. They rely on a Google product called Angular JS to roll out their solution and it is fantastic.

I would rate Ionic a nine out of ten.

We are using it for mobile applications that we are publishing to iOS, Huawei, and Google Play Store. It's a very nice hybrid framework for mobile applications.

Being able to have one set of code is valuable. I don't have to recode for different platforms. I don't have to recode for Xcode, Angular, or Android. So, the biggest feature for me is that it's a hybrid system, and I can have one set of code, and then the tool sets that are in there convert my code for Xcode or Play Store. It makes work a lot easier. I don't have to develop three or four code sets for one application. I can do everything from Ionic. 

It has a very powerful Node.js engine as well. It has also got some nice widgets, icon sets, templates, and things like that, but you do need to have some coding background there.

They've created a professional platform where there's a little drag and drop to create apps. For me, integrating or connecting to databases and things like that is very easy. I can integrate any type of backend, such as MySQL or PHP, by using web services and things like that.

When they jumped from version 3 to version 4, 5, and 6, they introduced something called Capacitor, which is basically the tool that you use to convert your code to Xcode, etc. They have a few plugins that are still using, for instance, PhoneGap. So, you have to jump between Capacitor and PhoneGap. Their documentation is good, but there are some versioning control issues. For example, if you want to bring up a phone dial-up or a map, you have to decide whether to use Capacitor, PhoneGap, or Cordova. They started writing Capacitor to get rid of PhoneGap and Cordova, but they haven't yet got all the libraries and all the functionalities. They want you to start using Capacitor, but they don't have all the libraries there. They're developing them as they go. So, currently, you have to mix and match the three. When it comes to mobile applications, I would only like to use Capacitor. I don't want to jump between Cordova and Capacitor or have both of them. That's the main thing for me, but they have been working on it. They have started to bring them closer and closer so that you don't have to use two different sets of libraries. They're close to where you don't have to use Cordova or PhoneGap, and you can only use Capacitor. In versions 5 and 6, they have improved it a lot.

They can also improve it in terms of publishing to different stores. For instance, I'm using Firebase to make my Ionic app web compatible. If I don't have a Node.js server to host on, I have to host it on Firebase or something like that. Currently, if I need to publish to different stores, such as the Microsoft store or the Huawei store, the only way I can publish to, for instance, the Huawei store is by creating the APK and uploading it. If they can start adding a little bit more integration to publish to different stores, such as the Samsung store, Huawei store, or Microsoft store, it would be good. Currently, there are no problems with iOS and Google Play Store, but for the other stores, you have to do a little bit of a workaround to get things done.

Its stability could be better. For me, jumping between versions 3, 4, and 5 was a big problem because it wasn't seamless. Jumping from version 5 to 6 is more seamless. Jumping from version 3 to 5 has been a nightmare because I had to recode quite a lot to be compatible with version 5. I totally skipped version 4 because it was just too quick. Jumping between versions has definitely been a problem for me. If I have to do a lot of plugins and redo a lot of my coding because they're jumping versions, I'm going to look for something else.

I have been using this solution for about four years. I started using version 3, and currently, they are on version 6.

If you stay on a version, it's very stable, but because of mobile devices, you can't do that. You can't just code and think that you don't have to do any maintenance on that for the next year, for instance. That's something that needs to be improved quite a lot. Backward compatibility between versions should be there. I would rate it a three out of ten in terms of stability because if you're on your current version, you're happy, but when there is an update, all of a sudden there are versioning issues. If you need to do major changes, you need to make sure that you stay on the same version, but the moment you start updating the version, there are a lot of break points. That's something that's a bit of a nightmare for me.

It depends on what you want to achieve with the product. You can create a quick little app or you can have a very complex integrated system. If you understand classes, models, controllers, and other similar things, scalability is very easy, but if you don't understand that, it becomes a bit of a problem.

For our needs, it's definitely scalable. There are people who say that if you want performance, then you need to go to the core. The performance these days is more of server-side performance, whereas Ionic is more on the client side. So, in my opinion, if there are any performance issues, that's because you don't have a good backend doing all the processing for you. For me, it's scalable if you understand what you want to do with it. If you use it purely for the front end with no data connections, web services, or other things, it can become a little bit more of a problem. Overall, I would rate it a six out of ten because you can't just use Ionic. If you want to use database integration and things like that, you need a stack. So, the scalability depends on your stack. If you want to use it as a standalone app, then it's not scalable, but if you integrate it into your stack, then it is.

