Create your own app – part two: pro­gram­ming or using app makers?

After planning a mobile app, the next step in mobile app de­vel­op­ment is to begin working on the technical aspects of your design. If you’re planning on de­vel­op­ing your native mobile app yourself, rather than employing external pro­gram­mers, then you have two options: you can create your own app – assuming you have suf­fi­cient knowledge and prior ex­per­i­ence in software de­vel­op­ment – or you can make use of an app maker (also known as an app creator, app builder, or app building software). This second edition of our guide to creating your own app will explore the dif­fer­ences between these two ap­proaches, in­tro­du­cing six of the best mobile app builders available today.

Choosing the right software to develop your own app is a big decision and should be carefully con­sidered. The tra­di­tion­al approach – pro­gram­ming an app via a par­tic­u­lar platform – offers the widest range of options when it comes to technical app de­vel­op­ment. But basic pro­gram­ming skills don’t always suffice; suc­cess­ful app de­velopers often have years of ex­per­i­ence in the field. So a word of warning: if you’re a beginner, you should try to acquire as much basic knowledge as possible before you aim to take on the coding of an app on your own using a pro­gram­ming language.

For pro­gram­ming, most coders use an in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment (IDE). An IDE for ap­plic­a­tion pro­gram­ming provides software de­velopers with various useful com­pon­ents (software de­vel­op­ment kit, editor, debugger, compiler, emulator, etc.). This means that pro­gram­mers have several useful tools at their fin­ger­tips that are powerful aids and are specific to the chosen pro­gram­ming language.

App makers, on the other hand, offer a similar ex­per­i­ence to the very popular and globally re­cog­nised homepage builders. You don’t need prior pro­gram­ming ex­per­i­ence to use app makers, as they work on the WYSIWYG principle (what you see is what you get): within the app builder, you work on a graphic user interface that is usually intuitive and easy to use. But app makers are con­sid­er­ably more re­strict­ive for cre­ativ­ity than IDEs. They only offer a small selection of pro­gram­ming commands, which are ac­cess­ible via the graphic interface and can be added into the user interface.

Our focus here will be to introduce these app makers. But to demon­strate the dif­fer­ences between the two different ap­proaches, we’ll briefly outline the methods involved in pro­gram­ming iOS and Android apps with an in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment too.

If you want to develop a very detailed, tech­nic­ally chal­len­ging, or graph­ic­ally complex mobile native app, then look no further than an IDE – native app making software isn’t suitable for your needs. The same is true if your app will need to process large amounts of data, or use many native device functions (e.g. position and movement sensors) – these requests are too difficult for an app creation software.

Working with an in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment doesn’t just expand the options for app de­vel­op­ment, it’s also free of charge: companies like Apple and Google offer first-class IDEs for anyone to use. The reason for this is simple: a large selection of ap­plic­a­tions make a platform at­tract­ive for users. This means it’s in the best interest of iOS and Android to have as many de­velopers as possible producing new apps regularly on their operating systems. This is also a part of the provider’s business model: Apple and Google receive a com­mis­sion for every fee-based app trans­ac­tion made on their re­spect­ive app stores.

When de­vel­op­ing a native app, pro­gram­mers usually use a par­tic­u­lar IDE for each separate platform. This is where the workload increases: if you want to release an app for Android as well as for iOS, you’ll need to code each app version sep­ar­ately. There are some in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ments like Xamarin which work in­tu­it­ively to allow you to program almost identical codes for native apps on Android, iOS, and Windows, but these are rare and place other re­quire­ments on your pro­gram­ming. Xamarin only functions with the C# pro­gram­ming language, for example. If you want to learn or improve your pro­gram­ming skills, you can find an overview and helpful tips in our article on learning how to code.

Android apps run in a Java framework, making knowledge of the Java pro­gram­ming language a necessity. If you have yet to master Java but have a good knowledge of C++, basic Java pro­gram­ming will come fairly easily, as the two languages are pretty similar.

The most used IDE for Android app pro­gram­ming by some distance is Android Studio. This is the official in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment for Android ap­plic­a­tions, made available for free by Google. Android Studio is a component of the Android SDK (Software De­vel­op­ment Kit) and can be used on various operating systems: there’s an Android Studio version for Microsoft Windows (from Windows 7), macOS, and Linux systems with GNOME or KDE Desktop. A pre­requis­ite of app de­vel­op­ment with the Android Studio IDE is an installed version of the Java De­vel­op­ment Kit, which can also be down­loaded free of charge. The basis of Android Studio is the popular Java de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment IntelliJ IDEA.

