So here I am, new to Xamarin, trying to check things out, run a simple cross plat hello-world starter project with WP8, WinRT, Android and iOS in the solution. BAM, no can do. Must buy Business edition for $999 just to do this.
This makes no sense. At all.
Xamarin, please take a lesson from Unity3d. Their free tools are free, until your company makes over $x or your team is x in size. The fact that I cannot even open a simple solution in VS without putting down a grand is a bootstraped startup killer.
Lets look even deeper at the business case here: dev gets to put (cross plat, droid, iOS, the works) projects together for free - Xamarin makes no $.
-Dev startup fails - Xamarin makes no money. OR,
-Dev startup succeeds, Xamarin now makes $$$ (not only from dev, but now his whole team). OR,
-Dev was a hobbyist, Xamarin makes no $. BUT, dev is now experienced with Xamarin, has a job at some enterprise corp trying to build cross plat apps, and succeeds in influencing the whole team that Xamarin is the shiz. Xamarin now makes $$$ on the entire team.
It is a win no matter what. Upsides all around, for Xamarin and Dev. But as it stands right now, you are crippling both the Dev and yourself by improper skew/pricing schemes. I have not evaluated yet, but also suspect your app size restriction is too limited as well.
Please call me. I have a lot of experience with this stuff (former product manager of Expression Studio and Visual Studio at Microsoft).