Magic xpa Application Platform vs Xamarin Platform comparison

Cancel
You must select at least 2 products to compare!
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Magic xpa Application Platform 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.
To learn more, read our detailed Magic xpa Application Platform vs. Xamarin Platform Report (Updated: March 2024).
765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Speed of development and database connectivity (MS SQL, Oracle, DB2, Btrieve/Pervasive PSQL, ODBC, MySql, and SQLite).""xpa gives us a fast development speed.""The Magic xpa Application Platform is very suitable for production since it is easy to update. The program is simple to upgrade and deploy. The solution is convenient in production. You need to adjust the data, then adjust the program which is not difficult.""The ability to use the same development environment for both Windows and Android applications. Magic xpa also supports iOS applications.""Without the need to compile code, the time spent in the development cycle is greatly reduced, allowing the programmer to test modifications to a program immediately after they have been saved.""Being able to make changes to existing programs to comply with last minute changes in requirements, and/or being able to fix, test, review, and deploy new code in a manner of hours instead of days, definitely gives us a huge advantage over our competitors and this is only possible thanks to Magic’s speed of programming.""Typically an experienced Magic developer can do the work of two to three experienced C#/.NET developers. Customers are amazed at how quickly most new features can be added and bug fixes implemented. I have worked for four employers - including myself - using Magic, and in most instances, bug fixes are addressed and deployed in under six hours.""Magic’s unique approach to development ensures that the programmer stays focused on the objective of the program (i.e. display all customers in California), instead of the repetitive tasks that surround it (i.e. connect to database, open customers table, create the query to retrieve records within the specified criteria, fetch the result of the query, connect it to a data grid, etc.)."

More Magic xpa Application Platform Pros →

"The ability to share a platform-agnostic common core, or business logic, enables a mobile developer to write code for all targeted mobile platforms, independent of the individual developer's specialization in iOS, Android, or Windows. This helps not only during development but also enables easier maintenance of deployed apps, since bug fixes or feature additions can be often made in the platform-agnostic layer.""Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products.""The cross platform ability is a great asset.""You can create one solution in C Sharp.""The solution's most valuable asset is its shared code base in C# that is better for large apps.""The solution is easy to understand and has banking integrated. The shorter development time, the bugging and as well as availability of a lot of documentation on the web. Also the native integration is easy.""Xamarin Platform's best features are its single codebase, the support from Microsoft, and the free libraries.""Cross-platform development saves time and provides consistencies."

More Xamarin Platform Pros →

Cons
"There is room for improvement in Magic's marketing and licensing. I would like to see more integration of web functionality.""The user interface could be improved to be more friendly for developers.""The ability to display page up, page down, top and bottom buttons along the scroll bar would make my mouse-reliant customers happy.""The Android environment is missing a number of functions for file/folder manipulation, sending receiving text messages (SMS) and the menuing options are limited. For now, it is left to the developer to write his/her own Java functions to include in the APK.""In the next version of the Magic xpa Application Platform, I want tables or small programs where I can directly add expressions. I can do it on SQL, but it would make life much easier if that specification were added to the platform.""The configuration of the xpa RIA mobile environment is complex and a discouragement to new developers. Also, Magic's documentation can be less than complete at times which leads to frustration for new developers. (I encourage new Magic developers to join the Magic Users Group).""Support is very bad.""They want to be one toolbox for everything, but primarily, we are using xpa to develop desktop applications, and in that area they're lacking functionalities, flexibility, and modern stuff."

More Magic xpa Application Platform Cons →

"We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved.""Xamarin Platform can improve by making the enterprise documentation better. There's a lot of basic documentation of how to do many of the functions of the solution, but there's not much enterprise-level documentation.""From time to time, it is a bit harder to code some specific scenarios compared to the native approach.""It is common to find a problem that you would need to develop from the start since there are no third-party components to reuse.""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.""The performance needs improvement, especially the dev tools, and also the ultimate output of the mobile applications.""The file size is a bit big, so you have to make certain layers.""The major I see with Xamarin right now is that there is no visual editor"

