One day. One day I hope Xamarin will find a different financing model, or like you said include VS support in their indie plan. It's just far too expensive right now.
You can dev for free with android/ios tools, you don't have to use Xamarin. The point of Xamarin is that you can make more money faster by developing and releasing for multiple platforms from one code base.
Just looking at the pricing model again and I see they've introduced monthly subscriptions. Going for the business plan will be, paid monthly, marginally cheaper than the annual subscription fee. I think I'd rather pay $83 a month than $999 at once.
I'm basically sitting here twiddling my thumbs and once VS support is included in indie (aka not ridiculously expensive) I will immediately buy a subscription. Until then, my (limited) money goes elsewhere.
Yeah. Also, I find it very sad that you cannot even try the Forms API before buying the suite. Their model only works for companies / individuals that don't care about the pricing.
Did they get rid of the eval period (30 day money back guarantee is not the same as an eval period) when they switched to a monthly subscription model?
One thing I didn't realize was that it any app built with the trial version can only be used for a 24 period. My plan was to build a LOB app, get my company to see the value in it and then have them purchase the full license. The 24 hour window makes that really difficult.
I also dislike their pricing. But their CEO was very open to discussing it by email the other month when they had a big new release, someone more articulate than me may convince them on the merits of a different model.