We performed a comparison between Appium and Xamarin Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Mobile Development Platforms solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"We develop apps using the React Native framework, and Appium integrates well for testing those apps. The Appium automation framework also has good integration with GitHub Actions and plenty of other tools and frameworks, including BrowserStack."
"The most valuable features of Appium are the in-built functionality, which we can use in our code. For example, move back, move front, navigate one page before, and navigate one page ahead. You can do this by using the in-built functions from Appium."
"The automation part is extremely helpful in streamlining our processes."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"The most valuable feature is that it's easy to launch applications. Appium has everything that Selenium has. So many good tools support Appium. We can take some Excel sheets and use them to fill out the text box that's in there. We can also take screenshots of failures."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"I haven't explored other solutions in this particular area, but what I like best about Appium is the fact that it shares functions with Selenium. The extension of Selenium functions allows me to use all of the methods that exist in that domain, and it just makes it simpler for me. I've been using Selenium for some time as well, so using Appium just seems like a natural fit for me."
"Being able to use the .NET framework and platform have me creating applications better than anyone who develops on Windows."
"My favorite feature of Xamarin platform is the Xamarin.Essentials package. I also like the changes seen in Xamarin's upgrade from Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI, because in the older Xamarin Platform, Xamarin.Forms gave you multiple libraries of a particular level for a single platform, whereas .NET MAUI comprises a single, organized library that contains everything needed for both Android and iOS."
"Plugins like MvvmCross make a developer’s life easy."
"The best part while using the Xamarin Platform is a cross-platform application. We could execute iOS and Android while writing a single line of code."
"Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products."
"You can create one solution in C Sharp."
"Xamarin makes it easy to create white label applications for all platforms."
"The combination of forms for cross-platform UI and C-Sharp for the programming language are my two favorite features."
"The initial setup is straightforward if you have previous experience with the solution, but it can be complicated for a novice user."
"I rarely use Appium nowadays because I'm now at the managerial level, but the last time I used it, whenever I selected and clicked on an element, Appium was very slow. I tried to debug it, but I still couldn't find the problem, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement lies with the connector and server. For example, the effort to get into the local machine sometimes causes the emulator to become slow, which then leads to failure in testing, and this is the usual issue I've encountered from Appium. An additional feature I'd like added to Appium in its next release is being able to do automation in iOS without using XPath and the name of the element. In Xcode, you can use previous UI tests for detecting elements, but in Appium, you have to use Xpath and the element name instead of being able to directly put the X-UiPath, which is what you can do in Xcode. In iOS as well, sometimes the element doesn't have a name or a path. Sometimes, there's also no element."
"The setup and installation were a problem for us at first."
"There is always a concern about the amount of code that is required to enhance the automation process. The idea of having less code or no code is what we would like to see in future updates."
"Image recognition could be improved. We have some images in our mobile applications. It should be able to run from the cloud, so we can automate the catcher."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"We haven't been able to fully leverage Appium for multiple reasons. I think number one is just that the tests take a long time to run. We have had some issues around just the results themselves and how predictable they are, but those are not issues with Appium directly."
"Appium has problems with automated validations following iOS updates, causing us to have to validate manually."
"I would like to see hot reload, similar to what Flutter has out-of-the-box. There is "Live Reload" but it’s still in preview and was only recently announced."
"For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer."
"There is limited support for UX widgets."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."
"The monitoring of the remote devices is not good as it should be extended along. It would be useful if the log is more integrated with the central console. I am not sure it can be accessed but it would be better."
"Regarding improvements, there are still some limitations with Xamarin, particularly regarding access to core functionality in Android and iOS."
"Xamarin Platform can improve if there was a virtual test environment so we did not have to have a Mac system for the iOS testing. At this time You must have a Mac to deploy or generate IBA profiles."
"Xamarin's profiling tools are only available for the highest tier of MSDN subscription and compatibility with platform-native profiling tools is rather lacking. This causes friction when working on performance-related issues."
Appium is ranked 7th in Mobile Development Platforms with 25 reviews while Xamarin Platform is ranked 4th in Mobile Development Platforms with 39 reviews. Appium is rated 8.0, while Xamarin Platform is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Appium writes "It's easy to launch applications". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Xamarin Platform writes "It's about to be retired and replaced with an inferior product, but offers excellent cross-platform development capabilities". Appium is most compared with Tricentis Tosca, Katalon Studio, Perfecto, Apache JMeter and SmartBear TestComplete, whereas Xamarin Platform is most compared with Ionic, Apple Xcode, OutSystems, Mendix and Tricentis Tosca. See our Appium vs. Xamarin Platform report.
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