Appcelerator was a mobile app development platform acquired by Axway in 2016. It has been discontinued.
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DronaHQ
Score 6.0 out of 10
Enterprise companies (1,001+ employees)
DronaHQ as a mobility platform helps containerise all apps in one single app. It's a docker for mobile apps used to build, deploy and manage apps rapidly. DronaHQ includes:
Pre-built Container App across IOS/Android/Windows.
Cordova runtime & app management layer.
Platform & Device APIs to accelerate development.
Ability to deploy different apps for different user groups.
Ability to deploy bug fixes and new features in real…
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
If you enjoy being ripped off and ignored, I would highly recommend DronaHQ. If you are unable to configure the app yourself, they will connect you to a contractor. You will be charged by the hour, so its within their interest to drag the project out as long as possible. Once the project is delivered, you may find that the app is super slow e.g. 1-2 minutes for a page to load. When you complain, they will blacklist your email.
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.
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.
I was charged approx. $10k by DronaHQ to build an app over 6 months with page loading speed of 1-2minutes. Bubble.io took 2 weeks and $1000 to build a far superior app with page loading speed within 2 seconds.
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.
