The 15 Best App Makers to Build Your Own Mobile App

Written by theaasifkhan | Published 2020/10/05
Tech Story Tags: mobile | app-builder | mobile-app-development | app-maker | app-development | ios-app-development | android-app-development | make-an-app

TLDR Appy Pie is the fastest growing app building platform in the world. Shoutem is one of the most polished products in the market and has only been growing since they were first founded in the year 2011. Swiftic began as Como in Israel and has since been responsible for powering more than a million apps. The cheapest of their plan that would allow you to publish your app on Apple App Store begins at $79.00 which is quite a pocket burner, particularly for the small and medium-sized businesses.via the TL;DR App

We have put together a list of the top app builder platforms who have proven their mettle in the industry by providing excellent service in coming up with apps that are flawless in functionality and are aesthetically brilliant.

Here’s the list of Best App Builders:

  1. Appy Pie
  2. Shoutem
  3. Swiftic
  4. GoodBarber
  5. BuildFire
  6. Mobincube
  7. AppInstitute
  8. AppMachine
  9. iBuildApp
  10. AppMakr
  11. Appery
  12. Mobile Roadie
  13. TheAppBuilder
  14. GameSalad
  15. BiznessApps

1. Appy Pie

The fastest growing app building platform in the world — Appy Pie has managed to leave a deep mark on the app building industry in many parts of the world. Our app building platform is particularly a blessing for those who are building apps for the first time and are novices in the field. Small and medium-sized businesses have found the platform especially beneficial because of their wide range of plans that give them the freedom to begin building their app for free and then move to subscription plans that suit their budgets.
The one reason why this platform has gained popularity so quickly is because of the sheer number of unique features offered. For example, with Appy Pie you can add in-app purchases, ads, upload eBooks and other intense content, connect databases, integrate social media, build instant messaging apps, and so much more! The best part is that there is a rich base of tutorials that are being developed so that customers do not get stuck with features or have any trouble in implementing any particular component in their app. Apart from this, we have quite a responsive live chat support with the option to call in for support anytime from anywhere. This is one of the easiest to use platforms that are based on a drag and drop interface enabling people with no coding skills to build their business apps with no hassle and do so in just a few minutes. The pricing plans for Appy Pie are quite affordable and are perfect for startups, entrepreneurs, and small to medium-sized businesses.

2. Shoutem

Shoutem is one of the most polished products in the market and has only been growing since they were first founded in the year 2011. In their latest V5, they have made quite a few and have updated their platform enhancing the user experience manifold. They have quite sleek template designs with a great number of options to customize them so that each app has unique aesthetics and design. Not only would your apps made here be good looking but also, they would have some great features. This app building platform is especially great for Event apps. The app is especially great for communities as well because of their Social Wall, where the users can share comments and photos.
However, the subscription plans are not so pocket-friendly. With plans beginning from$49, they might not be the most expensive of the lot, but it is not cheap either. The cheapest of their plan that would allow you to publish your app on Apple App Store begins at $79.00 which is quite a pocket burner, particularly for the small and medium-sized businesses or the startups.
Shoutem is making their code open and available to developers in their bid to get more and more people to build additional extensions or develop more features for them, as this is one area where they do not feature high in the ranks. In all, the designs, user experience, and templates might be exemplary, Shoutem is still low on the number of features it offers as an app building platform.

3. Swiftic

Founded in the year 2010, Swiftic began as Como in Israel and has since been responsible for powering more than a million apps all over the world, which probably makes it one of the biggest fishes in the app builders’ pond today. The components or building blocks that are provided by this app building platform are varied and include loyalty card feature, integrations for scheduling appointments, e-commerce, reviews & ratings from users, and events. The majority of apps that are built on their app building platform include businesses like restaurants, bands, and other kinds of organizations that run events.
In one of their recent moves, Swiftic has restructured its pricing completely. They have now shifted their structure to have just but one tier that has either a monthly ($57) subscription, yearly ($48) option, or bi-yearly ($41) payment plan. As a gesture of good faith and a show of their confidence, some of their updates go on to promise a 6-month success guarantee, which means that if you were unable to achieve “any meaningful business result” with your app, Swiftic would give you six months of service for free.
The platform has a combination of seven different templates which may be combined with six different styles of navigation. What makes this truly your own is that all the colors on the app, the background images, and the icons can be adapted with your own artwork. Their editor is quite smartly laid out for great ease of use, and the number of features and the design options they provide are many. Though the Success Guarantee is probably the most lucrative thing about them.

