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  5. Appcelerator vs Xamarin

Appcelerator vs Xamarin

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Appcelerator
Appcelerator
Stacks53
Followers70
Votes27
Xamarin
Xamarin
Stacks1.3K
Followers1.5K
Votes785

Appcelerator vs Xamarin: What are the differences?

  1. Development Language: Appcelerator uses JavaScript for development, while Xamarin allows developers to use C# for building applications. This difference in programming languages can impact the choice of developers based on their skillset and familiarity.
  2. Target Platforms: Appcelerator primarily targets iOS and Android platforms, whereas Xamarin supports a wider range of platforms including iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS. This broader platform support can be beneficial for developers looking to develop cross-platform applications across different devices.
  3. UI Components: Appcelerator provides a set of pre-built UI components for faster development, while Xamarin offers a more extensive set of native UI components to create a more customized and platform-specific user interface. The choice between convenience and customization needs to be considered while selecting the platform.
  4. Community Support: Xamarin has a larger community and support system compared to Appcelerator, which can be advantageous for developers seeking help, resources, and updates for their development projects. The availability of a strong community can contribute to faster issue resolution and overall development efficiency.
  5. IDE Integration: Xamarin seamlessly integrates with Visual Studio, a popular development environment, providing developers with familiar tools and features. On the other hand, Appcelerator's integration with IDEs may not be as robust as Xamarin's, potentially impacting the development workflow and efficiency for developers using different development environments.
  6. Licensing Model: Appcelerator follows an open-source licensing model, offering a free version of the platform with additional paid features, while Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft and is now included in Visual Studio subscriptions. This difference in licensing model can influence the cost and accessibility of the platforms for developers and organizations.

In Summary, the key differences between Appcelerator and Xamarin lie in the development language, target platforms, UI components, community support, IDE integration, and licensing model.

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Detailed Comparison

Appcelerator
Appcelerator
Xamarin
Xamarin

Appcelerator is the first mobile platform to combine the flexibility of open source development technologies with the power of cloud services.

Xamarin’s Mono-based products enable .NET developers to use their existing code, libraries and tools (including Visual Studio*), as well as skills in .NET and the C# programming language, to create mobile applications for the industry’s most widely-used mobile devices, including Android-based smartphones and tablets, iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

Library of over 20 pre-built common services that are both proven and robust, to reduce integration time and risk, services such as push notification, status updates, photo storage, and social integration, or create your own custom cloud services.;Client-side APIs for any development platform (e.g. Titanium, iOS SDK, Android SDK);Extensibility enabling you to build your own custom cloud application development services in Node.js on the Appcelerator cloud for all your mobile apps.
Cross-platform development- Thinking about supporting iOS, Android, Mac and Windows? Xamarin allows you to write it all in C#.;Reuse existing code- Use your favorite .NET libraries in Xamarin apps. Easily use third-party native libraries and frameworks.; Discover as you type- Explore APIs as you type with code autocompletion.;Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio- Create, build, debug, and deploy apps in Visual Studio. Or use Xamarin Studio, a fully-featured IDE that is built for mobile app development.;Native UI, Native Performance- Xamarin delivers high performance compiled code with full access to all the native APIs so you can create native apps with device-specific experiences.; Point and Click UI Design- Xamarin provides a world class Android UI designer. Use Apple Xcode UI designer to create interfaces and Storyboards that automatically sync with your Xamarin.iOS project.
Statistics
Stacks
53
Stacks
1.3K
Followers
70
Followers
1.5K
Votes
27
Votes
785
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 5
    Android
  • 4
    Open Source
  • 4
    Easy to learn
  • 2
    IOS
  • 2
    Javascript
Cons
  • 1
    No online IDE
Pros
  • 121
    Power of c# on mobile devices
  • 81
    Native performance
  • 79
    Native apps with native ui controls
  • 73
    No javascript - truely compiled code
  • 67
    Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms
Cons
  • 9
    Build times
  • 5
    Visual Studio
  • 4
    Price
  • 3
    Complexity
  • 3
    Scalability
Integrations
Crittercism
Crittercism
Urban Airship
Urban Airship
New Relic
New Relic
Hipmob
Hipmob
Red Hat OpenShift
Red Hat OpenShift
No integrations available

What are some alternatives to Appcelerator, Xamarin?

Ionic

Ionic

Free and open source, Ionic offers a library of mobile and desktop-optimized HTML, CSS and JS components for building highly interactive apps. Use with Angular, React, Vue, or plain JavaScript.

Flutter

Flutter

Flutter is a mobile app SDK to help developers and designers build modern mobile apps for iOS and Android.

React Native

React Native

React Native enables you to build world-class application experiences on native platforms using a consistent developer experience based on JavaScript and React. The focus of React Native is on developer efficiency across all the platforms you care about - learn once, write anywhere. Facebook uses React Native in multiple production apps and will continue investing in React Native.

Parse

Parse

With Parse, you can add a scalable and powerful backend in minutes and launch a full-featured app in record time without ever worrying about server management. We offer push notifications, social integration, data storage, and the ability to add rich custom logic to your app’s backend with Cloud Code.

NativeScript

NativeScript

NativeScript enables developers to build native apps for iOS, Android and Windows Universal while sharing the application code across the platforms. When building the application UI, developers use our libraries, which abstract the differences between the native platforms.

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova

Apache Cordova is a set of device APIs that allow a mobile app developer to access native device function such as the camera or accelerometer from JavaScript. Combined with a UI framework such as jQuery Mobile or Dojo Mobile or Sencha Touch, this allows a smartphone app to be developed with just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

Framework7

Framework7

It is a free and open source mobile HTML framework to develop hybrid mobile apps or web apps with iOS native look and feel. All you need to make it work is a simple HTML layout and attached framework's CSS and JS files.

Qt

Qt

Qt, a leading cross-platform application and UI framework. With Qt, you can develop applications once and deploy to leading desktop, embedded & mobile targets.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a web platform that exposes native mobile device apis and data to JavaScript. PhoneGap is a distribution of Apache Cordova. PhoneGap allows you to use standard web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript for cross-platform development, avoiding each mobile platforms' native development language. Applications execute within wrappers targeted to each platform, and rely on standards-compliant API bindings to access each device's sensors, data, and network status.

built.io

built.io

Built.io Backend is an mBaaS that allows you to avoid designing, building, and supporting a custom backend for your mobile & web applications. Enterprises can dramatically reduce cost, lower risk and accelerate time-to-market for apps.

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