We performed a comparison between Appium and Ionic 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."Appium's best feature is that it supports multiple frameworks."
"We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system."
"The solution is easy to use."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"Because it's a hybrid mobile app framework, it is easy for us to develop iOS as well as Android apps for our customers with the same resource skills. We didn't have to have separate iOS teams and Android teams to build the apps. We still have to use the Apple Xcode for iOS, but the main development happens with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. We don't have to write separate code bases in scripts for iOS and Android. We create apps using web-based technology."
"It's very flexible for UI development."
"With the Capacitor feature, you have access to the native attributes of your phone such as your camera. This makes work a lot easier."
"Ionic's best feature is that it's not necessary to write your own custom codes as all the hybrid is provided by Angular."
"Ionic's best features are its hybrid app development, design, and tags."
"The most valuable feature of Ionic is the ease of use and the simple connection of the applications. Additionally, the documentation is good in the Ionic application, and beginners can easily learn and download their own application using Ionic. Everyone can easily switch out, their domain, from native applications to hybrid applications."
"The solution is secure, reliable, and packed with features so we can easily implement apps even in the most complex situations."
"The most valuable feature is the one code deployed to all solutions, which means you do not need to have multiple teams."
"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."
"We previously worked with native applications, and there weren't any good mobile app testing tools. We started working with React Native, which works well with Appium, but it would be good to see better integration; the way elements are displayed can be messy. React Native is very popular nowadays, so it's essential to have that compatibility."
"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."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"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."
"We need some bug fixes for nested elements."
"One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything."
"What needs improvement in Appium is its documentation. It needs to give more context on the libraries that Appium is using under the hood. For example, my team is using Appium for Android automation, and a lot of times, I feel that there's functionality that's available through the Appium interface, that exists within the UIAutomator, but there aren't a lot of useful or helpful resources on the internet to find that information, so it would be good to have some linkage with the underlying platform itself. Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes. For example, at times, there's a bug in the inspector application that doesn't allow me to save my desired capability set, so it would be nice to get that bug fixed, but overall, Appium is a good tool. The Touch Actions functionality in Appium also needs improvement. For example, if I want to initiate a scroll on the device that I'm running Appium on, sometimes Swipe works, but in other situations, I have to explicitly use action chains, so I'm not too sure what's the better approach. What I'd like to see in the next version of Appium is a more intelligent and more intuitive AppiumLibrary, in terms of identifying menus and scroll bars, etc., because right now, I'm unsure if I have to do a lot of export reversals to get to the elements I'm looking for. It would be nice to have some functionality built in, which would allow me to easily get those exports."
"Ionic would be improved with dynamic design features."
"In a future release, we would like to have a little more support for the desktop environment. Currently it is still focused on mobile devices."
"The documentation could be improved."
"Ionic is a cross-platform framework, so when we compare Ionic with native Android and iOS, we can see the drawbacks. For example, if you need to work on very high-level aspects of an application such as animation, even if everything else is not putting load on the app, you will still see high load from the server side."
"It would be better if it had a speed niche system. There are a lot of things we need that weren't in the latest version. But I think they will be adding something."
"The navigation within this solution could be improved; it is currently quite complicated to move through the different tabs."
"There is a lack of a community environment."
"They started writing Capacitor to get rid of PhoneGap and Cordova, but they haven't yet got all the libraries and all the functionalities. They want you to start using Capacitor, but they don't have all the libraries there. They're developing them as they go. So, currently, you have to mix and match the three. When it comes to mobile applications, I would only like to use Capacitor. I don't want to jump between Cordova and Capacitor or have both of them. That's the main thing for me, but they have been working on it."
Appium is ranked 7th in Mobile Development Platforms with 25 reviews while Ionic is ranked 5th in Mobile Development Platforms with 14 reviews. Appium is rated 8.0, while Ionic is rated 8.6. The top reviewer of Appium writes "It's easy to launch applications". On the other hand, the top reviewer of Ionic writes "Great user acceptance and reliability, multiple teams not required, with prompt customer service". Appium is most compared with Tricentis Tosca, Katalon Studio, Perfecto, Xamarin Platform and OpenText UFT Digital Lab, whereas Ionic is most compared with Xamarin Platform, OutSystems, Appzillon Digital Platform, Mendix and Microsoft Azure App Service. See our Appium vs. Ionic report.
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