4. GoodBarber

Everything about this app builder starting right from its name is interesting. Based out of the French island of Corsica, the app building platform has some of the most impressive themes. Apart from the looks department, the app building platform is also known for offering some of the most advanced features including social networking, chat, Geofencing, iBeacons, and more. With GoodBarber, you can get a native Android app for a monthly subscription plan of $32, and if you are looking for both Android & iOS, the monthly subscription plan would run up to $96. Both plans, however, include quite an impressive progressive web app.
The app building platform proudly showcases the apps that have been created with their platform, so that you know the quality and the range of apps they are capable of offering, to you and the other clients.
Not only are their templates beautiful, but they also offer quite a competitive pricing for native apps. They offer some great add on features like push notifications, chat, etc. while offering great flexibility while building their apps. One shortcoming, however, is a lack of an online store of their own, but you can always integrate third-party stores like Amazon, Etsy, Shopify etc.

5. BuildFire

Having built apps for and supporting 30,000 businesses through their app building platform, BuildFire is one of the more reliable platforms. Most of their clientele fall in the category of enterprises, influencers, and brands. BuildFire showcases themselves as a platform that is one of the leading platforms in the industry that offer accelerated app development.
The combined power of a user-friendly dashboard and admin control panel eases out the whole process of releasing updates. The platform is particularly popular among the clients due to the ease of use, prompt reconfigurability, and the vast extent & possibilities of customization of the app. It is possible to make changes to the app on the fly and even test these changes out in real time. They offer a free plan and a Premium Plan that is available for $49 a month.

6. Mobincube

This app building platform is one of those that have established themselves as app builders for everyone! Their motto is that everyone should be able to build their own app and be able to make a whole lot of money with Admob platform. However, it is important that you understand, in order to make any money first, you would have to make some investments. With Mobincube however, you do not have to burn a hole in your pocket, because it is surprisingly affordable. The lowest of the ad-free plans with Mobincube begin at $9.99. It might come as a surprise to most people but this platform lets you Go Native with each one of their plans from the lowest to the highest, which means that you can upload the app that you build on a single one or all of the popular app stores.
Though the editor might seem to be a little primitive at times and you might have to keep switching browsers in order to be able to use specific features. However, all that they do offer does seem to be quite a power-packed platform where you can even create some pretty complex page types, like using SQLite based database to pull in data from an external server. While there might be a huge scope of improvement in the department of user-friendliness, there is no other app building platform that offers you a real app for free.
The platform has very competitive prices and a huge variety of templates to choose from with highly innovative features to choose from. There, however, is still a need to smooth out the technical hiccups that the platform faces, and the templates are a little too restrictive as well.

7. AppInstitute

Currently the biggest app makers in the UK, AppInstitute has won several prestigious startup awards. The platform is specially great when it comes to e-commerce features, like catalog menus that are extremely customizable and loyalty options that are quite lucrative. The great thing here is that you can make payments from within the app, without navigating out of it for any reason whatsoever. This is a great measure for those concerned about security & privacy.
Their booking feature, in particular, is unique as it extends the ability of simply making appointments or bookings to creating some really rich events that can be supplemented with interesting content including videos.
The apps you build here can be availed for a monthly subscription of $49 a month (Android & PWA) or $81 a month (iOS). This subscription comes with features like basic push notifications & app analytics. The features available on the platform are actually a lot stronger than what they might appear to be at first glance. However, you might observe a quite clear need for better options for integration on the backend.

8. AppMachine

The app building platform has in fact named itself quite suitably. AppMachine is unique in having automated as many of the tedious processes as possible. if you already have a website, they can simply pull out all the relevant information with just your URL. This can even include your Facebook, Twitter and other social media feed, RSS feed, and even your images.
The editor AppMachine is not just impressive visually but is fairly easily navigable without overwhelming you in any manner. Though not every component right from the beginning may be intuitive, they sure seem promising in their climb up to the top. At the moment, they are offering two different plans with Plus at $49 a month and Pro at $69 a month. While they might have managed to offer quite a powerful editor with a fairly comprehensive building block selection, but there is a need for the user interface to be more logical and quicker.

