Defold vs Moai

Defold uses Lua, which is regarded as an easy to learn language by most.

Software and online dashboard are free of charge.

You can do a lot with drag and drop, but you're not limited -- the code (Lua, which is easy to learn) allows you more power than just visual editing usually gives you.

Going from idea to result is very important for the creative process.

Being crossplatform it is important to work on low end devices.

A very active and friendly community in forums.

You can download and modify the source code of the Editor and the engine for free.

You can invite friends from the dashboard and create games together.

It allows you to change scripts in a game while it is running live. Common use-cases is to tweak gameplay parameters or to perform debugging on a running game.

The Moai SDK Forum is active and users will go to great extents to answer queries, post code snippets, beta test, and even purchase and give feedback on each others' games.

Although the Moai SDK is very advanced and uses complicated features, the documentation wiki thoroughly and clearly explains how to use these features, such as the Moai Cloud(a service that provides web services for your game), and multiple ways to build from source.