Apache Cordova vs. WompMobile vs. Xamarin

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.

Incentivized

At first look we were not sure if WompMobile was well suited for E-Commerce because they had very few examples of E-Commerce sites within their portfolio. We spoke with the team at WompMobile and those concerns were tossed right out the window. I can't think of any scenario where WompMobile would not be able to provide the right mobile solution.

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.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Delivery. On time delivery of design and updates.
• Access. Whenever we have a question or need something communication is immediate.
• Best practices. Our speed and SEO scores are outstanding. When Google changes algorithms our mobile site is already prepped for it.
• Maintenance. If assets pulled from our main site create problems on mobile we are informed right away.
• Improvements. WompMobile regularly investigates and offers improvements to functionality as the mobile space develops.

• 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.

Incentivized

• 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.

Incentivized

• Support Options. We struggled a bit with not having a 24x7 support option from WompMobile. Even though we haven't had to use it, and a global company like us would feel better with a 24x7 support option. We even expected to pay more to have that comfort for "just in case" scenarios. However, their speed in responding to your production issue has been phenomenal, and it makes you wonder if the current model is way better than a 24x7 support option where they might have to hire less costly labor who would take longer to resolve your issue.
• Test Environment. We struggled not having our test environment connected to their test environment. They have a test environment where they show you the changes, but it's not accessible through your test environment. It's a different concept.
• Reporting. WompMobile doesn't have a portal or dashboard for customers to see the hits and performance metrics of their site.

• 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.

Incentivized

Great solution and development team

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

Great development support

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I have no basis of comparison. I stumbled upon WompMobile from a mention by This American Life (I think), and worked it out with them. Looked no further

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.

Incentivized

• Very economic for ROI purposes
• Scalable for code reusability down the road
• Convertible, easily switch platforms if Apache Cordova doesn't suit your needs

Incentivized

• Our mobile site was pretty basic, but once WompMobile changed the site, we saw increased results across our site. Our site runs smoother than before, leading to more positive customer experiences.
• The site runs faster as well, allowing our customers to shop longer and quicker.

Incentivized

• 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

Incentivized