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Salesforce Platform vs Xamarin Platform comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 4, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Salesforce Platform
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
3rd
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
95
Ranking in other categories
PaaS Clouds (7th), Rapid Application Development Software (7th), Low-Code Development Platforms (5th), No-Code Development Platforms (2nd)
Xamarin Platform
Ranking in Mobile Development Platforms
5th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Mobile Development Platforms category, the mindshare of Salesforce Platform is 8.1%, down from 9.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Xamarin Platform is 6.7%, down from 8.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Mobile Development Platforms
 

Featured Reviews

Yasser_Anter - PeerSpot reviewer
Has customization and integration capabilities which increase efficiency
Salesforce could improve by offering AI features or functionalities to help business decision-makers analyze business history, suggest forward strategies, and participate in events. The previous version had a complicated interface where multiple pages and data entries were required, which was not pleasant for sales teams or business users. Also, deploying Salesforce took a long time, about four to five months, which is not ideal for any business.
Prince Tiwari - PeerSpot reviewer
Facilitates UI development with XAML, enabling shared UI code across platforms and reducing platform-specific work
I like its simplicity. As someone who didn't start my career as a dedicated developer, I was used to building websites or Windows applications. Transitioning to mobile app development meant learning new languages like Swift or Java. With C# and Xamarin, though, I could leverage my existing skillset. Xamarin, and specifically Xamarin.Forms, let me write my code once and deploy it natively to both Android and iOS. Xamarin.Forms are very useful. Essentially, it's a framework that allows me to create the UI mostly in XAML. This XAML code is then translated into the native UI elements for each respective platform. The advantage is that roughly 90% of my UI code can be shared. This significantly reduces the amount of platform-specific UI work compared to having to write separate UIs for each platform. For the most part, Xamarin's integration with Visual Studio improved the workflow, whether I'm on Windows or Mac. Since I'm familiar with Visual Studio, it provides a comfortable development environment. Additionally, features like Hot Reload and the integration of tools like Copilot help streamline the development process. Overall, it offers a positive development experience.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"A fully integrated solution that provides a seamless experience."
"It works beautifully. I haven't had any errors."
"The solution is used to track our customers."
"There are no major performance issues in the solution."
"Scalability to configure and integrate."
"The tool's most valuable feature is the CRM. Salesforce Platform comes with out-of-the-box capabilities."
"The solution has plenty of features that are useful."
"A great platform to import, manage and save customer data."
"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."
"Xamarin.Forms exposes a complete cross-platform UI toolkit for .NET developers. The advantage is that a single team can target multiple platforms (Android, iOS, and Windows) on a shared C# codebase."
"The combination of forms for cross-platform UI and C-Sharp for the programming language are my two favorite features."
"This solution is a cross-form technology, meaning that we don't have to create separate code to deploy apps across different platforms."
"Xamarin is well-integrated with Visual Studio so it will feel very familiar to you once you start."
"The platform is easy to learn as many tutorials are available on YouTube."
"Cross-platform development saves time and provides consistencies."
"The native features and Xamarin Essentials package are highly valuable to us."
 

Cons

"Salesforce also did not integrate well with some of the other systems that we had."
"Salesforce could improve by offering AI features or functionalities to help business decision-makers analyze business history, suggest forward strategies, and participate in events."
"There's a learning curve. It was a bit hard to understand the logical way of working with it, just at the beginning."
"The biggest challenge we had was the cost and the licensing."
"The reporting for Salesforce could be approved. It is a manual process and it would be useful to have a guide or videos on how to generate reports or any other cool things that you could do with the platform."
"The marketing automation needs improvement."
"Identification management systems integration should be easier."
"The previous version had a complicated interface where multiple pages and data entries were required, which was not pleasant for sales teams or business users."
"The application platform could be improved."
"For those who use only XAML to design the UI, it would be better if there was a better XAML previewer or designer."
"The android application compilation time needs to be reduced."
"The solution does not include Hot Reload which is painful because it causes us to wait quite some time for huge builds."
"They need to take a step towards independence from the UI platform. It takes a lot of time to adapt the native controls."
"There is room for increasing the scale a little bit further with the designer in the Visual Studio, more specifically, Xamarin.Android Designer in Visual Studio."
"In Xamarin.Forms, we have the option to preview our UI designs, but the functionality can be limited. So, this is not fully functional. Since I have some knowledge of iOS, where when you write code or design in the storyboard, your design is immediately visible in the preview."
"Regarding improvements, there are still some limitations with Xamarin, particularly regarding access to core functionality in Android and iOS."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"For the number of people that are using Salesforce Platform in my organization, I feel the price is reasonable."
"The cost is reasonable for the corporations I work for. I would say an average would be around $100 per month per user."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"I haven't had to buy Salesforce, however, I have heard it's $1500 a user."
"The licensing is on the expensive side, but most clients engage in negotiations to reach a more favorable agreement. For stand-alone or medium-sized clients, it can be relatively costly."
"The solution is fairly priced."
"The price varies depending on the cloud."
"rice-wise, the solution is reasonable for what we're getting."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, but there are fees for deployment, the API Store and Play Store, and using third-party libraries."
"It saved a lot of time and resources needed to develop a cross platform mobile app."
"This is a free product, so there is zero investment on licenses and IDE."
"Xamarin Platform is open-source, so it is free to use."
"You can build in Xamarin without paying any money."
"Xamarin Platform is a free open-source solution."
"There is no license fee because the solution is open-source."
"I think the solution is free."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Computer Software Company
14%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Educational Organization
19%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Computer Software Company
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

How would you choose between Microsoft PowerApps and Salesforce Platform?
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 pla...
How does Salesforce Platform compare with Azure?
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 tha...
Do you build applications using low-code or pro-code builders on Salesforce Platform?
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, ...
What do you like most about Xamarin Platform?
Xamarin.Forms are very useful. Essentially, it's a framework that allows me to create the UI mostly in XAML. This XAML code is then translated into the native UI elements for each respective platform.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Xamarin Platform?
Xamarin Platform is free, and we use an Azure subscription at a relatively low cost for our builds. It offers a good value for money, although it requires time to make it work effectively.
What needs improvement with Xamarin Platform?
The primary area for improvement is the support for third-party libraries, especially for major providers like Microsoft and Google. The lack of robust documentation and support for third-party bin...
 

Also Known As

Salesforce1, Force.com, Salesforce App Cloud
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

ADP
Cinemark, MixRadio, Sqor Sports, Storyo, JetBlue, The World Bank, Cr_dito Agrcola, Applied Research Associates
Find out what your peers are saying about Salesforce Platform vs. Xamarin Platform and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
850,028 professionals have used our research since 2012.