BrowserStack vs Xamarin

What users are saying about

Score 8.1 out of 10

Based on 104 reviews and ratings

Score 7 out of 10

Based on 45 reviews and ratings

Attribute Ratings

BrowserStack is rated higher in 1 area: Likelihood to Recommend
Xamarin is rated higher in 2 areas: Usability, Support Rating
BrowserStack and Xamarin are tied in 1 area: Likelihood to Renew

BrowserStack

80%

40 Ratings

7.0

Xamarin

70%

12 Ratings

BrowserStack

100%

6 Ratings

10.0

Xamarin

100%

1 Rating

BrowserStack

93%

15 Ratings

10.0

Xamarin

100%

1 Rating

BrowserStack

86%

15 Ratings

10.0

Xamarin

100%

4 Ratings

BrowserStack

N/A

0 Ratings

10.0

Xamarin

100%

2 Ratings

Pros

It shows a true representation of how a website will look on a mobile device.
BrowserStack has a good variety of devices and browsers for us to test on.
It's easy to access BrowserStack from anywhere that I have Internet access.
I can inspect my code and any errors, and also test changes on the device that I am logged into. It makes troubleshooting so much easier.

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Verified User

Team Lead in Professional Services

Computer Software Company, 201-500 employees

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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.

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Verified User

Engineer in Research & Development

Internet Company, 1001-5000 employees

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Cons

It can be a challenge to use it when you're accessing it from within a corporate firewall. In my view, this is the Firewall's problem, but anything that BrowserStack can do to ease that pain will expand its ability to be useful in more locked-down companies.

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Verified User

Employee in Information Technology

Computer Software Company, 11-50 employees

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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.

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Jordan Max

Software Developer

NewserInternet, 11-50 employees

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Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Yes

Free/Freemium Version

—

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

BrowserStack Editions & Modules

Edition

Live - Desktop	$29¹
Live - Desktop & Mobile	$39¹
Live - Team Plans	Contact sales team
Automate Pro	$129³
Automate Mobile	$199³
Enterprise	Contact sales team
Percy - Free	$0⁵
Percy - Professional	$99⁶
Percy - Enterprise	Contact sales team
App Live	$29⁸
App Automate	$199⁸

per user/per month
none
per user/per month
none
per month
per user/per month
none
per user/per month

Additional Pricing Details

—

General

Free Trial

—

Free/Freemium Version

Yes

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

—

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

Xamarin Editions & Modules

Edition

Xamarin	Free

none

Additional Pricing Details

—

Likelihood to Renew

BrowserStack 10.0

Based on 6 answers

It's simply a must-have tool. As a designer, I have to ensure my work is at least functional in older browsers. I also have to ensure that, when I design for mobile devices, any differences between platforms aren't problematic. BrowserStack allows me to test my work in a fraction of the time, with a whole lot more accuracy.

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Eric Karkovack

Owner

Eric Karkovack Web Design ServicesInternet, 1-10 employees

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Xamarin 10.0

Based on 1 answer

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.

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Duy Mai

IT Project Leader

North Orange County Community College DistrictHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Usability

BrowserStack 9.3

Based on 15 answers

BrowserStack has a clean and simple to use interface. I like that it has a "straight to the point" type feel to it. I don't log in and wonder where I need to go to do what I need to do. I'm able to log in and quickly begin my testing process of issues and then get out and get back to the client/reader.

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Verified User

Manager in Customer Service

Publishing Company, 11-50 employees

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Xamarin 10.0

Based on 1 answer

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

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Duy Mai

IT Project Leader

North Orange County Community College DistrictHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Support Rating

BrowserStack 8.6

Based on 15 answers

I sound like a broken record, but there's not too many negatives to say about BrowserStack. With so many devices nowadays, it's ESSENTIAL to our business to view/test on all browsers to provide the very best customer service. The up-to-date releases always guarantees that the product is supported with any "updates" from any browser or device.

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Verified User

Administrator in Quality Assurance

Non-Profit Organization Management Company, 10,001+ employees

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Xamarin 10.0

Based on 4 answers

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

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Duy Mai

IT Project Leader

North Orange County Community College DistrictHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Implementation Rating

No score

No answers yet

No answers on this topic

Xamarin 10.0

Based on 2 answers

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.

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Duy Mai

IT Project Leader

North Orange County Community College DistrictHigher Education, 1001-5000 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Compared to other products I've found BrowserStack to have an easy-to-use interface, it offers all the platforms I need and it runs quickly and reliably. The browser plugin is an especially useful feature so I can almost instantly open a URL in one of my BrowserStack presets. It proved useful for basic use at the free price level and for large team use at the higher price level.

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Matt Emge

Senior QA Engineer

BlueModusInternet, 11-50 employees

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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.

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David McCann

Senior Software Engineer

Digital Impact Alliance (DIAL) at the United Nations FoundationComputer & Network Security, 11-50 employees

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Return on Investment

Browserstack has provided us with a quick solution to cross browser compatibility testing at a low cost.
Direct impact on ROI is difficult to judge compared to the past, when there were no reliable options for testing across numerous platforms.
We had to pull back on our userbase when costs went too high for each individual to access the platform simultaneously.

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Nick Jastrebski

Project Coordinator

Miles TechnologiesInformation Technology and Services, 51-200 employees

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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

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Florence Birgen

IT Manager

Calmens naturalsCosmetics, 11-50 employees

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BrowserStack

Xamarin

BrowserStack

Xamarin

BrowserStack

Xamarin

BrowserStack

Xamarin

BrowserStack

Xamarin

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Likelihood to Recommend

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Pros

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Cons

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

BrowserStack Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

General

Free Trial

Free/Freemium Version

Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Entry-level set up fee?

Starting Price

Xamarin Editions & Modules

Edition

Additional Pricing Details

Likelihood to Renew

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Usability

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Support Rating

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Implementation Rating

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Alternatives Considered

BrowserStack

Xamarin

Return on Investment

BrowserStack

Xamarin

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