Xamarin Platform Reviews

Our company uses the Native solution to build mobile apps in DevOps that we push to app stores. 

One of our clients is an insurance company and we are building a forms app that needs to be nice but not super smooth because the app is more about data input and output. 

The solution allows us to share libraries from the mobile app to our client's web project. 

The solution's most valuable asset is its shared code base in C# that is better for large apps. 

Code is transferred to the .NET framework and the standard libraries for shared code are great. 

The solution is reliable with a very manageable hierarchy that allows multiple roles and permissions.

The solution's pull request system is quite good and unit testing is useful. 

The solution does not include Hot Reload which is painful because it causes us to wait quite some time for huge builds. 

The solution does not allow for use of the latest or premium version of Visual Studio so we have to use the 2019 version. 

The layout interface and designer for Android Studio is more advanced than the iOS Builder. Most of our layouts have to be built in Xcode but broken connections and file updates are continuing issues. 

Standard libraries have not been updated in four years because the focus has been on newer products like Xamarin.Forms and .NET MAUI. 

To continue to use the solution, we have to bind SDKs after new Android or iOS platform releases. 

No support is offered that would make our lives easier so we rely instead on Rider as an ID for development because it includes ReSharper. 

The auto update system is not trusted because it has broken our builds on occasion. 

I have been using the solution for ten years. 

The solution is reliable and stable with no bugs. 

We disabled auto updates because on occasion they were breaking our builds. 

The solution is scalable because of C# which allows large builds across teams. 

I don't need assistance often and am satisfied with past technical support. 

One issue regarding Test Cloud was resolved.

Another issue involving the iOS platform was not resolved by support so I ended up fixing it with a workaround. 

In general, forums contain topics that include workarounds for very early in an issue's lifecycle. Our team has been successful in fixing issues internally. 

I used CodeGear for another project. 

The initial setup is straightforward. 

Setup issues are not with the solution but are caused by native items such as Android and iOS provisioning profiles and upload rights. 

Our company includes 30 developers who deploy the solution through a week-long process that includes multiple steps such as regression testing, Test Cloud, and internal processes. 

Once all steps are complete, we automatically upload to stores and promote the version to be used. 

We maintain apps we build for our clients. 

Android Studio is growing faster than Visual Studio or Xamarin Studio because they focus only on Android apps. 

The native development of Android Studio is not comparable to Visual Studio. 

MAUI is amazing because it offers multi-platform distribution.

The solution is good but doesn't fit every app or use case so you should consider all options. 

The solution's strength is in form apps but it is not the best option for small, pixel-perfect apps full of animation and transitions. 

The solution does not include native bindings so you have to create one which is a hideous process. Our company opted to work with a third-party for binding six iOS libraries. It was too tedious to have to go through a whole update cycle after changing one item. If an app relies on third-party bindings or libraries, I don't recommend using the solution. 

We are using the new release of Xamarin Platform (as .NET MAUI) to create hybrid applications, so we don't need to implement them individually in different platforms. We can simply deploy in a single codeless application which is automatically deployed to multiple platforms. This is the biggest reason why we chose Xamarin Platform to begin with, and the second major reason is that it is produced by Microsoft. Being a Microsoft product lets us do large, sophisticated things with it, and we currently have around 2,000 developers using it in my company. 

Generally, we use a mix of .NET MAUI, Xamarin.Forms version 5.5, and ADO.NET with Visual Studio to deploy mobile applications on Android and iOS through the Google Play Store and Apple Store, respectively, and we also have a CI/CD pipeline using App Center.

With Xamarin Platform we are able to create hybrid applications that run cross-platform on Android and iOS, removing the headache of building and deploying separate applications for each platform.

My favorite feature of Xamarin platform is the Xamarin.Essentials package.

I also like the changes seen in Xamarin's upgrade from Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI, because in the older Xamarin Platform, Xamarin.Forms gave you multiple libraries of a particular level for a single platform, whereas .NET MAUI comprises a single, organized library that contains everything needed for both Android and iOS.

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.

I have about 5 years of experience with Xamarin Platform.

Xamarin Platform has been stable lately.

At the moment, we have around 2,000 users working with Xamarin Platform in my company. These are typically developers.

From my experience of using their support to resolve problems, I would rate them as very good.

Positive

The setup is easy; not difficult at all.

My company provided all the licenses that we need to support our use of Xamarin Platform.

Xamarin is an excellent platform that I could definitely recommend to others, despite the occasional issues we have had in the past.

