Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Cordova
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Flutter
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Flutter is an open-source mobile application development framework created by Google. It is used to develop applications for Android and iOS, as well as being the primary method of creating applications for Google Fuchsia.
$0
Xamarin
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Pricing
Apache CordovaFlutter by GoogleXamarin
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Xamarin
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache CordovaFlutterXamarin
Free Trial
NoNoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYesYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Apache CordovaFlutter by GoogleXamarin
Considered Multiple Products
Apache Cordova
Chose Apache Cordova
Apache Cordova is the mother of all other frameworks. The Ionic developed framework is well suited for development but most of their features are offered by paid services.

As Apache Cordova is open source and has a license to modify it, it has no legal problems to work with it. …
Flutter
Chose Flutter by Google
I think that Flutter is now much better than Microsoft's Xamarin and the old Apache Cordova. I was able to go from a concept design to a working application in almost no time and with almost no experience with Dart at all. It helps (but it is not a requirement) to have some …
Chose Flutter by Google
- Like it better than other solutions, or building native on both platforms.
- React Native has a good advantage with language and amazing web support.
- React Native is easier to jump in for web engineers.
Chose Flutter by Google
Flutter is a bit different from Android Studio, the latter one being an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) while Flutter itself is a Cross-Platform Mobile Development SDK (Software Development Kit). Flutter provides the access to the native features and built-in plugins …
Chose Flutter by Google
Way less tweaking to have a cross-platform experience, better performance, and feels more like a native app.
But the community, while growing, is still smaller than React Native. This can cause issues with specific use cases as it's harder to find help online.
Xamarin
Chose Xamarin
Xamarin is a good platform compared to Cordova, as it gives better API access, documentation and customer support as well as a robust community. It allows you to develop code using native Visual Studio and helps the developer to reuse the codebase for different platforms, …
Chose Xamarin
Apache Cordova is nothing more than a HTML Web VIew App. I've built an app using Cordova and it was a mess. With Xamarin, you get the platform level capabilities, which make the performance, in theory, no different than real native development. Cordova is not suitable for any …
Chose Xamarin
In Native app development we need to employ specialized developers solving some business problems in different technologies. Xamarin solves that problem to some extent delivering a native application experience. Hybrid has the same code base but suffers from lack of performance.
Chose Xamarin
None of the HTML-based cross-platform solutions can easily provide a native look and feel like Xamarin can. I've had to rescue multiple organizations that went down this path only to be disappointed with the results.
Best Alternatives
Apache CordovaFlutter by GoogleXamarin
Small Businesses
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CordovaFlutter by GoogleXamarin
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(6 ratings)
7.9
(17 ratings)
7.0
(12 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CordovaFlutter by GoogleXamarin
Likelihood to Recommend
Apache
It is suitable for making portable applications, with almost the same code for several platforms. You can access native features of the device or use an open source plug-in from the repository to create a local database and access the internal storage of the device. It is wonderful for the construction of a native application, through the use of standard web code. It is not recommended for enterprise applications.
Read full review
Google
Flutter by Google is well suited where you have to make an app across multiple platforms like iOS, Android, Web, Desktop and you don't have the bandwidth to create multiple teams for the Native app. This makes sure you have a faster development and you don't have to worry about how your product will look across different platforms. It is also very smooth/fast in response, making it close to feel like a Native app, this makes it an easy pick for a Fintech product where speed matters. Flutter by Google also has a huge library of Components, which are well tested and developed by Google's Flutter by Google team itself, making the development even more fast since the majority of required components are already available.
Read full review
Microsoft
If you are required to develop applications that are cross-platformed, Xamarin is a great tool to use. It will help save time and effort from your development team to be able to build applications seamlessly for android, IOS, Windows, and web on a single platform instead of requiring multiple tools to get the job done.
Read full review
Pros
Apache
  • Adobe Phone Gap has an extremely simple user interface that allows for easy learning to occur.
  • Adobe Phone Gap provides support for web languages and allows you to write in three of the main languages and transfer them to another language for use. This solves a common programming issue and is the greatest strength of the software.
  • Their desktop application allows for easy installation and programming.
  • Adobe provides quick support with questions about how to use the software.
  • The build interface notifies you of errors extremely quickly and helps identify the issue in your programming. You get an easy idea of what needs to be updated and adjusted.
Read full review
Google
  • User interface design works great across all platforms, including native styling for iOS/macOS.
  • Native compilation for mobile platforms and a decent rendering engine results in slick apps that can make the most of your device.
  • Dart is a well thought out language and easy to pick up.
  • Makes cross-platform development of good looking GUI apps a doddle.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Xamarin allows you to write cross platform code. This allows companies to build apps more quickly by writing less code. Having code abstracted and reused across multiple platforms allows for more testing and less issues overall.
  • The ability to use Visual Studio is a huge plus. Visual Studio is one of the best IDE's available and being able to write cross platforms apps while in a great IDE makes everything less painful.
  • Xamarin is now free with a large company backing. This means that bugs on the platform get fixed more quickly and there is a large community of developers.
Read full review
Cons
Apache
  • Cordova app code runs inside a webview component. So, expect the performance to be a little slower as compared to the native apps. This is more noticeable on older devices though. It is hardly noticeable when it comes to newer mobile devices.
