Salesforce Platform vs Xamarin Platform comparison

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Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between Salesforce 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 Salesforce 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
"We haven't had any issues with stability so far.""They are already beginning to implement generative AI.""It is a great platform. It's definitely an improvement from the GCP application that we were using previously.""A fully integrated solution that provides a seamless experience.""Intuitive to work with and the overall fundamental of the platform is very strong.""I'm not sure what the most valuable aspect of the solution is, but I can say that their finance and auditing systems are quite impressive. You can audit in different invoices right to procurement. It's all quite seamless.""The presentation is clear and easy to comprehend.""I like the reports and the dashboards. Since I'm a managing partner, I use the reports and dashboards to understand my team's contact management, opportunity management, and account management activities. We use Pardot for marketing campaigns."

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"You can create one solution in C Sharp.""We were able to optimize the service organization for one of our clients.""The Xamarin platform can reduce overhead significantly through code-share and reuse. The typical team size for a Xamarin project is significantly reduced compared to purely native projects.""The solution's most valuable asset is its shared code base in C# that is better for large apps.""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.""We very much like the XAML design techniques, multiple layout and pages, MVVMCross support, and portability across different platforms.""I like Renderers in Xamarin. They allow us to use native-platform controls easily.""The most important impact is the reduction in product lifecycle costs."

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Cons
"There is always room for improvement. It can be hard to learn, but when you have somebody who is experienced in this, it is like anything else. It is like Excel, you'll never know everything about Excel, but there's somebody who would possibly know. I'm sure I don't know all of the ins and outs of Salesforce.""There needs to be more documentation.""The initial setup process was a complex thing to do because four different organizations were working together.""An expensive solution requiring a lot of configuration.""Technical support could be a bit faster.""Getting reports in Salesforce is sometimes a little bit difficult. You need to do a lot of things to get detailed reports. This feature can be improved. Its price can also be improved. It is currently expensive.""The back end really isn't user-friendly at all.""The marketing automation needs improvement."

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"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation.""It needs offline sync capabilities to store data on devices persistently.""Xamarin Platform's performance base could be improved.""The application platform could be improved.""The Xamarin.Forms could improve.""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 problem that I faced was that the communication, the roles, and the responsibilities, weren't defined between Microsoft and Xamarin.""The recent move to .NET MAUI is a big change that's affecting a lot of the good features."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "Costly, but it is the top product in SaaS/PaaS. Pricing is more for large to enterprise level companies."
  • "Pricing and license differ and depend on how much license you are purchasing from them."
  • "It is an expensive program."
  • "The licensing is per user per month, which we took out a contract on a long time back. It's really an okay price for what solutions are available and for how many features and what kind of functionality you get."
  • "The solution is a bit expensive."
  • "It is expensive. Licensing is on an annual basis."
  • "It is quite expensive. Its developers come at a premium cost, which makes it expensive."
  • "It is expensive."
  • More Salesforce 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 →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer: I think it depends on your use case. If your organization uses Microsoft Enterprise products, PowerApps will work better in your environment. Similarly, if you have a Salesforce integration in… more »
    Top Answer:Microsoft’s Windows Azure platform is not easy or intuitive to deploy. The difficulty will be impacted by the type of application that you are trying to use the platform to build. Organizations that… more »
    Top Answer:At my organization, we have only used Salesforce Platform's low-code builder. The reason for this is not because we do not like the pro-code option, but because we do not see the need of using it… 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
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    1,103
    Comparisons
    1,035
    Reviews
    29
    Average Words per Review
    439
    Rating
    8.2
    Views
    1,517
    Comparisons
    1,062
    Reviews
    19
    Average Words per Review
    577
    Rating
    7.9
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud
    Learn More
    Overview

    Salesforce Platform is a tool that provides application building with open application programming interfaces (APIs), integration tools, back-end services, starter templates, and developer environments. With a low-code interface, users are able to build applications and benefit from automated processes. The product helps customers to increase work productivity and save on IT costs through efficient, easy-to-understand, methods for creating applications.

    Salesforce Platform allows companies to build and operate intelligent applications at scale and share them with employees and customers in real time. The tool secures companies' data while connecting and synchronizing it simultaneously across their Customer 360 accounts. The main components of the product are:

    • Application development: With low code, companies can build applications faster and automate their businesses.

