The App Builder: Bringing App Creation To The Masses

Have you ever wanted to make an app, but lacked the technical knowhow to perform such a feat? Well, now there’s a company claiming that you can make an app for mobile devices without having any form of experience or education.

The service is called The App Builder and it promises users that they will be able to create an app in minutes without any technical experience whatsoever. Users start by building an app on a Mac or Windows desktop. They then are able to fully customize said app with features like YouTube, Twitter, RSS, Gallery, etc. If users pay a fee of $29 per month, the app can be submitted to all relevant app stores (iTunes, Android Mark.. I mean, Google Play and Windows Phone Marketplace). The user can then update the app on the go or on a desktop.

While you can publish your app on app stores for a monthly fee, it’s vague on whether or not you can sell the app. All of the example apps on display are free.

If you’re feeling cheap, you can build an app and put it on your own phone for testing for free. The free version also includes customized branding, tabs and unlimited app content.

I took the plunge and decided to try building an app with this program. Users are first greeted with a page that asks them to name their app. I went with, “The Awesome App.” After that, you are asked what kind of features you want in your app. I went with YouTube, Web Page, Twitter and Facebook integration.

After filling out all the information, they send a draft of your newly built app to your email for download. You can also download a desktop application that emulates your app. As you can see, it’s not the greatest at formatting Web pages, but it handles YouTube, Twitter and Facebook with expected results.

The App Builder: Bringing App Creation To the Masses

All in all, it’s a pretty simple process with decent results. You aren’t going to build anything amazing out of this as it’s just a content delivery app. Still, if you’re a small business that wants to keep customers up to date on current events, it couldn’t get much easier than this.