Migrating from Hybrid App to Native App at later point of time

Question

Currently I am planning to use Hybrid App (ionic framework) to develop an initial version of our app. The reason is I am planning to start a startup and currently not in a position to afford individual developer for various platforms (especially for iOS, the developer rate is too costly).

So I decided to use Hybrid App using ionic, and our requirements fits well for hybrid app at-least for initial few releases. But at later point planning to migrate to native Android and iOS when I earn enough funding. Because later versions of app may have features like payment gateway integration, chat features etc.

So my question is, is it possible to release initial version of app using hybrid and at later updates push native version? If yes can someone give me basic idea of how is this achieved so I can take it forward? I searched quite in Google but didn't find enough information regarding same.

Answer 1

Publishing hybrid app on platform specific stores are same process as publishing native app.

You can develop and build application using any cross platform mobile application development tool (i.e. ionic framework or any other) and later easily move to native development tool. You can also develop application on hybrid tool(ionic framework) and build it on native development tool(Xcode or Android Studio) and proceed further for publishing on store.

In Android, package name(application ID) should be same for different versions of app binary. Also signing certificate remain same during version change.

In iOS, Bundle ID must be same for different versions/builds of app binary. Apart from this, provisional profiles and certificates also need to be same.

Answer 2

It is possible unless the binary have the same bundle identifier. You may first release an app with Ionic framework and later push a native version of it. One thing is that the two binary have to have same bundle identifier.