Top 10 Progressive Web Apps (PWA) Development Tools

Progressive Web Apps are getting massive traction, so for developers, what are the best PWA development tools out there?

Progressive Web Apps (PWA) Development Tools

The Technology model is changing so frequently that app owners must adapt to the ever-growing demands to keep their products or services relevant in the market. 

While mobile apps are ruling the application world, the PWAs are increasingly getting massive traction among the customers, and that is an area where app owners are putting all their focus these days.

PWAs are more than a buzzword in the app development domain. Gone are the days, when native apps were ruling the roost and it seemed nothing can replace them in near future. 

However, the PWAs have given native apps a run for the money, and now they are on verge of eliminating them due to the high level of performance and experience they offer.

According to the Top 30 PWAs report, the PWAs register a 36% higher conversion rate than native mobile apps. PWAs offer a 50% higher customer engagement rate if we compare that of native apps. 

Many studies and surveys have shown that enterprises have noticed a sizeable reduction in page loading speed by switching to PWAs while keeping the development cost 3-4 times less if we compare with the native apps.

 

What Is Progressive Web App (PWA)?

A PWA is a combination of mobile applications and standard websites that uses modern web technologies and capabilities to offer a native app-like experience to the users. 

In simpler terms, we can say that PWAs are web applications that look like a regular website but function as native applications. 

PWA apps are built using JavaScript, CSS, and HTML and they offer unique performance and usability to the user. The core of a PWA application consists of three components — an application shell, service workers, and a web app manifest. 

 

Advantages of PWAs

App owners and Enterprises offer the following benefits:

  • Improved user conversions and engagement
  • Short time to market
  • They work with most devices and browsers with a progressive codebase
  • Provide a native application like experience
  • Leverage web application manifest capabilities to describe the used resources
  • Fit all form and screen factors using a responsive design methodology
  • Leverage service workers to offer exceptional offline connectivity

We hope it has become more evident that why you should put your money in PWA development. It is important to have the right skillset and tools to develop engaging PWAs that can offer an amazing user experience. 

We have the following web application development tools available in the market, that enable developers to design, develop and deploy amazing PWAs for any enterprise. 

Top 10 Progressive Web Apps Development Tools

1. AngularJS

Angular JS is among the oldest JavaScript frameworks and one of the most popular PWA development technologies due to its mature and well-defined methodology. Angular JS is equipped with all the capabilities that enable developers to incorporate enormous functionalities. 

Angular JS simplifies the app development process, which helps developers to create PWAs quickly. Angular JS enjoys the strong support of Google and its extensive community support for regular updates.

2. Vue JS

Vue JS is an open-source and among the most progressive JavaScript frameworks available in the market, that offers the easy coding feature. It is a standard solution for developing PWAs and MVPs due to its amazing rendering capabilities. It also offers detailed and precise documentation, that helps developers to deliver PWAs quickly. Vue JS enjoys a unique proposition where JavaScript base and HTML extensions work in tandem with its Electron framework, which makes it a highly popular PWA development tool.

3. Ionic

Ionic is another powerful and effective PWA tool based on Angular framework and Apache Cordova, that allows developers to build high-performance PWAs. It provides a rich toolkit to develop several PWA components and functionalities such as  UI/UX elements, pre-built routing, unit tests, etc. 

It is indeed an intelligent solution for those app owners who are planning to migrate from PhoneGap/Cordova to Responsive web apps and Cross-platform mobile application development.

4. Polymer

Polymer is built and supported by Google. It is a lightweight JavaScript framework that is equipped with various PWA development tools. It offers strong documentation and a wide array of templates, that enable developers to build high-performance PWAs with ease. The Polymer allows developers to seamlessly sync the data with devices and create reusable components. Polymer is an excellent PWA development tool, that uses PRPL patterns for better optimization.

5. React PWA Library

The ReactJS framework is used to build single-page (SPA) and multi-page applications. However, with its extra capabilities and additional JS libraries, developers can also create highly rendered client-side and server-side pages, API integrations, and routing. React JS offers robust documentation, ecosystem backing, extensive libraries, an extensive development community, etc., which makes it an excellent choice for developing highly efficient PWAs.

6. Super PWA

Super PWA is a highly popular and user-friendly plugin to develop PWAs. Super PWA is also known for its capability to build high-quality offline pages. It enables developers to easily transform WordPress websites into fully functional Progressive Web Apps, without putting extra coding efforts. 

7. Magento PWA Studio

Magento PWA Studio is a highly efficient toolkit that acts as a facilitator to develop, deploy, and maintain a PWA Storefront above a Magento responsive website. It is built on Magento 2 platform and equipped with advanced libraries and tools corresponding to the Magento 2 principle of extensibility, which helps developers to build an efficient framework and PWAs.

8. PWA Builder

PWA Builder is an open-source tool founded by Microsoft, and it is ideal for converting websites into full-fledged PWAs with little development effort. It enables developers to build PWAs that work online and offline on any browser. PWA Builder has gained massive popularity among web development companies due to its intuitive features and fewer coding requirements. 

ScandiPWA

ScandiPWA is an open-source Magento theme but certainly not a toolset, it is more of a ready-to-use solution to create PWAs with ease. It doesn’t need middleware, databases, and extra services. It omits the middle layer, which ensures no performance lag to the Progressive web application. It supports multiple languages, domains, currencies, stores, and more. It uses GraphQL, which ensures faster page rendering capability due to its innovative single-page app approach.

Lighthouse

This is another highly popular PWA development tool. It was created by Google, and it is used to validate the PWA quality and check for any issues before its launch. It measures various parameters of the web application and lists the factors, that are mandatory to work upon to transform a website into a fully functional PWA. It analyzes the digital offerings of an organization and provides deep insights to the developers to tweak the PWA development process.

 

Conclusion

Progressive Web applications are undoubtedly capturing the imagination of customers due to their enormous benefits and features. However, if the PWAs are not developed using the right set of technologies and tools, then you will certainly be obliterated in this highly competitive application world. 

But guess what? By using these 10 PWA development tools, you can certainly develop outstanding applications that can give you a competitive edge, while providing your customers with a blazingly fast and native app-like experience.