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Appium pros and cons

Vendor: Appium
4.0 out of 5
291 followers
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Pros & Cons summary

Appium supports both Android and iOS, offering detailed app interaction while benefiting from open-source community support. It integrates well with tools like Selenium, reducing manual testing and enhancing efficiency with multi-language versatility. Despite compatibility issues with Unity and setup complexities, improvements in stability, configuration, React Native support, and security are ongoing. Enhancements to ease installation and better interaction with mobile device farms are necessary for tech buyers considering automation solutions.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Appium provides excellent interaction with mobile apps and elements, supporting both Android and iOS platforms.
Appium is open-source with vast community and documentation support, making it a cost-effective option for users.
Appium supports multiple frameworks and shares functions with Selenium, simplifying the transition for users familiar with Selenium.
Appium integrates seamlessly with tools such as GitHub Actions and BrowserStack, enhancing automation capabilities.
Appium supports multiple programming languages and allows for versatile test automation, particularly beneficial for Java users.

CONS

Appium encounters challenges with applications built on React.js, AngularJS, and Unity, with insufficient internal libraries to support these platforms effectively.
There is significant room for improvement in configuration and stability, impacting the efficiency and reliability of tests.
Tests in Appium can be slow and unpredictable, making it difficult to fully leverage it and requiring improvements in speed and result reliability.
Appium struggles with automated validations following iOS updates and lacks support for automation without using XPath, causing manual intervention.
The installation and configuration of Appium are complicated, requiring numerous dependencies and intricate setups, hindering initial setup efficiency.
 

Appium Pros review quotes

VM
May 17, 2019
It runs completely flawlessly and seamlessly every day.
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OC
Sep 26, 2022
I haven't explored other solutions in this particular area, but what I like best about Appium is the fact that it shares functions with Selenium. The extension of Selenium functions allows me to use all of the methods that exist in that domain, and it just makes it simpler for me. I've been using Selenium for some time as well, so using Appium just seems like a natural fit for me.
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Eko Kristianto - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 8, 2022
The best feature of Appium is that it allows you to inspect the element. With the Appium Inspector, you don't have to install another application to do the inspection. I also like that Appium has Android device connectivity. Currently, most people use Appium as automation software, and I haven't found any other tool that's more powerful than Appium.
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Alona Tupchei - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 28, 2022
We develop apps using the React Native framework, and Appium integrates well for testing those apps. The Appium automation framework also has good integration with GitHub Actions and plenty of other tools and frameworks, including BrowserStack.
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JK
Oct 6, 2020
It's an open-source solution with a very large community and available documentation.
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RajeevSAwant - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 22, 2022
It has great documentation and excellent community support.
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Abhishek-Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 28, 2022
Appium provides a record-and-play option, and the commands are the same as those that Selenium uses. So a person who has some exposure to Selenium will be able to write a piece of code in Appium.
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Siddartha Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 30, 2022
The most valuable feature is that it's easy to launch applications. Appium has everything that Selenium has. So many good tools support Appium. We can take some Excel sheets and use them to fill out the text box that's in there. We can also take screenshots of failures.
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Andrii N. - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 12, 2022
The solution is stable.
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Prakash-G - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 19, 2022
We get a list that shows all devices that are connected to the system.
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Show 10 more reviews (out of 27)
 

Appium Cons review quotes

VM
May 17, 2019
Configuration-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement.
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OC
Sep 26, 2022
What needs improvement in Appium is its documentation. It needs to give more context on the libraries that Appium is using under the hood. For example, my team is using Appium for Android automation, and a lot of times, I feel that there's functionality that's available through the Appium interface, that exists within the UIAutomator, but there aren't a lot of useful or helpful resources on the internet to find that information, so it would be good to have some linkage with the underlying platform itself. Another room for improvement in Appium is that it's buggy sometimes. For example, at times, there's a bug in the inspector application that doesn't allow me to save my desired capability set, so it would be nice to get that bug fixed, but overall, Appium is a good tool. The Touch Actions functionality in Appium also needs improvement. For example, if I want to initiate a scroll on the device that I'm running Appium on, sometimes Swipe works, but in other situations, I have to explicitly use action chains, so I'm not too sure what's the better approach. What I'd like to see in the next version of Appium is a more intelligent and more intuitive AppiumLibrary, in terms of identifying menus and scroll bars, etc., because right now, I'm unsure if I have to do a lot of export reversals to get to the elements I'm looking for. It would be nice to have some functionality built in, which would allow me to easily get those exports.
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Eko Kristianto - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 8, 2022
I rarely use Appium nowadays because I'm now at the managerial level, but the last time I used it, whenever I selected and clicked on an element, Appium was very slow. I tried to debug it, but I still couldn't find the problem, so this is an area for improvement in the solution. Another area for improvement lies with the connector and server. For example, the effort to get into the local machine sometimes causes the emulator to become slow, which then leads to failure in testing, and this is the usual issue I've encountered from Appium. An additional feature I'd like added to Appium in its next release is being able to do automation in iOS without using XPath and the name of the element. In Xcode, you can use previous UI tests for detecting elements, but in Appium, you have to use Xpath and the element name instead of being able to directly put the X-UiPath, which is what you can do in Xcode. In iOS as well, sometimes the element doesn't have a name or a path. Sometimes, there's also no element.
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April 2025
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Learn what your peers think about Appium. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: April 2025.
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Alona Tupchei - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 28, 2022
We previously worked with native applications, and there weren't any good mobile app testing tools. We started working with React Native, which works well with Appium, but it would be good to see better integration; the way elements are displayed can be messy. React Native is very popular nowadays, so it's essential to have that compatibility.
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JK
Oct 6, 2020
Stability is an area that needs some improvement.
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RajeevSAwant - PeerSpot reviewer
Jun 22, 2022
One thing which can be really helpful is that there is some kind of a recorder made available rather than scripting everything.
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Abhishek-Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 28, 2022
The challenging part with Appium is that installation can be a bit tricky. It can be challenging to set up in Android versus iOS environments.
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Siddartha Rao - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 30, 2022
Image recognition could be improved. We have some images in our mobile applications. It should be able to run from the cloud, so we can automate the catcher.
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Andrii N. - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 12, 2022
We need some bug fixes for nested elements.
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Prakash-G - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 19, 2022
Support-wise, it could be better.
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Show 10 more reviews (out of 27)

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