More Xamarin Platform Cons →

Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Magic is not the cheapest IDE out there. If you are considering Magic xpa, you should do a cost-benefit analysis to feel comfortable with your decision. The Magic sales staff is very helpful in providing pricing."
  • "It's not cheap. The licenses are not cheap. Not at all. They cost much money. There are other tools with free licenses but Magic asks for a lot of money."
  • "The cost for developers is high because you have to pay for licenses as well as runtime."
  • "The licensing is too costly."
  • "The licensing cost varies because nowadays Magic has tailor-made offerings for clients. I think the solution is worth the money."
  • "My clients have to purchase additional licenses in order to use what I built. It's not a fair approach."
  • "There are different licenses, we have the application and the online application. There are two different licenses for two different program sites for the Magic xpa Application Platform."
  • "The main problem with the Magic xpa Application Platform is pricing. You have to pay a lot of money for development, and you also have to pay a lot for the deployments and runtime, while in most competitors, you have to pay a lot for one of the two and not both."
  • More Magic xpa Application Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "In most cases, it is sufficient to have free/community license. But if you plan to seriously develop production-level, highly polished apps, you need to use Xamarin.Profiler and the professional or enterprise license."
  • "For personal use, the Community Edition is free."
  • "This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
  • "Xamarin is available under several licensing arrangements. Each developer needs one license at least. All features, especially the Profiler, unlock only with the highest tier."
  • "It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
  • "Xamarin is free, or comes with Visual Studio. Therefore, it is very profitable."
  • "The price of the Xamarin Platform is not expensive. However, the price of the solution depends on the application that is made. For example, if you have small applications, it's different from large or enterprise applications."
  • "There's no licensing cost for Xamarin."
  • More Xamarin Platform Pricing and Cost Advice →

    report
    Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Mobile Development Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.
    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:The Magic xpa Application Platform is very suitable for production since it is easy to update. The program is simple to upgrade and deploy. The solution is convenient in production. You need to adjust… more »
    Top Answer:There are different licenses, we have the application and the online application. There are two different licenses for two different program sites for the Magic xpa Application Platform.
    Top Answer:Throughout my career, I've encountered difficulties when integrating new technologies with Magic xpa Application Platform. In particular, when attempting to incorporate features from other development… more »
    Top Answer:Xamarin.Forms reduced the effort and time to build and market our solution, market our features, and get our solution into production.
    Top Answer:You can build in Xamarin without paying any money. What costs money is the IDE, Visual Studio, Professional, or Enterprise edition. What would cost you money if you're building apps for the Apple… more »
    Top Answer:There are issues with Xamarin, such as when you run into errors doing something called linking. When you build your solution, you can use Linker, which can give you errors if you don't link properly… more »
    Ranking
    Views
    692
    Comparisons
    278
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    856
    Rating
    8.5
    Views
    1,517
    Comparisons
    1,062
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    577
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    uniPaaS
    Learn More
    Overview

    Magic xpa Application Platform is a mobile development platform that is designed to enable organizations to simplify and manage every aspect of their application development process. It enables users to construct applications while expending a minimal number of resources. Developers can leverage AI technology in a way that maximizes their ability to effectively deploy their resources toward the end of producing the best possible applications. Ultimately, Magic xpa Application Platform allows developers to rapidly develop and deploy applications across multiple platform types. 

    Magic xpa Application Platform Benefits

    Some of the ways that organizations can benefit by deploying Magic xpa Application Platform include:

    • Decrease time needed for application production and refinement. Magic xpa Application Platform comes with pre-built application components that can be used to quickly create iterations of the application that can then be deployed or tested.  It also makes it so that any and all changes or upgrades that are applied to the application take effect across all of the devices that run the application.
    • Allows developers to be far more productive than they would be otherwise. Various features, such as Magic xpa Application Platform’s drag-and-drop capability, allow developers to worry less about the more technical aspects of designing the applications and have more time to design the best possible application. 
    • Ease of use. Magic xpa Application Platform is a low-code application development platform. This means that developers do not need to have extensive programming knowledge to create applications. Solutions of this type are far more accessible to the general employee of an organization than a program that is code-heavy. Fewer resources need to be spent training users to employ Magic xpa Application Platform than would be true of other similar platforms. Organizations increase their overall productivity when the process of application development becomes something that even those employees who are not the most technically savvy can take part.

    Magic xpa Application Platform Features

    Some of the many useful features Magic xpa Application Platform has to offer include:

    • AI-powered development capabilities. Magic xpa Application Platform has a built-in AI that users can leverage to simplify every step of the development process. Users can use this AI to automate various development steps. This increases the speed at which they can produce applications. 
    • Mobile use capability. Magic xpa Application Platform has a mobile application that organizations can use to run their product development from anywhere in the world. 
    • Collaboration tools.  Magic xpa Application Platform provides developers with tools that enable them to work with others to create the enterprise applications that their organizations need.

    Reviews from Real Users

    Magic xpa Application Platform is a solution that beats out the competition in a number of areas.  Two major advantages are the way that it simplifies the application management process and its scalability. It greatly eases the work that developers and administrators do by providing all of the tools that they need to meet their objectives. Additionally, users never have to worry about running out of development capacity in their digital environment. Magic xpa Application Platform can scale up and provide developers with the capacity to design and create their applications in the way that best meets their needs. 

