Appium Reviews

We use this solution for mobile UI automation, and particularly for regression test automation.

We develop complete, end to end test cases, then we automate them and run those test cases in a DevOps process. It's a complete CICD (continuous integration, continuous development) using DevOps methodology.

Our automation job triggers immediately after a successful development build. Upon completion of automated test cases, results are emailed to all stakeholders. This is a completely automated process without any manual intervention.

This solution has improved our organization in terms of efficiency. We use this tool for one of our mobile applications that supports iOS and Android devices. The application should support all Android devices with OS version 6 and above, whereas the iOS application should be compatible with iOS 9.3 and up. Therefore, it supports multiple OS versions with all of the devices and handsets that are coming to the market.

It becomes very difficult for our regulation team to test the solution, or run their test cases, on all of these platforms and mobile devices. But, with the help of automation, we can create a single script that does so. Not only that, but we can run our tests in a 24/7 model that includes weekends. Our team members cannot work overnight or on the weekend.

This solution continuously generates reports, and the report is the only thing that needs to be analyzed by the testing team. It runs completely flawlessly and seamlessly every day. This makes it very cost effective and productive. That is one of the major benefits for us.

Appium is a very good tool because with its help we can automate all of the platforms, Android, iOS, or Windows, and there is a single solution. We can create a single framework for all platforms that can satisfy all of the needs. Being an open source solution it is free of cost.

Otherwise, there are other open source tools for particular platforms, but with the Appium library, we can automate all major platforms.

This product is still maturing, so at times there are issues with its stability if your scripts run continuously for more than fifteen to twenty hours. At times, we have witnessed the Appium server stop responding for forty to forty-five minutes. As a result, scripts do not move in this time period. Sometimes the connection resets due to USB or Network issues, which is not an Appium issue.

There is no user interface because it is a complete development solution, and you have to code in Java. I do not see any room to include an interface in the near future, as is the case with other commercial automation tools.

For iOS automation, it is very tedious to install or configure this particular library in your system, and it becomes very difficult to troubleshoot if you are not Mac and Xcode savvy. You require an understanding of the configuration of Xcode projects and you have to troubleshoot a lot of things at times. 

Configuration/Installation-wise, there is a lot of room for improvement in this solution, especially for the iOS platform.

Stability-wise, this tool is still maturing. I have seen improvement over the past two years, with every release. I expect that in another year it will be even more stable.

In our experience, if you are running smaller scripts that execute for two or three hours, then this tool is good enough. If, however, your scripts run continuously for twenty or twenty-four hours then the tool give you issues at times. The connection gets reset or the server hangs in between. These things are normally seen after ten or eleven hours.

In terms of scalability, this tool is doing well. We have automated more than five hundred test cases, which run for twenty to twenty-two hours in one go. In that way, it is doing well, although, sometimes there are cases where the Appium server hangs, and the script does not proceed forward. This has to be ironed out.

We do plan to increase the usage of this solution. Right now, our company has a lot of experience and a lot of people are learning this tool, as well as other open source solutions. We do not use any commercial products. In fact, we have a policy of using open source solutions, as they are in demand. There is nothing challenging the capability of this tool right now.

Being an open source project, there is no company that specifically supports this tool.

That said, the open source community is quite strong. If you are having any kind of issues, with your solution or your implementation, there are multiple points that are available and you can ask questions. Most of the time you get your resolution in a very quick time, maybe in a day or sometimes a couple of days. In fact, most of the time, with my experience I can say 95% to 98% of the time, I found a solution which helped us. 

The open source community includes a large user base who are actively using it and sharing their experience, as well as their implementation solutions, over the net. 

Before this solution, I only had experience with HPE UFT (Unified functional testing). I, later on, moved to Selenium because we are able to achieve the same results with this open source solution as with any other commercial product, without any one-time or recurring cost for the tool. 

Selenium has matured with time and become a stable solution for Web Application automation. More and more clients are preferring Selenium because of the no-cost factor, and as a result, there are good job opportunities available for people who can work on Selenium. 

These were the major driving forces for me to move towards the Selenium automation solution.

Installation of this particular tool is tedious, and it gives you a good number of challenges at times. You have to resolve them, troubleshoot them every now and then, and you need the right people. You need a good expert with experience who can help you. It is not possible for a novice user, or any user who is new to the team, to do all of these things. There is a steep learning curve.