I would rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of ten.

We are using Xamarin for a messaging app and customer-facing end-user experiences. It's been great so far, and thankfully all the upgrades that happened throughout the year have led us to develop good UI.

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.

It would be better if they offered more certifications. They offer a number of certifications for Azure but none for Xamarin. This is something that could be provided for developers to show off their competency. Technical support could be better.

I have been working with Xamarin since 2016. I'm very fortunate to have started working with Xamarin before Microsoft acquired it. I have been using Xamarin ever since.

Xamarin is a well-supported stable solution.

Xamarin is very scalable. You can develop apps for hundreds or thousands of customers with the same code base. That is something very unique. I have a company that has a team of six Xamarin developers. They are all very experienced.

Technical support could be better. We often get support from the community and only sometimes from the Xamarin team. They are not the best, but they are okay.

The initial setup is straightforward. It wasn't earlier, but now it's pretty easy. You can deploy this solution with just a few clicks. Like any other app, if it's an automated deployment, it will probably take an hour or two. 

Xamarin is free. There is no license unless you go for some high-end enterprise features. Other than that, everything's free.

I would tell potential users to look at the new updates coming in over the next three or four months, as those are critical. The best place for you to start with Xamarin is by following the contributors on YouTube. I know there are many paid courses, but they aren't good or worth the money. It's best to take a course directly provided by the content creator or contributor.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Xamarin an eight.

We use this solution mainly for mobile app development.

In the App Center we can not only deploy our apps, but we can also carry out user analysis; which page particular users have visited, whether the app has crashed, and what the root cause of that crash might have been, so that we can fix the issue.  This functionality allows us to provide a better user experience.

This solution is a cross-form technology, meaning that we don't have to create separate code to deploy apps across different platforms. 

We also find this solution to be simple to use, with a very user-friendly environment.

We have noticed that there have been stability-based performance issues with this product, which need to be improved.

We would also like the notification feature that was available with previous versions, to be included again.

We have been using this solution for six years.

The stability of this solution has previously been an issue, and requires constant updates to maintain.

This is a scalable solution, but it requires some prior training to carry out upgrades effectively.

The support for this solution is good. There are multiple ways to resolve issues, including a Facebook group that has been set up by the provider.

The initial setup of this solution was very straightforward, and the deployment only took 10 minutes to carry out.

This is an open-source solution, but there is a subscription charge to use the App Center of around $100.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

We use the Xamarin Platform to develop applications. We develop mobile Android and iOS applications.

The best part while using the Xamarin Platform is a cross-platform application. We could execute iOS and Android while writing a single line of code. The most important feature of the Xamarin Platforms was this.

I believe there is already a better version in.NET MAUI. Xamarin Platform has already been shut down in the month of May 2024, according to my knowledge. Support will be discontinued in the month of May 2024.

It already has a completely new version. It has already vastly improved.

The architecture in the Xamarin Platform has to improve, there are some features missing.

There are no borders. The main thing that the Xamarin Platform lacks is a user interface. It is somewhat difficult when we are creating the UI.

Borders and sheets are two of the most important features that are missing in Xamarin. The frame is heavyweight. Sheets, nowadays, we see looking sheets on every platform and in every application. It will come from the bottom. When you finish paying, it will come from the bottom. It's similar to the system's successfully completed sheet.

I have had 15 months of experience with the Xamarin Platform.

I believe we are currently using a three to four-year-old version because this is a long-running project.

The Xamarin Platform is a stable solution.

Xamarin Platform is scalable. We can add to it.

In our company, we have approximately 20 developers.

I have never used the help of the technical support team.

In my company, the majority of the software we use is Microsoft-only, such as MVC,.NET MVC, Power Apps, PowerPoint, and Power Apps CRM. The majority of the software we use in my company are Microsoft products.

My company is 99.9% dependent on Microsoft products.

It is easy to install.

While using Visual Studio, it is easy to use the Xamarin Platform.

The time it takes to install Xamarin is dependent on the internet speed. 

We can easily install Xamarin in 30 to 40 minutes, depending on internet speed.

It is extremely quick If you have high-speed internet as well as some RAM and systems processor. It will be very fast if it has an i7 processor.

There is no requirement for a license. It is available for free as an open-source product.

If you are new to the Xamarin Platform or thinking about using it, my advice is to start with.NET MAUI instead, because Microsoft support for the Xamarin Platform will be discontinued in 2024.

