ReactJS vs React Native – A 2024 Overview for Your Business Growth

Are you confused about choosing between ReactJS and React Native for your development process? Want to have a robust web development framework onboard? Let’s dive in and find out the answers to all your questions with this informative blog to compare ReactJS vs React Native.

What Exactly is ReactJS?

ReactJS is a JavaScript library that supports the front end as well as the server. It’s used to develop the user interfaces or UI components of mobile and web applications. With ReactJS, your developers can combine complex UIs from a minor isolated part of code known as ‘components’.

ReactJS takes care of only the view layer of any application. It consists of two key parts components and an HTML document. While the HTML document is a place where all components are rendered, Components are the elements that showcase HTML code and what you want to see in your UI.

Key Features of ReactJS

1. Greater Speed: Using the Document Object Model (DOM), ReactJS can help your business in web and mobile application development that defines speed like none. Creating an in-memory data structure cache that analyzes the subsequent difference, React seamlessly updates the DOM displayed by the browser.

Developers write code as if the complete page is rendered with every change, but actually, only those components are rendered that change. This makes it the right fit for your successful application creation when it comes to speed.

2. Intuitive Architecture: Unlike a web development framework, ReactJS as a library introduced the concept of component-based architecture to the development arena. With this concept in place, your business can reuse components and concentrate on other imperatives while saving a lot of time.

This type of architecture helps in collating an array of larger UI and transforming them into an autonomous self-sufficient arrangement. For instance, if any component needs some significant changes within the Adset tab in Facebook Ads, then only that component shall be redefined and reused.

3. Boosts Search Engine Optimization (SEO): With the capabilities of server-side rendering, React helps enhance the SEO of an application/web page and engages organic traffic. When a server is visited by a Google bot that has already rendered images and content, caching and logging of the same content can be achieved at a faster rate.

This boosts the overall SEO strategy. Besides, React also decreases the page loading time if the Google bot directly logs the content from the server side and initiates unmatched visibility and user experience.

4. Large Ecosystem: Your business shall get the privilege of having a platform driven by a huge community of React native developers. These developers have established this community by creating a huge ecosystem of extensions for code editors, component libraries, web browsers, tools, etc.

Such a community-enabled platform promotes innovation and stands tall as one of the best-suited options for developing dynamic websites and applications.

What Exactly is React Native?

React Native is a cross-platform mobile framework that uses ReactJS to build impressive websites and applications. It helps your developers to create mobile apps by compiling native app components that have the ability to run on various platforms like Android, Windows, iOS in JavaScript.

The more interesting part is React Native outlines ReactJS under its framework and ReactJS helps build components with React Native.

Key Features of React Native

1. Platform-specific code: One of the major advantages of using React Native is attaining the knack of writing platform-specific code to develop custom business applications and websites. As a framework, React Native builds applications by automatically detecting the platform it’s being run on. As such, your business helps in generating the right code for the correct platform and improves your development process.
2. Quick Application Development: Most of the code available in React Native is JavaScript which helps the front-end developers to create applications swiftly. With such a web development framework at the forefront, the developers only have to gain knowledge about platform APIs, platform-centric designs, some native user interface elements, and JavaScript. Even if you are not a great developer, you can easily get started with React Native and can change your business idea into a whooping reality.
3. Hot Reloading Feature: With React Native, your development team shall gain the capability to automatically reload a mobile application in a seamless manner. It gives your business enough liberty to lift loading times and user experience. This Hot Reloading feature shall help you in optimizing the development process, make it faster, and save time across the end-to-end development cycle.
4. Smoother UI Experience: React Native framework consists of component UI libraries that can be used by businesses to deliver a smooth UI experience to their users. This type of sharing UI libraries like Expo, Shouten, etc. saves a lot of time required to create them from the start. Using React Native means focusing exhaustively on innovation. Rather than curating libraries from scratch, you can concentrate on your business ideas.

Know the Major Differences Between Both: Here’s a Quick Lowdown to Some of Their Downsides Pointed Out in the Below Table

There are various similarities between the two platforms. But as we move forward with this React Native vs ReactJS tutorial, let’s have a look at some of the major differences that your business can consider and try.

ReactJS VS React Native – Main Differences

• When it comes to a web platform, ReactJS can be defined as a base derivative of React DOM, while React Native acts as a base derivative by keeping workflow and syntax the same alongside altering components.
• React is a JavaScript library that can help your developers in building a highly responsive UI Layer and React Native on the other hand is a complete framework for developing cross-platform applications.
• Virtual DOM is used to extract browser code in React; native APIs help in rendering components in mobile in React Native.
• In React Native, UI is rendered with the help of JSX but the applications curated with ReactJS extract HTML in UI.
• For styling in ReactJS, CSS is used, and the React Native platform requires a stylesheet for styling.
• Using CSS, you can carry out animation in ReactJS; for animation in React Native, you need to use an animated API.

Many companies have already adopted React Native and ReactJS technologies and are using them exhaustively to build cutting-edge applications and websites. Let’s check out some of the most famous companies that have adopted ReactJS or React Native.

Famous Applications Backed by ReactJS

1. Instagram – Team Instagram was seeking a website, a one-page app with which web visitors can access the social platform. And they chose ReactJS for this purpose. With the React web development platform, the web application was optimized and all set to please users with comfort and speed. Now, web, as well as mobile Instagram applications, are built with ReactJS.
2. Netflix – ReactJS was adopted by Netflix in 2015. However, it’s now used in combination with a rendering layer called Gibbon. The reason why Netflix chose React was its asserting development approach and one-way-ticket model of information flow.
3. Airbnb – The company chose ReactJS for its development process to utilize its iterating pattern, seamless code refactoring, and component reusability. Today, the company is using this technology for the internal structures of its web pages as well as the mobile application.

Famous Applications Backed by React Native

1. Uber Eats – The company was built on the cornerstones of customers, drivers, and restaurants. The biggest challenge for programmers was to interpret an authentic restaurant console from the web to mobile for both iOS and Android. As such, a part of the Uber Eats mobile app is created with React Native which is helping the company to scale up and enhance its services.
2. SoundCloud Pulse – Team SoundCloud was all set to launch a mobile app by which the artists can manage their copyrights and accounts as a whole. The important thing was to fit into the limited resources and the development team of three. This is where an open-source web framework like React Native helped the company by sharing the codebase, increasing user-friendliness, and reloading automatic live code.
3. Bloomberg – When this digital magazine wanted to develop a mobile application for its users, it opted for React Native. “The first tool that truly delivers on the promise of cross-platform native app development,” says one of their post on the Tech At Bloomberg blog.