Xamarin Indie for $25/Month

That looks like pretty good value.

It's much lower risk to a small shop like mine.

I could stick 3 developers on it for $150 a month to cover Android and iOS and not worry if we don't use it much for a month or two because other priorities come up.

Actually, scrap that.

I think I still REALLY want Xamaine to give us a 6 month unlimited free trial for up to 5 developers. That way, if it sticks and it's as good as they say, we'd happily pony up the $534 a month to get the team on it and would probably run with it for a long time.

In comparison, using native Android + iOS tools costs us about $5 a month, 1% of the Xamarin cost.

Entry barrier still too high for me. Just sharing my thinking :)

This was really exciting news to me, until I read that they would never consider doing this for the higher tiers. We are currently active subscribers for both platforms that we paid for annually in March, which prevents us from switching to this model and being able to spread our costs. We would love to be able to upgrade to a higher tier using a monthly cost rather than a large payment each year, especially for Visual Studio integration.

They should have a Jetbrains-style and Jetbrains-priced "Personal License" -- $199 for new user and $99 for upgrading user.