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."The solution is stable."
"The best feature of Appium is that it allows you to inspect the element. With the Appium Inspector, you don't have to install another application to do the inspection. I also like that Appium has Android device connectivity. Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium."
"Appium helps me to do as much as much as I want to."
"Obviously because of automation, it reduces manual testing efforts."
"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."
"The library is extensive so the driver interacts with most functions or actions on mobile devices."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"Xamarin Platform's best features are its single codebase, the support from Microsoft, and the free libraries."
"Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products."
"It usually saves time for application development. We write once and the code works everywhere."
"The initial setup is very simple."
"Test Cloud, Calabash, SpecFlow, and Xamarin.UITest are the features which can’t be ignored because just writing code doesn’t mean your app will run flawlessly. You need to test your app on each possible device and configuration, which you can do easily."
"I like Renderers in Xamarin. They allow us to use native-platform controls easily."
"The most valuable features of the Xamarin Platform are that it has cross-platform development, one code base serves a purpose on both, and the grid layout is a lifesaver."
"Xamarin is well-integrated with Visual Studio so it will feel very familiar to you once you start."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Appium can improve when the case fails, there should be a feature where you can generate the report from Appium. Once you're on a test case, automatically the screenshot should be captured which would avoid manual intervention. These features would be beneficial to migrate to Appium."
"If it had more facility for configuration it would be a spectacular solution."
"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."
"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"In Xamarin.Forms, we have the option to preview our UI designs, but the functionality can be limited. So, this is not fully functional. Since I have some knowledge of iOS, where when you write code or design in the storyboard, your design is immediately visible in the preview."
"They need to take a step towards independence from the UI platform. It takes a lot of time to adapt the native controls."
"From time to time, it is a bit harder to code some specific scenarios compared to the native approach."
"For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer."
"Regarding improvements, there are still some limitations with Xamarin, particularly regarding access to core functionality in Android and iOS."
"Xamarin Platform is missing the code renderer."
"The problem that I faced was that the communication, the roles, and the responsibilities, weren't defined between Microsoft and Xamarin."
"I feel that the Android AppCompat library creates a lot of issues. A lot of development time is often wasted solving these 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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