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."The way Appium server interacts with mobile apps is fantastic. It provides all the information about the elements inside the app, Android as well as iOS. I can interact with the element quickly, just type some text or get some text values from the element - whether it's a drop-down, or web text, or a native element."
"It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation."
"It runs completely flawlessly and seamlessly every day."
"We do not need to pay for the solution. It’s free."
"It has great documentation and excellent community support."
"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."
"The automation part is extremely helpful in streamlining our processes."
"Appium provides a record-and-play option, and the commands are the same as those that Selenium uses. So a person who has some exposure to Selenium will be able to write a piece of code in Appium."
"The main value of this solution for our business, is that it is a hybrid product that allows us to write code that is compatible with IOS, Android, and web documents."
"What I like the most about Ionic is live reloading, which enables us to develop new features without having to build the application again and re-check the functionality."
"The solution can support many languages."
"The most valuable feature is the one code deployed to all solutions, which means you do not need to have multiple teams."
"Ionic is easy to upgrade and is helpful for design purposes. It also is quite common and easy to use. It is a very reliable application. It's easy to write on and print. The UI is easy to use as well. My organization chose to go with Ionic because we can access both Android and iOS applications."
"Being able to have one set of code is valuable. I don't have to recode for different platforms. I don't have to recode for Xcode, Angular, or Android. So, the biggest feature for me is that it's a hybrid system, and I can have one set of code, and then the tool sets that are in there convert my code for Xcode or Play Store. It makes work a lot easier."
"Ionic's best features are its hybrid app development, design, and tags."
"The solution is secure, reliable, and packed with features so we can easily implement apps even in the most complex situations."
"It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS."
"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."
"Support-wise, it could be better."
"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."
"Stability is an area that needs some improvement."
"Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement."
"The user interface needs improvement because there are issues when setting up environment variables."
"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."
"There is a lack of a community environment."
"It would be good if the mobile version uses something other than JavaScript and HTML."
"There could be better support for augmented reality and other things. Geolocation and background app activity are some of the things that are a little more clumsy at the moment and could be improved."
"Ionic could improve in the Native mode because while we do testing it is difficult to find the root cause of problems. It could be more user-friendly."
"Ionic would be improved with dynamic design features."
"Documentation for migrations and compatibility is insufficient."
"As a developer, I would say one of the improvements is more plugins."
"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."
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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