Why Appium

The main advantage of Appium is that it’s cross-platform, meaning it will work on iOS, Android, Firefox, OS, etc. You can test in any language; and you don’t have to modify your app. Plus, you can use the selenium protocol that you’re already familiar with from web testing. And on the nice-to-have spectrum, Appium has a great community around it; plus it’s free and open source.

Here’s a quick look at the competition currently:

• Instruments – Disadvantage? One language. All done in advance. Can’t talk to outside frameworks.
• uiautomator – This works well; it also has instruments. But the language must be Java. tightly integration with app. Appium has more advanced features such as changing emulator language or xpath locators, however.
• iOS driver – main disadvantage, small community. not widely used.
• Selendroid – great project that appium supports. based on instruments, works on older android devices. more limited capabilities compared to uiautomator.
• KIF – modifying your app, writing objective c into your app. rule #1 is don’t mess with the code. takes it one degree of separation from what the customers are going to see. there are some advantages to doing that. more tight integration, able to do some types of testing that appium can’t
• Monkey Talk – low level. not the richness of appium