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Visual Studio App Center vs Xamarin: What are the differences?
Visual Studio App Center: Continuous everything – Build, Tes, Deploy, Engage, Repeat. Automate the lifecycle of your iOS, Android, Windows, and macOS apps. Connect your repo and within minutes build in the cloud, test on thousands of real devices, distribute to beta testers and app stores, and monitor real-world usage with crash and analytics data. All in one place; Xamarin: Create iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#. 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.
Visual Studio App Center belongs to "Continuous Integration" category of the tech stack, while Xamarin can be primarily classified under "Cross-Platform Mobile Development".
Some of the features offered by Visual Studio App Center are:
- Build
- Test
- Distribute
On the other hand, Xamarin provides the following key features:
- 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.
Olo, Crowdkeep, and GoFormz are some of the popular companies that use Xamarin, whereas Visual Studio App Center is used by Partipost, Lykon GmbH, and BeachBody. Xamarin has a broader approval, being mentioned in 105 company stacks & 432 developers stacks; compared to Visual Studio App Center, which is listed in 4 company stacks and 4 developer stacks.
Pros of Visual Studio App Center
- Con1
- Show error issues for mobile devices1
- Slack integration1
- Bug tracking integration1
- For Mobile apps diagnostics and tracking1
Pros of Xamarin
- Power of c# on mobile devices120
- Native performance80
- Native apps with native ui controls77
- No javascript - truely compiled code71
- Sharing more than 90% of code over all platforms67
- Ability to leverage visual studio45
- Many great c# libraries44
- Mvvm pattern43
- Amazing support36
- Powerful platform for .net developers34
- GUI Native look and Feel19
- Nuget package manager15
- Free11
- Backed by Microsoft9
- Enables code reuse on server9
- Faster Development8
- Easy Debug and Trace7
- Use of third-party .NET libraries7
- It's free since Apr 20167
- Best performance than other cross-platform7
- Open Source7
- Mac IDE (Xamarin Studio)6
- Xamarin.forms is the best, it's amazing6
- Power of C#, no javascript, visual studio5
- C# mult paradigm language5
- Compatible to develop Hybrid apps4
- Microsoft backed4
- Microsoft stack4
- Great docs4
- That just work for every scenario4
- Well Designed3
- Small learning curve for Mobile developers3
- Ability to leverage legacy C and C++2
- Ionic2
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Cons of Visual Studio App Center
Cons of Xamarin
- Build times9
- Visual Studio5
- Complexity3
- Scalability3
- Price3
- Nuget2
- Maturity2
- Build Tools2
- Support2
- Maturidade0
- Performance0