Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Apache Cordova
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Xamarin
Score 6.0 out of 10
N/A
N/AN/A
Zeplin
Score 7.6 out of 10
N/A
Zeplin, from the company of the same name, is a platform supporting collaboration in application development by engineers and designers by providing an API with popular collaboration, development and prototyping tools and creating a space where productions can be shared and reviewed.
$15
per month
Pricing
Apache CordovaXamarinZeplin
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Xamarin
Free
Free
$0
up to 1 project
Advanced
$15
per month per seat (up to 50 projects)
Basic
$15
per month per project
Enterprise
Contact sales team
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Apache CordovaXamarinZeplin
Free Trial
NoNoYes
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 CordovaXamarinZeplin
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. …
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.
Zeplin

No answer on this topic

Features
Apache CordovaXamarinZeplin
Project Management
Comparison of Project Management features of Product A and Product B
Apache Cordova
-
Ratings
Xamarin
-
Ratings
Zeplin
4.6
4 Ratings
51% below category average
Task Management00 Ratings00 Ratings4.92 Ratings
Workflow Automation00 Ratings00 Ratings3.01 Ratings
Mobile Access00 Ratings00 Ratings4.32 Ratings
Search00 Ratings00 Ratings6.34 Ratings
Communication
Comparison of Communication features of Product A and Product B
Apache Cordova
-
Ratings
Xamarin
-
Ratings
Zeplin
6.9
4 Ratings
15% below category average
Notifications00 Ratings00 Ratings6.94 Ratings
File Sharing & Management
Comparison of File Sharing & Management features of Product A and Product B
Apache Cordova
-
Ratings
Xamarin
-
Ratings
Zeplin
4.9
5 Ratings
49% below category average
Versioning00 Ratings00 Ratings7.22 Ratings
Document collaboration00 Ratings00 Ratings3.33 Ratings
Access control00 Ratings00 Ratings4.25 Ratings
Advanced security features00 Ratings00 Ratings4.82 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Apache CordovaXamarinZeplin
Small Businesses
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Stackby
Stackby
Score 8.9 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Troop Messenger
Troop Messenger
Score 9.8 out of 10
Enterprises
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
Swiftify
Swiftify
Score 9.0 out of 10
HCL Connections
HCL Connections
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Apache CordovaXamarinZeplin
Likelihood to Recommend
7.5
(6 ratings)
7.0
(12 ratings)
7.9
(22 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Usability
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
7.5
(4 ratings)
Support Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
9.5
(4 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
Apache CordovaXamarinZeplin
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
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
Zeplin
I still have some issues, especially with color integration between the style guide and also project. When we update the colors, it's not automatically sync to every project. Aside from that, zeplin solves my problem for hand-off design from design to developer. I set zeplin is source of truth design file
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
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
Zeplin
  • Ease in automatically building design style guides, saving time that might be spent on building style guides in another tool (such as InDesign).
  • Users can use Mac, PC, or web versions of this app to collaborate on a single project, enabling us to work with a wider pool of contractors.
  • Accelerates the design-to-development workflow, as it’s very easy to import Sketch or Photoshop files through plug-ins, and HTML/CSS codes are automatically created based on designs.
  • Provides cross-platform specifications for web, iOS, and Android, which can save developers time in figuring out specifications beyond the “main platform" on their own.
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
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
Zeplin
  • The uploading and syncing of assets is great for sketch and photoshop but we use illustrator and that can be cumbersome/tedious at times.
  • There are certain elements that have been a bit confusing to navigate at times, but for the most part, it's pretty user-friendly
  • More integrations
Read full review
Likelihood to Renew
Apache
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
Zeplin
Great tool
Read full review
Usability
Apache
No answers on this topic
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
Zeplin
Zeplin's component management and style guide help us to be consistent across whole product and it so easy to use for non-technical person. It is now easy to collaboration for designes between different teams like stackholders, product owner, UI/UX, developers and testers. Now there is only one point of reference is Zeplin so it is so easy to get details without asking designer or developer again and again.
Read full review
Support Rating
Apache
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
Zeplin
Zeplin has classic support with a chat from the website. It's working fine, and we're also getting the support needed when needed. However, Zeplin is very good at closing the incidents and moving on. It was a while ago we had a case with their support so that it might have improved since then.
Read full review
Implementation Rating
Apache
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
Zeplin
No answers on this topic
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
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
Zeplin
Zeplin is great to inspect and share user interfaces, specifications and assets, perfect for developers. Tools like InVision and Marvel are much better to create prototypes for both developers, coworkers and even stakeholders, but they don't have this kind of feature (inspection) as Zeplin does. So each of them can be used for different purposes, offering different approaches to share and interact with layouts for apps and websites.
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
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
Zeplin
  • Development time has reduced as the design updates are communicated in real time to developers and they don't have to write the boilerplate code as it's already generated.
  • Employee engagement has improved as every stakeholder is aware about the design changes from the beginning and can give their inputs.
  • Designers save a lot of time as they don't to explicitly communicate when the update or publish their designs and also it just takes a couple of clicks to publish their designs. Also, lot of rework is saved as every stakeholder is involved right from the beginning.
Read full review
ScreenShots