Its documentation is good, and there's a community. As an open-source developer, that's important to me. When I start something new, the first thing I look at is documentation and community. If the documentation is good and there's a community, then you can run. Ionic has got a strong community and their documentation is very good. So, I'm happy with that.

You need to be a developer to understand it. The documentation is very good, but you also need to have Node.js background and some command line background. I prefer that because if it's too easy, then it becomes like WordPress, and every guy on the street can then start using it. 

If you're a developer, their documentation is quite straightforward and easy to read. They're on Git as well. They've got a very good large community. So, for me, getting started with Ionic is very easy. They are also integrating with Vue and React. If you've got an Angular, React, Vue, and Node.js background, it's very easy to use. For someone starting in software dev, any such setup is difficult. I'm currently looking into Flutter. For me, Ionic was easier than Flutter because, in Flutter, you need to extract everything, whereas, with Ionic, you run a Node.js command, and there are some steps, and you've got a working app within minutes that you can start using and playing around with. I would rate it a seven out of ten in terms of the setup and ease of use. I love the product. If you're a coder or developer, it's very easy.

Overall, I would rate it a seven out of ten. I'm fairly satisfied with it.

The main reason we use Ionic is because it is designed to be cross-platform. If you need to build an application with the same functionality on iOS and Android, you don't need to worry about maintaining two separate applications. We can build and deploy on Ionic, and then enter the apps into the Apple App Store and Play Store. With Ionic, only one source code needs to be managed across multiple applications.

Ionic also provides their own tools to deploy the application along with Ionic Capacitor, but I was mostly using custom manual deployment along the lines of, "Let's run some commands in Android and Xcode", and then generating net-aware applications. Additionally, Ionic supports web applications and PWAs (Progressive Web Apps).

In our company, we have multi-member developers where some are working on Ionic using React Native, some are working on web apps and Vue JS, and we are all working in a parallel fashion. In my group we currently have around 10 people working on Ionic, even though they're also working on React Native and other languages that have different skill sets. For myself, I have more than three years of experience in Ionic using Angular, until I switched to working on Ionic with React Native.

When I first started working on Ionic, I noticed that what they were doing is just creating a WebView of native code in the background, and then rendering everything on WebView. That means that it's converting our code to HTML, and the HTML was being rendered on WebView for native Android and iOS. For this reason the performance wasn't very good, and at times they were using code or a plugin for this until version five, when they introduced Capacitor.

Capacitor provides a lot of features we can use, including libraries and code for the camera plugin, post notifications, and so on. The thing is that if they are not using WebView, they have to internally build some native modules for Android and iOS. Whenever we import those modules from Android and iOS and we are busy creating the APK and building the applications, they are converting into native components instead of WebView, and that's why we're seeing such good performance now.

What I like the most about Ionic is live reloading, which enables us to develop new features without having to build the application again and re-check the functionality. It's the same when it comes to the web, as whenever we make design changes or create API calls, it automatically refreshes our application and we can directly check the functionality.

Ionic is a cross-platform framework, so when we compare Ionic with native Android and iOS, we can see the drawbacks. For example, if you need to work on very high-level aspects of an application such as animation, even if everything else is not putting load on the app, you will still see high load from the server side. You will eventually find yourself getting lots of image, video, and hardware-related work to deal with. This is the main limitation of Ionic because we still have to depend on the native Android and iOS code. However, in other ways we can achieve the same performance with Ionic as we can achieve with native Android code.

One feature I would like to see added is the code post. The code post is a very good feature I encountered when using React Native. Inside the code post, you don't need to deploy your application again when you're modifying your code. You just need to run one command, and each and every server will automatically receive the latest modification. A similar feature in Ionic would be appreciated. 

Another drawback of Ionic has to do with the no-code service that they provide, where you just need to drag and drop your components to build your application. I feel that, coding-wise, it isn't a good feature. And, for instance, if you're making an API call, they would only provide the UI, so you would still need to take some time to modify it. Because of this, I considered simply building our UI from scratch.

Apart from that, one other disadvantage is when you're using a type of plugin like AdSense for putting adverts in your application, Ionic would take a percentage of whatever profit you make.

I have more than three years of experience in Ionic, having started on the first version available.

When it comes to stability, so far, so good. Ionic has improved a lot since it came out. When I was working on Ionic version one and version three, at times the performance was not good. When using the application, we could literally feel, "Okay, this is not a native build." You could see the UI glitches, and so many other glitches, but now, in the latest version, they have improved a great deal.

Before, they were using extra code, such as a plugin or library, converting all those components to WebView. But now, they're using the native component in the background. Thus, the improvements have come a long way in areas such as screen navigation and so on.