  • Crashes can be hard to debug since the crash logs will not point you to the culprit javascript code. This is not a limitation of Cordova alone. Any other hybrid mobile app development platform suffers the same problem.
  • Even with tools like Safari debugger and Chrome debugger, it can be tricky to measure graphics and animation performance. Achieving smooth animations can be a bit of a challenge sometimes with hybrid mobile apps in general.
Read full review
Google
  • Occasionally updates to the Flutter SDK result in wide-sweeping changes that seem to not be thoroughly tested and considered. Flutter sometimes evolves too fast for its own good.
  • While the 3rd-party Flutter package ecosystem is vast and rich, 1st-party support for basic things (audio/video playback, battery information, Bluetooth services, etc.) are lacking. You are occasionally forced to rely on an open-source package for use-cases that other platforms have native support for.
  • Documentation, particularly around testing, is lacking. While there are some great docs, like the Dart Style Guide, many Flutter-focused support documents are lacking in quality and real-world usability.
  • Flutter allows you to architect an app however you want. While this is a great feature, it also adds complexity and leads to the current state of Flutter's state management, where there are 50+ options on how to organize your app, with very little official guidance or recommendations from the Flutter team. For a beginner, this can create decision paralysis.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Forms - not 100% there. Still needs work but is production ready.
  • iOS - sometimes errors can be hard to understand, if they even show up.
  • Insights - Xamarin offers their own crash analytics software. However, it's not perfect and sometimes doesn't pick up crashes.
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Apache
No answers on this topic
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Xamarin has been great for developing different projects efficiently and effectively. It's nice to reuse the core business logic across different platforms so that there are less to maintain and little replications are needed. The biggest benefit is that C# programmers do not have to learn a different language to do mobile development.
Read full review
Usability
Apache
No answers on this topic
Google
Flutter by Google is very easy to start with. The initial setup they provide is very helpful and easy to understand. The default project setup is also good and can be deployed to production without changing much. Flutter by Google provides a huge library of components, which are created and tested by their own team, making the development of application much faster and robust. Flutter by Google also has a huge community support where we can find components built by the community and we can contribute our own components as well, which helps in faster dev time. Applications developed using Flutter by Google are very smooth, almost feels like native, which helps in creating good impression on customers/clients.
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Microsoft
If you are required to develop applications that are cross-platformed, Xamarin is a great tool to use. It will help save time and efforts from your development team to be able to build applications seamlessly for android, IOS, windows, and web on a single platform instead of requiring multiple tools to get the job done
Read full review
Support Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
I never had to contact support for any help. Most of the problems we ran into, we were able to identify and use peer support through blogs and other internet sources to resolve the problems. There are plenty of sources online which provide tutorials, discuss problems, etc. Example: StackOverflow
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Apache
No answers on this topic
Google
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Just with any programming tasks, have a plan first. Design out the system, spend time to build it correctly the first time and have plenty of testing and user acceptance opportunities. Xamarin was easy to implement for a C# programmer. However, you need to do tutorials to realize the platform's capabilities.
Read full review
Alternatives Considered
Apache
Apache Cordova is the mother of all other frameworks. The Ionic developed framework is well suited for development but most of their features are offered by paid services. As Apache Cordova is open source and has a license to modify it, it has no legal problems to work with it. Also, most well-known IDEs recognize the Apache Cordova snippets.
Read full review
Google
I have experience with react and React Native. I would say that the idea behind all those frameworks are quite similar. However, I found the javascript-based frameworks a bit more accessible as you could utilise your javascript knowledge. Here, Flutter works with its own language. This has advantages and disadvantages sometimes. I found the community around javascript frameworks bigger and therefore sometimes more helpful. However, Flutter does a good job here as well. I think the main argument for Flutter is its usability for less experienced developers. If you do not have knowledge in javascript or other programming languages then I think it is much easier to start with Flutter than with another framework like react. I think the package that you get form scratch is better than in the other frameworks were you have to set up and learn a lot more before you can start.
Read full review
Microsoft
Xamarin runs natively on MacOS, and the debugger and other integration and auto-complete tools are far better than Eclipse for C# .NET. It also carries much of the plugin/add-on capabilities that are so desirable on Atom. Eclipse is a better for generalized software development, provided a developer is comfortable switching between the IDE the command line for certain parts of their workflow, like building, package management, or debugging. But for C# .NET development on MacOS specifically, Xamarin is the best product I've used for the job.
Read full review
Return on Investment
Apache
  • Very economic for ROI purposes
  • Scalable for code reusability down the road
  • Convertible, easily switch platforms if Apache Cordova doesn't suit your needs
Read full review
Google
  • The rapid development capabilities of Flutter allow us to build apps we could not have previously considered commercially viable, opening new revenue streams.
  • Free and open licensing made adoption very easy (ie. free/low cost!).
  • In comparison to Qt, our time spent arguing with build tools and perfecting development environments has decreased substantially.
Read full review
Microsoft
  • Saves development time and deliver fast.
  • Allows inhouse developers build both Android and iOS application without switching languages.
  • Allows use coding in C# in Visual studio IDE from which we can code in different languages. We don't need multiple IDEs installed
Read full review
ScreenShots