In order to use this tool for iOS applications, you have to use Xcode and have to install and create profiling for your development solution. For a user who is new to the system, and perhaps not aware of Xcode or profile creation on a Mac machine, it becomes difficult. The majority of developers use Windows-based development systems. In order to automate iOS applications, we have to use Mac-based machines to provide the operating system.

This means that you need to have some kind of experience with Xcode, or at least some experience with iOS application configuration. These are the skills required in order to set Appium up on your Mac machine and use iOS automation.

A Windows-based system can be used for Android applications, but a Mac machine can be used for both iOS and Android. I rely on Windows for Android, but you are certainly free to work on a Mac machine.

There are six people in our team using this solution on all platforms. I have the role of Automation Architect, and the others are Automation Engineers. We have set up a local cloud environment in our office, and we do everything ourselves.

We deployed this solution ourselves and created our own script for Appium installation on an iOS machine. Instead of individual commands, we have created a BASH script which installs & configures the automation development environment. With this, it is easy to install and configure a system for a new developer who is coming to our team. If you do not have such a script then it is a full-day task to complete the setup and configuration on your iOS machine.

This is an open source solution so it does not cost anything for licensing or otherwise.

I had evaluated SeeTest before Appium for mobile solution development, but the customer was not willing to invest in a commercial tool. SeeTest is more stable, mature, and easy to install as compared to Appium, but it comes with a significant cost of almost $80,000 per year (number of licenses that we required). This is the reason we decided to move on with Appium.

This solution is one that you need a little bit of time and patience to learn, but once you learn it, it opens the gate to work on many other similar types of tools or wrappers that are created, keeping Selenium at the core. 

Overall, the product is good. On a scale of one to ten, I am only deducting two points because you cannot automate & run the iOS application on the Windows OS. You require Mac machines for iOS automation. Also, installation and configuration are also tedious for new users.

I would rate this solution eight out of ten.

To automate mobile apps, iOS and Android.

The way Appium server interacts with mobile apps is fantastic. It provides all the information about the elements inside the app, Android as well as iOS. I can interact with the element quickly, just type some text or get some text values from the element - whether it's a drop-down, or web text, or a native element.

Initially, Appium had a GUI, for Windows as well as for Mac, and there were some limitations that I couldn't figure out: How to run automated test on multiple iOS devices. However, we figured out that you can run a couple of instances of Appium in parallel, and use them to run tests in parallel, as well as sequentially. 

It's available as open-source for the iOS or Mac, as well as for Windows, so that's a pretty huge feature.

It needs to accommodate applications that use React.js and AngularJS.

Also, an application developed on the Unity platform, such as a gaming application, objects are moving in that case. Interacting with those elements is still lacking in Appium. Appium doesn't have the internal library to play with the Unity platform. That is a huge lack right now.

In addition, on Google platforms we can't use Appium to automate, that is a lack. 

So what I'm suggesting is that Appium should develop a newer, generic solution for all kinds of platforms used to develop applications.

The stability is there. 

I don't think I have experienced any problems with scalability. The scalability is good.

Whenever I have problem, most of the time the solution is available through the  Appium community, as well as through Google searches. I'm an R&D guy so I am able to figure out a solution quickly.

We used commercial tools like Experitest. There were a lot of limitations. For example, we had to use iOS Configuration Utility manager before using that tool. We felt Appium was better because it is an open-source tool. It is very competitive with any of the commercial tools, right now.

I didn't see any complexity in setting up Appium.

Overall, Appium is the best. It is not made as a commercial tool.

I would rate Appium as a nine out of 10 because it has the flexibility, simplicity, and it is elegant. It is technically more advanced, and even a beginner can start using Appium very quickly, and master it in less time.

Support for both Android and IOS. It simplifies the testing setup.

It saves a large amount of QA resources needed for doing smoke tests and sanity checks on new versions of the app on several phones and OS versions.

Usability. The documentation is not always easy to follow, especially the advanced setup part, where the IOS predicates usage. Also, the Appium inspector, a tool which allows you to inspect screen elements, is rather tricky to setup.

Three years.