    Per H., the CEO of Mass Marketing Software AB, writes, “The solution makes the managing and adapting of the software very easy. When it comes to the application's service, mistakes can easily be resolved. This shortens the time it takes to progress from an idea to a new function.”

    He also writes, “The solution is highly scalable, allowing one to use very large databases and systems.

    Xamarin is an open-source platform for developing modern and performant applications for iOS, Android, and Windows using.NET. Xamarin is an abstraction layer that manages how shared code is communicated to the platform's underlying code. Xamarin is for developers with the two following goals:

    • Cross-platform sharing of code, tests, and business logic.

    • Writing cross-platform apps in C# with Visual Studio.

    Xamarin allows developers to share an average of 90% of their program across platforms. This enables programmers to achieve native performance, look, and feel on each platform while writing all of their business logic in a single language (or reusing existing application code).

    Xamarin applications can be created on a PC or a Mac and compiled into native application packages, such as an .apk file for Android or an .ipa file for iOS.

    Xamarin Platform Features

    Xamarin Platform has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Complete binding for the supporting SDKs: Xamarin includes bindings for almost all of the underlying platform SDKs in iOS and Android.
    • Java, C, Objective-C, C, C++ Interop: Xamarin gives you the ability to use a variety of third-party code by providing tools for directly invoking Objective-C, Java, C, and C++ libraries.
    • Modern language constructs: Xamarin applications are written in C#, a modern language with many capabilities that Objective-C and Java do not have, like lambdas, LINQ, parallel programming, generics, and more.
    • Strong base class library (BCL): Xamarin apps use the .NET BCL, a large collection of classes with streamlined features, like powerful XML, database, serialization, IO, string, and networking support, among others.

    Xamarin Platform Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing the Xamarin Platform. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Native UIs and APIs: Xamarin delivers comprehensive access to each platform's native SDK and UI controls, projecting the entire native API of each device into C#. Therefore, the apps you develop are native instead of write-once/run-anywhere programs that look alien on every platform. Xamarin provides you access to all of the capabilities that distinguish each platform.
    • Share code between platforms: With Xamarin, you can share all code across platforms while providing a native user interface tailored to each individual device. With Xamarin, you can execute the same C# code on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. With Xamarin, your software is compiled to a native binary rather than being interpreted, in contrast to other cross-platform frameworks. Even in the most demanding situations, native compilation provides users with excellent app performance. Xamarin provides responsive, multi-user input and feedback, fluid scrolling, sophisticated graphics and animations, complicated data visualization, and realistic high frame rates for games.
    • Code with C#: Write shorter, more concise, and more maintainable code by leveraging advanced language features, such as Language Integrated Query (LINQ), delegates, lambdas, events, garbage collection, and many other features. With Xamarin's fully extensible platform, you can include libraries written in C, Objective-C, C++, or Java. In C#, you have access to the entire native ecosystem of components and libraries.

    Sample Customers
    ADD, Cape plc, Adecco, Kuno Kinzoku Industry Co., GE Capital, Dove Tree, CBS Outdoor, Paris-Nord Villepinte Exhibition Center, Allstate Life Insurance Company, Titan Software Systems
    Cinemark, MixRadio, Sqor Sports, Storyo, JetBlue, The World Bank, Cr_dito Agrcola, Applied Research Associates
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Insurance Company9%
    Healthcare Company6%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Music Company14%
    Manufacturing Company14%
    Computer Software Company14%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Manufacturing Company11%
    Financial Services Firm11%
    Educational Organization8%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business75%
    Midsize Enterprise17%
    Large Enterprise8%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business33%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise52%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business47%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise41%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Magic xpa Application Platform vs. Xamarin Platform
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Magic xpa Application Platform vs. Xamarin Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Magic xpa Application Platform is ranked 11th in Mobile Development Platforms with 10 reviews while Xamarin Platform is ranked 5th in Mobile Development Platforms with 37 reviews. Magic xpa Application Platform is rated 8.6, while Xamarin Platform is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Magic xpa Application Platform writes "Fast development and user-oriented functionalities, but it needs better .NET integration and a completely different pricing structure". 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". Magic xpa Application Platform is most compared with Microsoft .NET Framework, Mendix, OutSystems and GeneXus, whereas Xamarin Platform is most compared with Appium, Ionic, OutSystems, Apple Xcode and Mendix. See our Magic xpa Application Platform vs. Xamarin Platform report.

    See our list of best Mobile Development Platforms vendors.

    We monitor all Mobile Development Platforms reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.