In general, the stability of Ionic is great, whether you're building an eCommerce platform, a social application, or most anything else.

As for maintenance, it's not a big deal. Only one person needs to be assigned to that.

We definitely intend to increase our usage of Ionic in the future. Whenever a non-technical customer asks about building their mobile application in Android and iOS, they tend to expect two separate developers for each mobile platform. Instead, I suggest that they use Ionic to develop their application because it is cross-platform and they don't need to maintain two separate developers. With Ionic, one team can do both Android and iOS coding, and even web coding, so it's always something I refer to with many of our customers.

I could give Ionic 4/5 stars in terms of technical support.

Positive

I have also used other solutions such as Angular and React Native, which is also cross-platform.

The setup was very straightforward. Even a non-technical person can set up Ionic and start creating normal applications.

I have a good deal of experience in deploying Android and iOS in different scenarios and until now I have deployed more than 10 Android and iOS applications on the Play Store and Apple Store. We are not using a consultant or similar professional to help with implementation because I know the issues of our applications and how to solve them.

I think most of the plugins for Ionic are open source, and you can do a lot with many of the basic features. However, if you need to use a premium plugin for something like extra scroll list functionality, Ionic will ask for a certain sum of money.

Another thing to be aware of is that with some advertisement plugins such as AdSense, Ionic will take a percentage of whatever profit you make.

Ionic is the best solution I have used of its kind. There are different reasons and benefits to choose to use it, which include cost-savings, time-savings, and the ability to code more effectively, especially since you don't need to maintain two separate code bases.

At the same time, it has its limitations, even though the Ionic team are continuously improving many aspects. I would possibly give it a perfect score if it weren't for the fact that it does not support multi-threading (as it is based on JavaScript). This means that if you are thinking of making custom animations without using any images, you might find that your application will struggle with high loads.

I would rate Ionic an eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution to develop hybrid mobile applications that include PWAs, Android apps, and iOS apps. 

Our developers rely heavily on Storage, PWA, and CodeOver but prefer that our laboratory designs other components to ensure a homogeneous work environment. 

The solution is secure, reliable, and packed with features so we can easily implement apps even in the most complex situations.

The solution provides flexibility with useful components such as a date picker, Storage, biometric and CodeOver plugins, and end-to-end payments. 

For example, we used the solution to develop banking apps for a client because its features met banking requirements.

Documentation for migrations and compatibility is insufficient.

For example, we recently migrated from Ionic 5 to Ionic 6 with an additional migration to Angular 13. We found that Angular was no more compatible with Ionic 6 than it was with Ionic 5 but there was no documentation on the subject.

Release notes and migration guides sometimes miss crucial information which creates chaos while migrating. We did provide feedback and opened a case on the solution's portal where some issues were resolved.

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable and is used by many organizations with no reliability challenges. 

From the performance side, improvements could be made because we sometimes use native plugins to interact with hardware but the plugins are not updated frequently enough. 

For example, Ionic 6 includes new bundling optimizations but older plugins are not yet aligned with the latest capabilities and this causes a lag in performance. 

For this reason, we rely on our in-house design laboratory to create DSL components that we use instead of plugins to ensure a homogeneous approach across teams and apps. 

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support is good and has responded in a timely manner to tickets. 

I rate support a seven out of ten because it would be beneficial to have a Slack channel for queries and discussions to get an instant response. Other solutions offer this option and it is a more flexible approach to receiving support. 

Neutral

The solution was already in place when I started working for my current company. 

The setup can be straightforward or complex depending on needs, features, and number of users. 

Our company handles implementations for clients. Our team of 35 engineers includes developers and QA along with four DevOps staff handling core items. 

A separate internal team handles deployments because the apps are huge with millions of users. Apps are deployed in different data centers with monthly releases for both Android and iOS. The deployment process includes bundling the app in a disk folder, using Docker to encapsulate it, and using GCP cloud to deploy.

A team of maintenance engineers handle upgrades and releases of new versions.

The solution's open source option is free with no licensing fees. 

Our company uses the open source option without any features that require fees. 

At my prior company, we had a discussion about using Angular or CodeOver separately. 

We decided to use the solution because we were implementing an app for an Arabian banking client that needed support for right-to-left translations. No other solution was able to support that flexibility in a convenient manner. 

There are many design changes when reading right-to-left and the solution is capable of a complex design that reads both ways.

I recommend using the solution because it is a good product. 

I am not sure it is worth it to consume additional services that have licensing fees. 

I rate the solution an eight out of ten because it has many flexibilities but there is some room for improvement. 