.NET MAUI is a new tool and platform for developing everything.

I would rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of ten.

I am not giving it a ten, because I don't know the other languages. Flutter is a major competitor for Xamarin in mobile applications. But I'm not familiar with Flutter. That's why I'm giving it an eight.

We use the Xamarin Platform for developing applications for businesses. I've worked and used the solution for property management companies, and the medical and education sector.  We consume APIs and distribute them within app stores.

The most valuable features of the Xamarin Platform are that it has cross-platform development, one code base serves a purpose on both, and the grid layout is a lifesaver.

Xamarin Platform can improve by making the enterprise documentation better. There's a lot of basic documentation of how to do many of the functions of the solution, but there's not much enterprise-level documentation.

I have been using the Xamarin Platform for approximately eight years.

The stability of the Xamarin Platform could improve.

Xamarin Platform is scalable.

I am the only one using this solution in my company.

Xamarin Platform could improve the support. Sometimes they're responsive, sometimes they're not.

I rate the support from Xamarin Platform a three out of five.

Neutral

The initial setup of the Xamarin Platform is straightforward. If you want a simple debug deployment it is simple, you only need to press play.

I manage all the way from design, testing, and deployment in the Xamarin Platform. Additionally, we have a web team.

If you are making applications with the Xamarin Platform and they make money then this solution will have a good ROI. However, if you are making applications that are not making money then it will not have a good ROI.

I evaluated other solutions, such as React, before choosing the Xamarin Platform. I'm a .NET developer and the Xamarin Platform was easy to use for me and this is why I choose it.

My advice to others is to look into tutorials, such as on YouTube. There are a lot of resources on YouTube. Additionally, there is a lot of documentation within Microsoft that's good.

I rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of ten.

The strongest use case for this solution is developing cross-platform mobile apps. Most people are building both Android and iOS, and Xamarin lets you reduce your development efforts and build it from a single code base. You can build for Windows and Mac from it also, but most people are using it to build mobile apps.

Xamarin.Forms is a framework that's coupled with the Xamarin platform, and I think one of the biggest productivity gains is that you can build a single UI using Xamarin.Forms and it runs on both platforms. Plus, it gives you the ability to use C-Sharp, which is a very mature, robust language. The combination of forms for cross-platform UI and C-Sharp for the programming language are my two favorite features.

The solution struggles a little bit with binding libraries. If you want to use something like Google Maps or a third-party component that's been built for Android or iOS but isn't part of the actual Android or iOS platform, you have to build these things called binding libraries. It's a tedious process and the tooling doesn't do a lot to help you with it. The really common libraries usually have bindings already built that you can use, but if you get stuck having to build binding libraries, it's a lot of work.

I'm a Mac user and I'm not a huge fan of the Visual Studio for Mac because it's not as strong of a tool as the Visual Studio for Windows, and you don't have the same features on both. That's why I have to resort to a different IDE. I generally work in JetBrains Rider because it's a much better IDE for Mac. The IDE support on Mac lags, but they do have a new version of Visual Studio out, so I can't say I've given it a fair chance yet.

I have been using this solution for about ten years.

I think the stability is slightly stronger when building iOS apps. When you build an iOS app, there's nothing that is really restrictive, so you should be able to achieve the same type of performance, look, feel, and quality of using Swift and all the native iOS stuff.

The Android apps run pretty well, too. I noticed a little bit of a performance hit on the Android side, but that's because there's some pretty complicated architecture stuff. Overall, I would say you can build very high quality apps with the solution.

The scalability is more based on your backend than Xamarin itself, but there are no real restrictions. You can add developers to the team and there's no restrictions with Xamarin that you wouldn't encounter with any other mobile development platform.

I'm a contractor, and my last customer had five developers using the solution. 
I heard about one mobile team in Denver at Charter Communications that had 25 people on it, but that's a lot. I would say most teams and companies that I've worked with have between two and six developers using the solution.

This is a Microsoft product and you go through the same channels for tech support that you do for any other Microsoft products. I would say they're pretty good at getting back to us. Parts of Xamarin are maintained by an open source team, so that's always a challenge as to what responses you sometimes get from them. 

I would say they're as good as any other solution on support. I almost always find solutions on Stack Overflow before I hear back from them, because there's a pretty big community there. I did a lot of work at Cinemark and we had two to three million users a month and I've never run into anything that we weren't able to solve pretty quickly, within a day or so.

