There are not a lot of tools for mobile testing. Appium is one of the only open-source mobile testing solutions.

Almost 80% of the market uses the solution and we did not evaluate other options. 

The solution is a fit when you need both iOS and Android frameworks because it combines them under one roof.

If you only test on a specific platform, you can use base libraries or drivers. For example iOS works on XCUI drivers and Android works on UiAutomator. 

We looked at Espresso and XCUITest, which are native testing apps for Android and iOS, respectively, but we can't use those for both in React Native. We carried out a POC for Appium, and there were no viable alternatives. It allows us to use one tool and one repository for both mobile operating systems.

We are not currently looking into other tools. We also never looked at any other solutions previously.

We had evaluated two other solutions. For certain tools scripting was easy in Android, but for iOS, there are additional requirements such as instrumentation. This would set us back. We want to use something that is consistent throughout the various OS. They are also paid software, with additional features that are an extra fee. It wouldn't justify the ROI.

Most of the testing that we do requires testing in both Android and iOS.

We chose Appium for the scalability and the ease of automation for both Android and iOS. Appium is a good choice, it's standard. We can use most of the scripts.

I had evaluated SeeTest before Appium for mobile solution development, but the customer was not willing to invest in a commercial tool. SeeTest is more stable, mature, and easy to install as compared to Appium, but it comes with a significant cost of almost $80,000 per year (number of licenses that we required). This is the reason we decided to move on with Appium.

I was using Silk Mobile, and it was not the right tool for our needs. Also, I tested the native automation on both Android and Mac. These are good options, but you need to switch context radically from Android to IOS and back.

We evaluated Micro Focus.