Feature Article

April 22, 2013

Appy Pie Officially Launches, Offers Simple Mobile App Creation

Only about three months after launching the beta version of its mobile app builder software and app market place, Appy Pie has now fully launched its app creation service. This service allows customers to quickly create apps for Android and iOS in the cloud from a Web browser, without any programming knowledge whatsoever.

Appy Pie grew out of founder Abhinav Girdhar's Web and app development company, in response to clients frequently requesting help with low-cost app development. According to Girdhar, Appy Pie provides ease of use comparable to other content management systems like WordPress.

Of course with the importance of multiplatform development today, Appy Pie also allows users to push one app to different platforms — a very useful feature since Windows Phone 8 and BlackBerry support are on their way. The service also features integration with OpenTable, GrubHub and SoundCloud at launch, while more APIs are to be added down the line.

There are two versions of Appy Pie, free and paid, which obviously differ in terms of usability and accessible features. Free users can build HTML5 apps for free, while paid users can create Apple App Store or Google Play developers accounts and upload apps directly to these markets from Appy Pie. These customers also have access to monetization options, customer support and Google Analytics — pretty much everything one would need to create and launch an app properly.

All apps are built using a combination of HTML5, CSS and Javascript, while an additional framework handles interacting with phone-specific APIs. While this may sound similar to other app creation services, Appy Pie's focus on simplicity and low pricing, along with its solid support team and breadth of features, set it apart.

So how easy is it to make an app with Appy Pie? Pretty easy, in fact. Its layout is very straightforward, asking for basic app information and allowing you to determine your app's visual style in the first section of the creation page.

Unfortunately, the default templates right now are fairly limited and, frankly, a little ugly, but you can upload your own images, so it shouldn't prove much of an issue for most.

The next section of the app creation page allows you to add App Pages to your app's dashboard, with basics like "Contact" and "About" added by default. Additional App Pages include social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, general text-based content, and multimedia.

Unfortunately, this is where Appy Pie became unresponsive for me and I was unable to proceed to the final "Publish" section — clicking the next button did nothing.

So while Appy Pie certainly is easy to use, it still has a ways to go in terms of providing a fluid experience. It was just launched within the last week, though, so it can only improve.




Edited by Braden Becker


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