Hey, this is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric I make apps!
So today, let's answer the question what kind of App Builder Software should I
use?
Alright. so today, I want to answer a question that came in a few days ago
from Noah Johnson. He said, "What app building programs and websites do you
recommend? I just build three apps off of GoodBarber. Would it be okay to build
apps for clients from these drag-and-drop
app builders instead of coding the app from scratch?" Now, I know a lots of people,
lots of, you know, small companies that use these tools to - for their clients
And to me, they've always seemed really fascinating and
when we look at the web, these app builders is drag and drop, WYSIWYG app
editors and the kind of things that my clients would really, really love. And it
looks they're like the WordPress of a web developer. I don't know if you
remember back in the day when you had to get a custom HTML developer, do all your
code, but now, you just get a theme, you do everything - do everything yourself and
you have that control. And my clients would - a lot of my clients would like
that kind of stuff. One of the big questions they always ask us, can I change
this after you give it to me? So, giving them a custom like business app solution
or AppyPie or GoodBarber solution would be great. Like six months ago,
I would have said, "Yes, definitely. Go with it." But there's a few downsides to
using these tools. The big one at the moment is that Apple, a few months ago,
they came out - they came out with that rule ,I think it was four point
two point six (4.2.6) or four point two point nine (4.2.9), I can't remember, but basically, they
said any apps generated with a wizard were not going to be accepted, which
would made no sense. Because there's nothing to do with the quality of the app. It
just had to be with - with the tool that was used to create it and there was this big
petition - for those of you, regular viewers you'll know there was that big
petition and everything, and Apple soften their language on that. So that
they're saying is, that if you do release it for your clients, make sure
that they have their own individual account. So, you don't want to
release them all underneath your account. And I don't know how stringent they are
with that now. So the other - and on the Android side, the big problem - cuz I
checked I mean, I did a lot of research on this about two years ago,
because this is what I wanted to do. I thought this would make it - this would make
things much easier, make my life a lot simpler, if my clients can update their
stuff. We started a project that was similar to this. We called the project
Viaduct and it - we got about, hmmm, from 60% of the way through with it and
just never finished. It was just like to do this, it's gonna be too hard. So, you know,
all these, like GoodBbarber, AppyPie, all that stuff, they have their reseller
accounts, so it's contacting all of them. And one of the big downsides
on the Android side, at least as of a year and a half ago, was that
you couldn't get the keystore files for Android. So let's say, you you release an
app using one of these tools and you put it on to Google Play, and it does really,
really well. But then, your client wants to do something that the tool
doesn't allow and you want to just continue the development on that. On
iPhone, you can. I mean. on iOS, it's fine because you could just do a new
application in a new language and and sign it with the same key and everything.
But because you don't have access to that in on Android, then you pretty much
just have to create a new one from scratch and you lose all that audience
and stuff like that. So now, I'd - now to be honest with you, to be 100% honest with
you, I'm not sure if that's still the case because I've never used Google
Play's new signing utility. I'm still - I'm still doing the keystore file. (laughs) I trust
the keystore files so I just - I'm still generating the keystore, I'm compiling
that into the app, and releasing them for all the client apps - for our apps., for all
of them. So, I'm not sure that's still the case. But if you do talk to - what
I would do is I'll talk to GoodBBarber, asked about the Apple permissions or the
the Apple reject rates and all that kind of stuff. A lot of these - a lot of these
app builder tools which are great, I think they're fantastic,
it's just that unlike the web, where everything is free and open, Apple came
in and clamp down on it for no apparent reason at all. So, check with them
to make sure that you can actually release it on the App Store. Do a couple
tests yourself, you know, tell your clients -one of the things that I'm
always doing is showing my clients how to set up App Store, you know, here's
the instructions on how to set up yeah, iTunes Connect, here's how to set up
the Google Play Store. And they always call with the same questions, "How do I
get uh, what is it, the TIN account or the PIN account whatever. Those different
numbers that you need. Make sure your clients know how to do that and you
release it underneath their name. So anyway, that's what I think.
For those of you who are actually working with these app builder softwares,
if you find any difficultiess or hiccups, because like I said,
I've done a lot of investigating into this and I just haven't actually pulled
the trigger and done it myself, because it was just easier. I felt like I just
had more control if we just coded ourselves. So, for those of you
actually use these kind of things, help Noah out here and let us know the
kind of experiences you've had. You might think that they're great. Are you having
trouble now since the beginning of the year releasing these to the
iTunes App Store? And anyway - so anyway, Noah, I hope that helps. That's it for
today. I'll talk to you, guys, tomorrow!