On a scale of one to five, with one being bad and five being excellent, I would rate their technical support team as a four.

Positive

The setup is moderately complex. In general, I don't think development for a nice mobile is very simple, but I wouldn't say that it's super complex. .Net itself is a pretty productive programming language, so it helps you with a lot of things, but there's definitely a learning curve to get up to speed on it.

It takes a day to get the solution configured on your workstation, if you know what you're doing. The reason I say that is because you have to install the Android SDK, the iOS SDK, and then you have to install Xamarin on top of all that. All of them have to be installed and configured correctly for everything to work, so there's a lot of dependencies. I think it probably takes at least a day to get a workstation set up and configured, and then you're off and running. 

In regards to DevOps and all that, in most places I've worked, you have developers with their individual machines configured. Then when you merge your code into a git repository, the builds are automatically done and either sift to the testing team or are uploaded to the app stores, depending on where you are in the project. That might take a week or so to get going, but just as an individual developer, it takes about a day.

There's no licensing cost for Xamarin. Like the rest of .Net, it's open source, but there is a licensing cost if you want to use the IDE. There's a number of different development environments you can use. 

You can use just traditional Visual Studio. I license Visual Studio Professional. It's about a thousand dollars a year and Xamarin comes with it. 

I also license another IDE, which I could run independently. That one is called JetBrains Rider, and it's only about $200 a year. You could do all of your Xamarin development with that if you didn't care to license the other stuff. 

The actual platform itself technically doesn't require anything. If you wanted to download Visual Studio Code, which is a free IDE, and figure out all the plugins to get everything to build and work the way you wanted, you could actually technically develop for free, but I don't think many people do that.

I would tell people considering this solution that there's a lot of training available. There's a lot of documentation on Microsoft's website and apps for getting started. Places like Pluralsight also have a lot of video training. I would recommend downloading the IDE and going through some of the Microsoft tutorials initially, and then jumping into Pluralsight to find some deeper training.

I would rate this solution pretty high. I would give it a nine out of ten. I've never had the Xamarin platform cause a project to fail. In other words, I've been successful in every project where we've tried to apply it and, except for external problems with the requirements or things like that, I've never run into any technical problem that I couldn't solve with Xamarin. The apps that you can produce can be very professional depending on how much time you put in and you can dramatically reduce the amount of code you have to write to support two platforms.

Xamarin Platform is being used for building applications. For example, shopping and e-commerce applications.

The most valuable feature of the Xamarin Platform is the deployment.

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. 

I have been using the Xamarin Platform for approximately six years.

Xamarin Platform is a stable solution. I have published six to seven applications on the Apple Store and they are stable.

The scalability of the Xamarin Platform is good and it updates often.

The support of the Xamarin Platform is good. 

If you start from the beginning and face problems Microsoft support will find a solution. You will be placed in the queue for support from Microsoft, and depending on the issue the time for the response can vary. For example, if the question is the first time it has been asked or has occurred, it could take longer, but if someone has already found the solution previously, it could be a faster response.

Xamarin Platform deployment is very good, it is simple. You must have a virtual machine on your system for the Xamarin Platform to work. The full deployment takes a few days at the most.

It's reducing the cost and time to deploy and deliver your applications to different customers. You can deploy it on Android and iOS, which includes mobile devices and desktops.

Xamarin Platform

The price of the Xamarin Platform is not expensive. However, the price of the solution depends on the application that is made. For example, if you have small applications, it's different from large or enterprise applications.

The cost for us on average is $2,000 to $3,000 for all the projects. This involves starting from scratch until we deploy and package them to the Google Store or Play Store for publishing.

I would advise others to use the Xamarin Platform because it's the technology that is most stable in the market. There is always support from Microsoft and it is updated often.

I rate Xamarin Platform an eight out of ten.

I used this solution for three years.

I am not using this solution anymore, but I had Visual Studio and Xamarin installed — we were using components of Xamarin.

We were trying to integrate some PSPDFKit functionality. We wanted to open up a PDF document to the last page that the person opened it. If it was a five-page document and they opened it on page two and then when they closed it, they wanted it to open back up to the page where they left off. They were trying to get the PDF to be sticky.

The product owners that were looking at it liked the functionality. There was a competing product library called PSPDFKit. They wanted to get rid of that because it costs a lot of money; however, they wanted the functionality that the PSPDFKit had, inside Xamarin. There were some issues with it that they were trying to resolve.