To develop an ap­plic­a­tion for an iOS device, most de­velopers use Xcode – the official in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment provided by Apple, which can also be used to program ap­plic­a­tions for macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and watchOS too. Xcode is ex­clus­ively available for the mac operating system. Every Mac user can download it free of charge from the Apple App Store using an Apple ID.

The IDE is part of the developer package also known as Xcode. To help you dif­fer­en­ti­ate between the in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment and the other features in the Xcode developer package, one IDE is labelled with the term Xcode IDE and the other as Xcode Tools. Within the Xcode IDE, you can use Cocoa Frame­works as well as the pro­gram­ming languages Swift and Objective-C to write an ap­plic­a­tion. It’s also possible to create an app in the pro­gram­ming languages C, C++, Java, and many more on iOS.

If you def­in­itely want to create and design your own app, but you don’t have any prior pro­gram­ming ex­per­i­ence or knowledge of coding, then an app maker could be the perfect tool for you. There’s now a wide range of different providers offering their own unique app de­vel­op­ment software designed to make things easy. But unlike the official IDEs from Google and Apple, most mobile app builders aren’t available free of charge. In fact, almost all app makers offer a business model that charges a monthly fee for the use of the app building kit and an ad­di­tion­al fee for hosting the finished article. Some providers include the option in their monthly sub­scrip­tion package that your app will be offered in the official app store of your chosen platform – but this comes at an extra cost (usually a one-off fee). Usually, you can create your app free of charge with the kit and even test it out, only paying once you publish your app online.

So what are you getting for your money with app creators? Generally speaking, ap­plic­a­tions that basically consist of text and images are easy to create using app builders. This app de­vel­op­ment software is best suited for small to mid-sized companies and or­gan­isa­tions who are designing an app to inform users about their products, services, or par­tic­u­lar topics. Many app makers also enable you to design a shopping app, making it possible for you to create your own online shop. Other useful features offered by lots of app builders include RSS feeds and push no­ti­fic­a­tions. These are great options if you’re looking to design a news app or an app to inform users about events. And other device functions, like geo-targeting, or embedding a camera in your app, are also possible with some providers, albeit often with glitches or flaws.

But many features you see in other native apps are un­for­tu­nately im­possible to implement with app makers. Embedding native device functions like the camera, the mi­cro­phone, or Bluetooth is – as we mentioned – possible, but it’s very limited. Some features aren’t supported at all – like the ac­cel­er­a­tion sensor of the smart­phone. Meanwhile, video games and similarly chal­len­ging graphic designs are almost im­possible to create with app builders. There are some spe­cial­ised providers that enable you to design gaming apps like GameSalad; but you can only use pre­fab­ric­ated 2D graphics and fixed game world elements.

In com­par­is­on with an in­teg­rated de­vel­op­ment en­vir­on­ment, the reduced range of functions available with app creators isn’t par­tic­u­larly sur­pris­ing when you consider that the app builder simply offers a selection of pre-designed command chains from a par­tic­u­lar pro­gram­ming language. That’s all that app makers are – straight­for­ward pro­gram­ming commands from a pro­gram­ming language (or the com­pon­ents of it) made ac­cess­ible via a graphical user interface in plain English so that anyone can implement them. This set of actions allows a user to build an app.

A good way to get your head around this is to think of a mobile app builder like the section of a travel guide that gives you the most important words and phrases you need for the language of a new country you’re visiting. With this language knowledge, you’ll be able to survive emer­gen­cies and get by with the basics. But you’ll struggle to com­mu­nic­ate well because you simply don’t have the language skills.

Just like this mini phrase book, app makers contain selected in­struc­tions that you can use (to insert an image, for example), even though you don’t have a full un­der­stand­ing of the pro­gram­ming language. These commands can be accessed via the graphical user interface, usually through a drag-and-drop function, and are auto­mat­ic­ally trans­lated and un­der­stood by the program without user in­ter­ven­tion. Since an app builder only uses a small part of a full pro­gram­ming language vocab­u­lary, in other words only certain specific commands have been prepared for the user interface and all of them are organised into set phrases. This means that users only have a certain number of possible app functions available – limiting cre­ativ­ity and flex­ib­il­ity.

The app makers we’ve discussed in this article so far can be thought of as app building software – programs you can use to create a native mobile app on Android or iOS platforms. Some of them also enable you to develop a web app or even a website. This software works in your browser and is straight­for­ward to get to grips with.