We started building with Ionic mainly for our hybrid mobile application development projects, and as we got a little bit more comfortable and the toolchain improved, we've also used it for web development that we've done for some of our customers.

There are two main things. Because it's a hybrid mobile app framework, it is easy for us to develop iOS as well as Android apps for our customers with the same resource skills. We didn't have to have separate iOS teams and Android teams to build the apps. We still have to use the Apple Xcode for iOS, but the main development happens with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. We don't have to write separate code bases in scripts for iOS and Android. We create apps using web-based technology. 

Another advantage is that it comes with a lot of free, inbuilt components. It has UI components that are already mobile-friendly. It also has a very good in-built navigation for the mobile context. It makes development very easy. You do it for one platform, and it is automatically done for both platforms.

They can get the performance closer to what we would get by using Native. They have improved it significantly, but they can add more support for device-specific things. There could be better support for augmented reality and other things. Geolocation and background app activity are some of the things that are a little more clumsy at the moment and could be improved. In our company, we are working on building capabilities with augmented reality and other things. If they can add more powerful support for that, it would be awesome.

It has been about six to seven years.

If it is done well, it is a very stable framework to use. We've some projects that are almost five years old, and they are using some of the earlier versions of Ionic, such as Ionic free, and they still do pretty well when we use them on the latest iOS and Android versions. So, it has been quite good. It's not that the support breaks or there are other issues. If you are building them well by using best practices, they seem to work pretty well even after multiple platform upgrades.

It is mainly using web technologies, and they also have a fantastic community that builds a lot of plugins. Those plugins are open-source and free. It is also very easy to build your own plugin and extend your extender framework and use it how you want. That works out really well. 

There are also paid tools that the Ionic team has released, which further improve development, deployment, and app design. They are paid ones but not necessary to use. They can, of course, improve your entire output efficiency, but you can pretty much do most of the development work using the open-source community tools. You don't have to go for these paid tools.

We have about six or seven developers who are working on Ionic-based projects, and we are a team of about 16 people in total at the moment. It is getting used in our current projects, and we are planning to use it for some of the projects that are in the pipeline in the future.

The Ionic forum is very active. It also has a very large community forum. A lot of the issues and questions asked on the forum generally have been answered. I have not taken their paid support yet. So, I would not be able to comment on that, but so far, with the general community support, the responses from their official support on their forum, and API docs, the experience has been pretty good.

The earlier versions of Ionic used the Cordova toolchain, which was very difficult because any dependency updates would break the build process. On different developer machines, getting the project started and set up was always time-consuming, but since they introduced the new Capacitor toolchain, things have improved significantly. It has made life a little bit easier for us. The setup is no longer complex. I would rate it a four out of five in terms of the setup.

The maintenance that we see on the projects is related to client features. When it was on the Cordova toolchain, there was a lot of effort due to Ionic version upgrades, et cetera, but since the Capacitor toolchain has been used, Ionic-specific maintenance is not a big challenge. It's generally maintaining what we do on the project because some of the projects have been long-term projects where we are maintaining client apps. So, the maintenance projects are on, but they are not related to Ionic.

Typically, Ionic is compared with React Native and Flutter. React Native very much uses React, and Flutter uses its own language, which is Dart. If we were to use these, we would have to train our developers in these languages. The good thing about Ionic is that although they started with Angular as their base web framework, over a couple of years, they have also added support for React and Vue. They keep adding support for popular JavaScript frameworks. That really makes it super easy for us to hire new developers and ask them to work on Ionic. Even if they don't know Angular and they know React, they can still use the Ionic framework. That's the best part about Ionic.

For us, it is a 10 out of 10 because it is our platform of choice for most of our mobile app product development. It is the default choice for our company. Working on the platform has been very good.

I use Ionic to design the printing phase per customer requirements. I use the ID screen, which is usually coded, to create the pages of the Android and iOS mobile applications.

Ionic is easy to upgrade and is helpful for design purposes. It also is quite common and easy to use.

It is a very reliable application. It's easy to write on and print.

The UI is easy to use as well.

My organization chose to go with Ionic because we can access both Android and iOS applications.

It would be good if the mobile version uses something other than JavaScript and HTML.

I would like to see the addition of more performance and security features to the next release.

I've been using this solution for two years.

It is stable, and as the versions are upgraded, the stability has also been fine.

It is scalable.

I would rate Ionic's technical support at eight on a scale from one to ten.

Positive

The initial setup can be complicated depending on your understanding of the project requirements. It is important to have good communication with your clients.

