Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Fluid VS Ionic Portals

Compare Fluid VS Ionic Portals and see what are their differences

Fluid logo Fluid

Turn Your Favorite Web Apps into Real Mac Apps.

Ionic Portals logo Ionic Portals

Portals is a supercharged iOS and Android Web View component for adding web-based experiences to native mobile apps.
  • Fluid Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-07-29
  • Ionic Portals Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-07-22

Fluid features and specs

  • Dedicated Browsers
    Fluid creates site-specific browsers that allow users to have dedicated apps for their favorite web pages. This can enhance focus and organization by keeping tasks separate from regular web browsing.
  • Custom User Experience
    Each Site Specific Browser (SSB) can have a custom icon and name, providing a more personalized and aesthetically pleasing user interface.
  • Resource Management
    Having dedicated apps for regularly used web services can minimize the use of browser tabs and extensions, potentially leading to better performance and resource management.
  • Independence from Web Browser
    Fluid apps are independent of the main web browser. This means that if your browser crashes or has issues, your Fluid apps remain unaffected.
  • Enhanced Productivity
    By converting web apps into standalone desktop applications, users can more easily compartmentalize their work, leading to enhanced productivity.

Possible disadvantages of Fluid

  • Limited to MacOS
    Fluid is available only for MacOS, which limits its usability to Mac users and excludes users on other operating systems like Windows or Linux.
  • Manual Updates
    Users need to manually update each Site Specific Browser (SSB) created through Fluid, as these do not automatically update like regular browser tabs.
  • Security Risks
    As Fluid apps are essentially wrappers for web pages, they are subject to the same security risks as any web browser. Users need to ensure they are visiting trusted sites.
  • Limited Functionality
    Unlike full-fledged desktop applications, Fluid apps might have limited native functionality. They rely heavily on the web app's own features and may lack advanced desktop integrations.
  • Cost for Full Features
    While Fluid is free to use, certain advanced features, such as pinning apps to the status bar, require a one-time purchase of Fluid's paid version.

Ionic Portals features and specs

No features have been listed yet.

Analysis of Fluid

Overall verdict

  • Fluid is a good option for macOS users who find themselves frequently switching between web applications and want a more streamlined process. It's especially useful for those who prefer to keep web app sessions isolated or those who enjoy customizing their workflows. However, consider that it is only available for macOS and may not support all features of more complex web applications.

Why this product is good

  • Fluid (fluidapp.com) allows users to create site-specific browsers, which can be useful for treating web applications as standalone apps on macOS. This can help with productivity by preventing web distractions and organizing workflows. Fluid is particularly beneficial if you frequently use web apps and want them to function like native applications with their own dock icons and separate sessions.

Recommended for

  • MacOS users looking to create desktop-like experiences for web applications.
  • Individuals seeking to minimize distractions from other open tabs in a standard browser.
  • Users who need isolated sessions for different web applications.
  • People who appreciate customizing their desktop workflow.

Fluid videos

Primochill Vue Fluid Review

More videos:

  • Review - FluidReview - Accept Online Applications and Submissions and Review
  • Review - Golden Matte Fluid Acrylic Review • An Alternative to Gouache?

Ionic Portals videos

What is Ionic PORTALS? 🔥

More videos:

  • Review - Micro Frontends for Mobile with Ionic Portals
  • Review - Webinar: Ionic Portals - Micro Frontends for Mobile

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Fluid and Ionic Portals)
Group Chat & Notifications
Productivity
0 0%
100% 100
Mac
89 89%
11% 11
Web App
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Fluid and Ionic Portals

Fluid Reviews

10+ Best Prototyping Tools for UI/UX Designers in 2018
With a strong focus on simplicity and communication, Fluid UI great Prototyping tools. Having built-in high and low fidelity component libraries, live team collaboration, device previews and video presentations making it a top-notch solution for designers, product managers and founders alike.

Ionic Portals Reviews

We have no reviews of Ionic Portals yet.
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Fluid should be more popular than Ionic Portals. It has been mentiond 19 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Fluid mentions (19)

  • ToDesktop – Web app to desktop app in minutes
    > Is ToDesktop For Me? > If you want to make a desktop app of a website for your personal use, ToDesktop is overkill. I just want to point out that a lot of us "pros" learn how to use tools like this by semi-personal use. Therefore, you might want to consider a free personal version that's crippled in a mildly annoying way: For example, no installer, don't sign the app, and have an easily-ignorable nag. (Therefore... - Source: Hacker News / almost 2 years ago
  • in safari Sonoma, do profiles act like containers ? (firefox container)
    If you haven't used Fluid - https://fluidapp.com , I would recommend trying the free download. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Why is it so hard to change Chromium's UI?
    You can use Min, Fluid or any browser with full screen mode to have the same effect. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Safari Window Management
    Https://fluidapp.com/ might do it for you. Other applications like this also exist. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Web Push for Web Apps on iOS and iPadOS
    Does Fluid[1] work as a solution for you? I’m on an older OS with an older version but I love it for creating single-site apps. [1] https://fluidapp.com/. - Source: Hacker News / over 2 years ago
View more

Ionic Portals mentions (3)

  • In Review: My First Year at Ionic
    Looking ahead, I'm planning to expand my focus from mobile deployments to the entire app development life cycle. I'm excited to dig more into Capacitor and Portals (the superapp SDK from Ionic), as well as some of the more advanced challenges and use cases facing cross-platform developers. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
  • Ionic react multi app
    Portals for Capacitor would work for this usecase. What you're describing is a "super app" and Portals is good for super apps or micro-frontends for mobile: https://ionic.io/portals. Source: over 2 years ago
  • Lessons learned from migrating a native iOS app to Flutter
    Glad to hear Ionic and Capacitor worked for you! One other thing we’ve been working on is a mobile micro-frontend product called Portals that is focused on enabling teams to bring in web experiences into their native apps. We’ve seen some really interesting adoption of it from traditional native teams. We will be supporting Flutter and RN this year. It’s probably the best web view experience out there at the... - Source: Hacker News / over 3 years ago

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Fluid and Ionic Portals, you can also consider the following products

WebCatalog - Run your favorite web apps natively

Nativizer - Convert any web application into native iOS & Android apps

Web2Desk - Web2Desk is a tool to convert your favorite websites to Desktop app in just one click.

Candu - The first no-code native web builder for SaaS

Nativeifier - Turn any webpage into a native app

WebShell - Bundle web app to OS X app without coding