When to choose Progressive Web Apps Over Hybrid apps

The users’ entire app experience lies between web apps and native apps which when put for a comparison overflows the table with its pros and cons. Webapp is the easiest to develop and maintain on the other hand native app is far ahead in terms of better user experience.

To bridge the gap between these two, the concept of Hybrid app was introduced around 12 years back which can be developed using the common web technologies which make the development easier and cheaper but adopts the installable feature of a native application. To make things much easier, the concept of Progressive Web Apps was introduced by Google in 2015.

Let’s do an analysis on when to go for PWA and Hybrid Apps.

The pros of hybrid over native apps are below which got even better with progressive web apps.

Ease of development

o This was the most highlighted feature of hybrid apps when introduced. There is no separate team needed to be hired, the same team can handle both IOS and android apps which is a blessing for low-budget applications.

This aspect got even more simplified with PWA, where the web development team can handle the app development as well. The role of wrapping platforms like Cordova got nullified in the case of Progressive web apps.

Single codebase

o The single code base factor makes hybrid apps easy to maintain. Whenever a new update needs to be introduced, this feature reduces the overhead on the developers to make the changes in all the codebases.

o There is not much difference with PWA in this aspect as only one code base needs to be maintained for PWAs as well.

Application distribution

o Both Native and Hybrid apps are distributed via Applications Stores in most cases (In some cases the executable files are distributed directly. But as that percentage is very small it can be ignored). This increases the overhead on the app developers to get through the approval process.

PWAs on the other hand can be directly added to the home screen from the browser, thereby the approval process could be bypassed.

Application Performance

o Hybrid apps are way behind native apps in case of performance and user experience. Even the newcomer PWA has beaten the Hybrid app in this case. PWAs offer better performance and response toward user actions when compared to hybrid apps.

Access to Device Features

o This is the place where PWA completely fails to Hybrid apps. Even though hybrid apps cannot reach up to native apps, they are way ahead of PWAs in this aspect. So, for applications that need access to device features like fingerprint sensors, Bluetooth, PWA is not recommended.

Ease of pushing updates

o Pushing the updates to a PWA is simple as it will load automatically in the background when the network is available.

o Whereas in hybrid and native app, the update should happen via application stores which gives PWA the upper hand on this factor.

Battery consumption

o PWAs usually require more CPU usage and hence it seems to be less battery efficient. This is considered as one of its demerits.

Space usage

o PWA is space-efficient compared to hybrid and native apps. They are limited to the internal storage allowed by the browser in which they run. Which is 10% of the allowed space for Firefox, 6% of Chrome, and 50MB of Safari.

Search Engine Indexing

o Progressive web apps can be found in a Google search because they are completely indexable. Even hybrid app links can be indexed and listed in searches, but considering the ease of getting indexed, PWA has an upper hand on this aspect as they have a high SERP ranking.

Offline capability

o Even though the PWA is an instance of a web browser, it offers offline capability with the help of service workers. This gives the user more of a native app experience with PWA.

Here is a quick side-by-side comparison of PWA and the Hybrid app for better understanding.

Summary

We have discussed several areas where PWA has the upper hand also areas where they fail to hybrid apps. So now it is your turn to make the call whether to go with the Hybrid apps of PWA. This completely depends on your requirement.