    • Automation: The product can connect with Salesforce Genie, allowing employees to create seamless processes.

    • Security: The Shield component allows companies to secure their data and build applications.

    • Hyperforce: Companies have the option to scale globally and serve customers locally, providing secure, private, and agile solutions.

    • Einstein Intelligence: Organizations can utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to create personalized experiences for customers, potentially increasing companies’ growth.

    • Sandboxes: Salesforce Platform offers developers secure development environments where they can test, build, and deploy changes before rolling out final products.

    Salesforce Platform Features

    Also referred to as a “drag and drop app builder," this solution offers various features for customers to create intelligent applications and build personalized services for clients, partners, and employees within the apps.

    • Mobile feature: The mobile feature of Salesforce Platform allows users to build applications for mobile as well as turn already-made apps into mobile apps instantly.

    • AI: Through AI, users are able to personalize their applications, utilizing the smart assistant of the platform (called Einstein). The creation of customized services for clients can drive engagement and scale customer experience.

    • Vision feature: The Vision feature also utilizes Einstein Platform, where users can take advantage of Einstein Prediction Builder, Bots, Vision, and Language to create AI-powered applications.

    • Data protection: Salesforce Platform offers a data protection feature called Salesforce Shield. With it, companies can monitor app and data use, automate security policies, run compliance audits, and encrypt sensitive data.

    • Privacy and identity feature: Salesforce Customer Identity is a feature for privacy that offers user access through a single login. The feature provides a seamless user experience while maintaining a high level of security.
    • Community feature: The community feature of the product offers a digital experience platform where companies can create secure portals, applications, and websites.

    • Builder feature: The application building feature of Salesforce Platform offers various ways for users to create apps, including through low-code builders and pro-code tools.

    Salesforce Platform Benefits

    The benefits of using Salesforce Platform include:

    • Compared to manual coding products, Salesforce Platform is simpler for beginner users who want to develop a product.

    • The tool requires a low amount of coding, making it a quick and agile way to develop applications.

    • The adaptable design of the platform offers multi-layered security which maintains data accessible to users while protecting it from outside sources.

    • The product can be incorporated with various platforms and coding languages for application development.

    • The platform can be used to create applications compatible with large database systems like MySQL and Oracle.

    • Salesforce Platform allows collaboration between users, as it offers simultaneous access to various users at the same time.

    • Salesforce Platform is compatible with desktop databases such as Microsoft Access.

    Reviews from Real Users

    A vice president at a healthcare company values Salesforce Platform because it is flexible and user-friendly with helpful pre-built schemas.

    Peter G., a senior technical consultant at a tech services company, rates Salesforce Platform highly because it is intuitive, quite easy to learn, and stores all kinds of relevant sales information.

    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
    ADP
    Cinemark, MixRadio, Sqor Sports, Storyo, JetBlue, The World Bank, Cr_dito Agrcola, Applied Research Associates
    Top Industries
    REVIEWERS
    Computer Software Company33%
    Comms Service Provider9%
    Financial Services Firm7%
    Non Profit5%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company16%
    Financial Services Firm12%
    Government10%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    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 Business36%
    Midsize Enterprise29%
    Large Enterprise35%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business20%
    Midsize Enterprise13%
    Large Enterprise67%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business47%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise41%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business24%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise60%
    Buyer's Guide
    Salesforce Platform vs. Xamarin Platform
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce Platform vs. Xamarin Platform and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    765,234 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    Salesforce Platform is ranked 3rd in Mobile Development Platforms with 80 reviews while Xamarin Platform is ranked 5th in Mobile Development Platforms with 37 reviews. Salesforce Platform is rated 8.2, while Xamarin Platform is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of Salesforce Platform writes "Reliable with good reporting and custom dashboards". 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". Salesforce Platform is most compared with Microsoft Power Apps, Oracle Application Express (APEX), Microsoft Azure, Appian and ServiceNow, whereas Xamarin Platform is most compared with Appium, Ionic, OutSystems, Apple Xcode and Mendix. See our Salesforce 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.