Yes. Sometimes the mobile environment reset and application installation are slow. Sometimes you need to kill and restart the Appium app. I have seen constant improvements though.

Appium is not that scalable, if you're using real devices locally. It can get scalable by using cloud services and emulators.

I am not aware of any paid support option. There is a decent sized community where you can get answers. Also, Appium and all language extension clients are open-source, so anybody can raise issues on Github.

Yes, Silk Mobile. Its features are very far from Appium's capabilities. Also, it is expensive.

Straightforward. Straightforward on Windows, relatively straightforward on MAC (the best option is testing on both Android and IOS devices), slightly tricky on Linux (I am using Arch Linux).

It's open source. There is nothing wrong with that.

I was using Silk Mobile, and it was not the right tool for our needs. Also, I tested the native automation on both Android and Mac. These are good options, but you need to switch context radically from Android to IOS and back.

Good luck, not sure how you can do it better. It has flaws, but is still much better than any other cross-platform mobile automation tool.

- Best part is that it's open source tool.

- Supports multiple mobile platforms.

- It supports native apps, mobile web & hybrid applications of both Android and iOS.

- It is based on Selenium using HTTP protocols.

- It supports most of the scripting languages like Java, Ruby, Java script, etc.

- It can be integrated with CI tools.

It is an indispensable tool for mobile automation helps much in converting manual test cases to automated scripts. Being an open source tool, it yields good ROI.

It should provide reliable & promising executions every time without any interruptions and avoiding any synchronization issues. They should also think of supporting Windows mobile applications as well in future.

The highest strength of this tool is that it's open source.

• Automate tests for native apps, hybris apps and mobile websites
• Test executions on real mobile devices and emulators/simulators
• Write automation scripts in any language of your choice Java, C#, PHP, Python and many more
• Based on Selenium API so there is no steep learning curve to understand Appium

We provide IT services and solutions, and with this solution we have helped our clients reduce their manual testing efforts to greater level. Our clients have realized benefits by reducing their testing cycle from three days to three hours through Appium.

They can improve test reporting, and more importantly on test scripts, by providing less constructs to automate more complex testing scenarios.

I've used it for the past three years. We use it alongside Selenium.

Deployment is little tricky but with good help from external vendors organizations, we can implement an Appium-based test automation solution in a short period of time.

There have been no issues with the stability.

There have been no issues with the scalability.

There is great on-line support from the users community. External vendors have innovative solutions build using these tools where they provide tremendous support.

It was difficult to some extent, but with good documentation from the on-line community we where able to implement the tool.

We did it in-house. If you are implementing it for enterprise level its better to seek external vendor help.

We have seen ROI of more than 60%. It's open source.

I would say start lean, gain small wins and incrementally add more. Example: Start automating test cases for one browser and slow expand to multiple browsers.

I used Appium for automating our iOS applications. It is a mobile automation tool, and I have set up all the capabilities in the config with iOS and all the applications I needed to do it.

Due to it being open source, Appium is cost-effective. Other paid platforms use Appium as an underlying platform while automating configurations and selling their products, which makes Appium a financially attractive solution.

Appium's wide support of programming languages is valuable. It supports languages like Java, which is the core of it, and JavaScript and dot net. This support is beneficial for our development stack, which already includes dot net, making it a favorable choice for our organization.

The deployment process and configuration are quite complex and require improvement. Additionally, the wait time functionality could be enhanced as I experienced failures with longer wait times.

I have used Appium for three months.

I would rate the stability of Appium an eight out of ten.

I believe Appium can scale well. I would rate its scalability a seven out of ten.

I haven't communicated with Appium technical support.

Positive

I have not used other vendors’ products, but I have taken demos. The main reason for selecting Appium is it's an open-source tool, whereas others were costly.

The deployment and initial setup process is complex. Unlike Playwright TypeScript, the documentation for setting up Appium is not straightforward.

I was the only person involved in the implementation team.

Appium being open source is a major advantage as it doesn't incur the costs that other commercial automation platforms require.

My experience with Appium from a pricing perspective is favorable due to it being open source, making it a cost-effective option.

I have taken demos from other automation solutions but have not used them.

As mentioned before, Appium is free and used as the base by many paid platforms. The initial setup can be simplified to make it easier to use, similar to Playwright TypeScript, which is straightforward.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.