Likelihood to Recommend I do not think I can recommend Appcelerator at this point due to the issues with Appcelerator studio, lack of good debugging support, lack of thorough documentation and forums and the additional cost overhead of licenses. The pros are just that it allows for cross-platform development. However,
Cordova does a much better job of it and excels at places where Appcelerator currently struggles
Read full review - Inexpensively and rapidly creating multi-device (
Android , iPhone) native apps. - Quick ramp-up time allows for rapid development. - Open source tools can be used to develop. - Lightweight code-based can be easily shared and developed in a team environment. - Use of React, Vue, and angular leverages well-known coding and application design frameworks that are transportable.
Read full review Pros Adds structure to your code through Alloy framework. Easy to integrate with iOS SDK and to build and run iOS apps. Read full review Nice command line interface for repetitive development and deployment tasks. Realtime preview (in web browser) during development. Easy to update and keep current (open source) via command line. Provides nice set of mobile widgets for consistency across devices. Read full review Cons It is very hard to debug your code. Breakpoints never worked for us even with the latest Appcelerator Studio and we had to rely on log statements to debug. There is a need to purchase licenses from Appcelerator to run the code on a device or for creating iOS distribution builds. This is an additional cost when you have already paid for Apple developer program for precisely these things. If things are broken due to lack to support between Appcelerator and a new iOS version, you pretty much have to rely on a new version release from Appcelerator for the issue to be fixed. It is difficult to create enterprise distribution builds where the distribution certificate is owned by your organization's team and you only have a development certificate for the same. The forums on developer.appcelerator.com are seldom helpful. It is hard to find solutions for issues even on other forums like stack overflow. Documentation needs to be improved. Read full review Slightly better documentation when it comes to command line build troubleshooting. Increased widget library (even though it's much improved today). Native chart/graphing widgets. Read full review Alternatives Considered Appcelerator makes you write a structured code whereas
Cordova just packages your code and you are free to structure it. Appcelerator bridges your javascript code with native code and that would make it run faster than javascript code in
Cordova apps. However, with recent mobile browsers, you would hardly notice any performance deterioration with
Cordova apps. Appcelerator struggles with issues related to its IDE, debugging, documentation and forums and additional costs.
Cordova makes it much more simpler to develop cross-platform apps with better developer support, debugging support, documentation and forums minus the additional costs.
Read full review Android Studio Busy Confusing Marginal IDE Large footprint Single device development IonicFramework Lean, no IDE needed Web browser preview Multi-device development Scripting of build packages for deployment Read full review Return on Investment We were able to build and deploy a mobile app with Appcelerator. However, the platform still has issues and does not cover our needs as much as some of its competitor like cordova does. Read full review The ability to create a mobile app quickly by a single developer (saving $20K). Increased customer satisfaction. Avoids outsourcing costs of $10k-$20k. Read full review ScreenShots