MonoTouch (= Xamarin.iOS) has nothing to do with Cordova.

I wasn't sure if it was Xamarin or another framework that was ultimately using Cordova underneath. After reviewing their docs a bit more, it appears Xamarin was not the framework where this was the case.

Did you evaluate cocoon? On my tests that was the fastest although a little buggy. I think if I built from the ground up targeting that it would be the best?

https://www.ludei.com/cocoonjs/

We hadn't, but as one of the other comments mentioned, that seems to be game-development focused, which is unfortunately not what I'm working on. I'll keep it in mind for side projects, though.

Isnt cocoon canvas and webgl only?

oh yes. I do mainly games so that huge restriction doesn't register with me sometimes.

trigger.io is also an interesting newcomer.

I recently used trigger.io on a project. It doesn't seem much different to phonegap. Their Reload feature was useful because we had a tight deadline and many iterations but documentation was sparse. Most documentation links 404'd or referenced older versions so I end up having to manually search. If you're on the cheapest plan like I was then you only get community support, which was no good. Stackoverflow based but many questions are unanswered. There's just no community as far as I could tell.

Also their trigger toolkit interface was messy. Browser based. Sometimes I'd enter data into one field only to have it clear other fields.

They compile remotely so if you're looking to tweak configurations in xcode (like you can with cordova) you'll need to opt for some of their modules (like plugins are to phonegap/cordova).

Just so frustrating.