The deployment can take two to three days. Usually, we have a team of three people who handle the solution, but that number can go up if a larger team is needed.

Ionic is an open source solution, and there are no hidden fees.

You would need to know JavaScript and HTML. I recommend Ionic and rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten. It is easy to use whether it is for Android or iOS applications.

It's very flexible for UI development, and we use it for front-end tasks.

It supports JavaScript, Bluebird, Node.js, and Angular. Inside the Ionic Framework, if we want any control from the Angular perspective, we can include it.

There is a lack of a community environment, and the solution lacks developer opinions. One thing lacking in Ionic is community libraries that can support the Ionic Framework.

The JavaScript framework has so many steps, and if Ionic can reduce those steps, that would be great. They can easily provide those things into the core framework, which will be very good for the developers.

We have been using this solution for about three years, and it is deployed on Play Store and App Store. We started with Ionic 5.0 and are currently using Ionic 6.0.

Ionic has introduced a few more controls in new releases. It will be very helpful for mobile app development and developers.

It is very scalable. I am unsure about usage across the organization, but on my current project, we use Ionic Framework with two developers on our team.

We have used technical support. There were some issues with plugins, and they provided consoles from their official site. They initially did not respond, but we eventually got an answer. On an enterprise level, they quickly give technical support and have biometric authentication. I arranged one ticket for the enterprise-level library, and they responded quickly.

Any developer with hands-on experience or basic knowledge about the JavaScript framework can easily set it up. Anyone can connect Ionic to JavaScript or any web development.

The setup was straightforward, and they were in the command line, so we had to do a command to set up the core system. A developer can use their system on their Mac, run the application, and develop the UI and logic on the browser itself.

Ionic is open-sourced, and there are no hidden fees. So if anyone wants to use their enterprise library to support B2C auth and any biometric authentication or fingerprint, they can do that with the enterprise edition library.

I rate this solution an eight out of ten. It is an easy solution and a good find. We chose Ionic because the project we are developing supports both Android and iOS. In addition, an architect and lead decided to use Ionic because it was a cross-platform framework, and they had an Angular developer at that time.

For a web developer who experiences web development like HTML, CSS, bootstrap, or any JavaScript framework, Ionic is used. It is great for those developers to develop mobile applications for Android, iOS, and PWA.

We are using Ionic for tracking our internal applications.

The most valuable feature of Ionic is the ease of use and the simple connection of the applications. Additionally, the documentation is good in the Ionic application, and beginners can easily learn and download their own application using Ionic. Everyone can easily switch out, their domain, from native applications to hybrid applications.

Ionic could improve in the Native mode because while we do testing it is difficult to find the root cause of problems. It could be more user-friendly.

I have been using Ionic for approximately two years.

The stability of Ionic is good.

I am the only one using Ionic in my company.

Most of the time if I have an issue with Ionic I'm receiving help from the forum, and through LinkedIn connections. I have not used the support from Ionic.

The initial setup of Ionic is simple, it is user-friendly. The full deployment only takes five minutes. 

The full deployment and operations take 10 minutes when my application size is approximately 20 MB, including the building and the app signing.

Ionic is an open-source solution, it is free.

We would like to develop the applications based on the contract developed in a simple way. We don't like using Angular Studio and we can easily make my hybrid application through Ionic. In our use case, it can easily connect to Android and iOS. This is why we choose Ionic. 

It is important for those who want to use Ionic to know about the main core functionality of their application. If they are aware of this then everyone can easily build their own application using Ionic. It's not that difficult to make the application through Ionic.

I rate Ionic an eight out of ten.

I use Ionic for app development.

Ionic's best features are its hybrid app development, design, and tags.

Ionic would be improved with dynamic design features.

I've been using Ionic for six years.

Ionic is really stable.

Ionic is scalable.

The initial setup was easy.

I would give Ionic a rating of nine out of ten.

Ionic is uploaded within the Google Cloud console. I am using it to complete general tasks in Google Cloud locations and Deskforce.

I like that I can place the code and escalate data storage. I also like that it's user-friendly. Nothing is complex in Ionic.

It would be better if it had a speed niche system. There are a lot of things we need that weren't in the latest version. But I think they will be adding something.

I have been using Ionic Angular for three years and two months.

Ionic is a stable solution.

Ionic is scalable. We have about 20 users in our organization using Ionic.

Technical support is good. On a scale from one to five, I would give Ionic tech support a five.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward.

We have received a return on our investment. On a scale from one to five, I would give our ROI a five.

We pay 50,000 dinars per month.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Ionic a ten.