We performed a comparison between IBM MobileFirst and Xamarin Platform based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out what your peers are saying about OutSystems, Mendix, Salesforce and others in Mobile Development Platforms."I like Its capability for developing hybrid applications, with an ability to integrate device-native code as well"
"IBM MobileFirst has one of the most feature-rich admin panels."
"With help of this product, we have been able to develop mobile applications without having complete knowledge of each mobile OS's native programming technology. App development, delivery, and code management have been very efficient using this product."
"Their leadership is exceptional at both listening to the customer base and delivering innovative, best-in-class products."
"The solution's most valuable asset is its shared code base in C# that is better for large apps."
"Xamarin makes it easy to create white label applications for all platforms."
"The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is that both the UI are the same in Android and iOS, in one project and Android and iOS, are applications for developing PCL projects. Additionally, the dashboard is good."
"For me, developing apps for iOS and Android is a dream came true, without migrating to Objective-C or Java. Xamarin enables me to do so."
"A single line of code works with android and iOS."
"I think the best part about Xamarin is that you can create apps for both platforms using one source code. That's the most powerful feature. When you develop something for Android, it also builds for iVerse as well. The cross-platform aspect of Xamarin is unique. The ability to develop both apps with a single code base is something very unique."
"Plugins like MvvmCross make a developer’s life easy."
"I would like to see improved support for native device functions."
"There are issues with push notifications, especially for Windows mobile apps. JSONStore also crashes abruptly at times."
"The debugging functionality could be improved in Xamarin Platform because sometimes it takes very long to move through the stages of setting up the application build to the final deployment on a mobile app that resides in a physical device."
"Xamarin Platform can improve if there was a virtual test environment so we did not have to have a Mac system for the iOS testing. At this time You must have a Mac to deploy or generate IBA profiles."
"For beginners, the entire setup can be overwhelming because it involves setting up development environments for iOS, Android, and Windows at the same time if you want to target all three."
"Xamarin's profiling tools are only available for the highest tier of MSDN subscription and compatibility with platform-native profiling tools is rather lacking. This causes friction when working on performance-related issues."
"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."
"We'd like to have some chat support functionality."
"They need to improve performance, especially for the Android platform. Also, some controls are missing in the Xamarin framework when compared to native controls; for example, the checkbox control."
"The solution always has room for improvement with price, integration, stability, and documentation."
Earn 20 points
IBM MobileFirst is ranked 14th in Mobile Development Platforms while Xamarin Platform is ranked 4th in Mobile Development Platforms with 39 reviews. IBM MobileFirst is rated 8.4, while Xamarin Platform is rated 8.2. The top reviewer of IBM MobileFirst writes "It provides access management for the enterprise user as well as for the consumer". 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". IBM MobileFirst is most compared with IBM MaaS360, Ionic, Microsoft Azure App Service and SAP Mobile Platform, whereas Xamarin Platform is most compared with Ionic, Appium, Apple Xcode, OutSystems and Mendix.
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