When they put their ticket in, Microsoft pointed to Xamarin and Xamarin pointed at Microsoft, to say who's going to fix it. That's where it got left off. Xamarin was never able to utilize that module for the PDF. They had to keep the PSPDFKit software, that's the current state. 

The software itself was pretty good. The problem that I faced was that the communication, the roles, and the responsibilities, weren't defined between Microsoft and Xamarin, that's really where the problem was in my opinion. Nobody was taking ownership of that. 

Let's say you have two platforms on-prem. If you're an iPad user, you want the look and feel of the iPad; if you are a Surface Pro user, you want the look and feel of the Surface Pro. What I feel is of the utmost importance in regards to Xamarin, is to make sure that when you do something, whatever the object is, you get the object that the iPad user expects. Conversely, if you're a Surface Pro user, you get the object that the Surface Pro user expects.

I was in favor of it, it had the capabilities. I was impressed by the way they were thinking of moving it forward, scalability-wise.

The developer activity was complex, but it was understandable. From my perspective, I wanted to minimize the number of software vendors we were working with, and consolidate where features were overlapping. The reason I was trying to do that was to try and save the government some money. I was thinking I was still paying X dollars for one contract for three years, and Y dollars for another contract, and the features were all the same — what's the use of paying for both?

I believe the initial implementation took two years. They developed a working product that was in production. Xamarin was included in that initial design.

They had good documentation regarding implementation, but I understand it was evolving and integrating into Visual Studio.

When someone's building something, they want the capability to do so across the platform; initially, there was a goal to build something for iOS, something for Windows, and something for Android. The first thing they dropped was the Android approach. They ended up keeping the iPad and Windows. You write the code once and it generates in both, or in multiple outputs. 

In our situation, we were supporting it on the iPad — 95% of the people used one. A very select few people used Microsoft Surface. It's a tremendous effort to keep both going, although that's the whole purpose of having Xamarin.

It's a great concept. I think it worked well. The concept of doing it is still not perfect. When we generated some code on the iPad, we would get fewer bugs, and with Surface Pro, we would get more bugs.

The same code was pushing a bug on Surface Pro, but not on the iPad. That's basically a fact of maturity over their capabilities. From a business point of view, it didn't make sense for the use case that we had — it was a huge cost for a few users. In many situations, Xamarin has a purpose. There are good reasons to build it once and have it work on both platforms.

Not from a technical point of view, but from the business side, if I was consulting to a large government organization and looking at the cost-effectiveness, I would suggest they have iPads or Surface Pros and give them to their public users — make them decide upfront instead of going down both paths, doubling the paths.

On the market, compared to everyone else, they're the top solution. They're the best solution out there that I could see. On a scale from one to ten, I would give Xamarin Platform a rating of nine. If they become bug-free, I would give them a rating of ten.

Xamarin is a framework for creating mobile applications. It can be deployed on any device for mobile app development. I am a user of this solution. 

This is a Microsoft-supported source platform so the technical support is very good and it's close to native. It's all compiled into related code and at the same time wraps old libraries or native libraries into cross-platform libraries which is great. I do a lot of proof of concepts, and part of the reason I like Xamarin is that I'm familiar with it and know my way around which saves me a lot of time. 

Xamarin is reaching its end of life and they're moving it to .NET MAUI, combining it with other platforms and creating a centralized framework. It's a big change that's affecting a lot of the good features and something they could have done in a more user-friendly way.

I've been using this solution for six years. 

I have had times when I ran into bugs which can take some time to sort out. I found out the hard way that these bugs can often take quite some time to resolve and that's obviously not ideal.

The solution is scalable, we can vertically build on top of it.

Customer support is good. 

The deployment is fairly straightforward. Since it's backed by Microsoft, the documentation is expensive. There are MVPs working around the clock to help get you up to speed, so implementation is a breeze. It's not really a problem. In that respect, it's much better than React Native. I've deployed this on my phone. 

Xamarin is open source, so it's free. If you're planning on development within a company, it might require purchasing the commercial version.

Until relatively recently, I used this solution all day, every day, but at this stage it would not be my go-to choice and I'd now prefer Flutter or React Native. If you're starting something new and you have experience with .NET, and are already in the environment of the ecosystem, then I would say that you could potentially use Xamarin. But if you are coming from a JS perspective, then I would recommend Flutter. If you're production ready, go with Flutter or React Native. 

The solution has served me well and I rate it eight out of 10.