The price range for app builders is re­l­at­ively large; every program has a variety of different packages to choose from. The standard package usually costs between £10 and £20 a month, but we’ve included a free app creator in our list too. But a word of warning: many of the features that make an app user friendly, including a great selection of push no­ti­fic­a­tions, can only be added at a price (typically between £10 and £40 a month). Premium packages are often more than £100 a month. Deciding which app maker and which package is the best for you depends largely on the functions that you need for your app.

Every one of our six featured app builders here can feature social media channel embedding (like Facebook or Twitter feeds) and in­teg­rated streaming platforms, like YouTube or Sound­Cloud. You can also test all of the listed app makers before you decide to pay for their usage. When reviewing them below, we’ll be con­cen­trat­ing on the range of features and functions offered by each in­di­vidu­al app creator, as this is the best way to know which one is suitable for you.

AppMa­chine is an app maker that supports iOS and Android platforms. This software features an intuitive tool known as a “wizard function” that re­cog­nises different content in a website and transfers it to the app. So if you already own and operate a web presence, and you plan on using the same design for your new app, you can use this tool to simply import website features and use them as the basis for your app content.

AppMa­chine also offers a good range of design options and templates, as well as a com­pre­hens­ive ex­plan­a­tion of the various features in the app. AppMa­chine also supports de­velopers in pub­lish­ing and marketing their app. But all these great features come at a price – AppMa­chine is in the upper tier of the app builder price range.

AppY­our­self is a German app de­vel­op­ment company. Their main selling point is that when you create a native app with AppY­our­self, you get a web app and a tra­di­tion­al website with it as well. The content of these three different versions is the same, but the format is auto­mat­ic­ally adjusted; changes are syn­chron­ised auto­mat­ic­ally. This makes AppY­our­self a good choice for companies who don’t have a website yet to use as a basis for their planned app. Because of the interface to other platforms (for example Tri­pAd­visor or Yelp), many processes can be sim­pli­fied for your own business or your customers.

AppY­our­self offers a straight­for­ward editor for app creation; but the design options are con­sid­er­ably more limited than with other systems.

If you’re involved in e-commerce, Swiftic could be the right app creator for you. Although other app makers on this list (including the afore­men­tioned AppMa­chine and AppY­our­self, plus Shoutem) also offer many similar features, no other app builder offers as extensive a range of options for im­ple­ment­ing your own shopping app. Ad­di­tion­ally, Swiftic also supports res­taur­ants. The app maker provides multiple templates to create menus.

One useful component of Swiftic apps are its marketing tools. In this way, offer codes, com­pet­i­tion tickets, loyalty offers, and vouchers can easily be in­teg­rated. Outside of the app – through email marketing and social media in­teg­ra­tions – Swiftic supports its users in boosting their sales numbers.

This mobile app builder for iOS and Android ap­plic­a­tions offers a diverse range of design options. There are a lot of tasteful and pro­fes­sion­al looking design templates, all of which can also be cus­tom­ised in­di­vidu­ally. Good­Barber scores with its large range of add-ons and a few unusual functions, including geo-fencing, iBeacons, and community man­age­ment options.

Another clever and useful tool that Good­Barber offers is the option for several de­velopers to work on an app together – col­lab­or­a­tions can be organised by role (like ad­min­is­trat­or or user). If you’re looking to create a shopping app, you can also make use of some of its special services. Good­Barber can be used to create apps for Android, iOS, and the web (as pro­gress­ive web app).

Mobincube is one of few app makers that allows you to make a fully func­tion­ing native app free of charge. The free version has an astound­ing number of functions and templates – but you must accept ad­vert­ising displays.

If you opt for the paid-for version, you could earn money with this model: Mobincube has its own ad­vert­ising network which provides the display ads featured in its apps – if a user clicks on an ad displayed in your app, you’ll receive a small com­mis­sion. In the fee-based Mobincube packages (which are still very af­ford­able), you can de­ac­tiv­ate these display ads and enjoy a wider range of functions and templates to customise your app.

Two no­tice­able features stand out when it comes to Shoutem: firstly, you can take advantage of social media features spe­cific­ally developed for the app to implement your own community platform. Secondly, Shoutem has links to numerous display ad­vert­ising networks, giving you plenty of options for in-app ad­vert­ising. This app maker is available for Android and iOS, and is con­sidered to be intuitive and easy to use. Shopping systems are easily in­teg­rated with Shoutem. Just connect the app to Shopify to sell your products via multiple platforms sim­ul­tan­eously.

More than 200 templates can be in­di­vidu­ally adjusted to design a great app. Shoutem for De­velopers allows for even greater com­plex­ity. For example, you can access the source code and add further functions in this way.