9. iBuildApp

iBuildApp has one of the easiest to use drag and drop editor, a built-in Content Management System and more than a thousand app templates to choose from! This app building platform has emerged as one of the ultimate all-rounders when it comes to building exemplary apps that are beautifully designed and need absolutely no programming knowledge.
The featured templates on the app building platform might not look ground-breaking, but the platform has been used for more than a million times, and that must say something about it. Starting from a basic plan starting at $9.99 a month, there is a business plan for $39 a month, and an enterprise or agency plan for $99 a month. You can even go for a free trial before you opt for a more serious investment in it.

10. AppMakr

Now, this is an impressive platform! The Singapore based app building platform has almost 2 million apps built on it. Not only do they claim to build an app in a mere 20 minutes, but they do so in quite a cost-effective manner. They have a free plan which can be converted to a $2 monthly plan for PWA, and a yearly plan for $99 for iOS & Android. On the whole, the app building platform is in fact quite an affordable one.
They offer a great number of building blocks and offer the option to tweak the design of the app, but visually, the editor of the app builder leaves you quite underwhelmed. It might have some great app features and building blocks but is definitely in need of a major design overhaul.

11. Appery

This is one of the cloud-based app builders which can be used to build apps for all the leading app stores including Android, iOS, and Windows Phone while including Phone Gap providing access to its built-in components. As this is a cloud based app building platform, there is no need to download and/or install anything, which makes it convenient to begin the process of building your app quite quickly. This platform too has a drag and drop interface to build the UI of the app and lets you connect to any of the REST API and then use them in your app. What’s more, the app data can be stored by instantly adding a cloud database and backend to your app whenever needed.
The apps made here also make collaboration simple, so that you can share your project can be shared with the developers, business users, and your customers in real time. The plans vary greatly as they begin from free and can go up to $180 a month!

12. Mobile Roadie

They are one of the bigger players in the mobile app building platform with clients like Disney, TED.org, Universal and more of similar standing. Their pricing plans start from a CORE plan at $149 a month to their PRO plan that is marked at a hefty $799 a month. This is quite clearly indicative of the clients that they are targeting. The design options for their templates are many, but there is also an added bonus of you being able to tweak them to your liking.
The app builder offers some great community app features like chat and a fan wall which makes it especially interesting for artists and bands. The music player which can be smoothly integrated here is popular, particularly among the musicians. Apart from this, the app builder can boast of some pretty advanced app features like geo-targeting the content.
However, due to the wide range of features that it offers, the apps built on this platform take a lot longer to build. Also, the user interface of the platform needs to be a little more intuitive.

13. TheAppBuilder

TheAppBuilder offers two different approaches and has whole suite of apps that would suit employees, clients, events, and brochures. The app can be build easily with the online toolkit and you would get help either from the training or from TheAppBuilder itself so that you can define and build the structure of the app, so that you can populate it with some content to begin with.
You can make use of the dedicated AppLibrary and offer to your users a peek into multiple apps and you can even customize it with your own branding. What’s more, you can make changes to the structure and content of your app, even after it has gone live. You can build native apps for iPhone, iPad, & Android and on the platform, any updates you make go live within 60 seconds of making the change.

14. GameSalad

GameSalad is a fabulous platform that lets you build and publish games for a number of platforms including iOS, Android, HTML5, and OS X. Its drag and drop interface lets you build a game without any coding skills or programming knowledge.
The game creator has a scene and actor editor, which is where all the action would happen. This is where you would be setting up the actors in a scene and creating attributes, images, sounds etc. The app building platform also has quite an active community forum which offers access to help and advice from other independent game designers. The pricing plans for GameSalad start from free and go up to $299 a year.

15. BiznessApps

BiznessApps is a great app building platform that can help you create mobile apps for business using a really simple process. It has plenty of features including food ordering, e-commerce, loyalty program, third party app integrations, push notifications, app analytics, and more.
You can create an app for yourself within minutes using their user-friendly content management system, where you can customize everything using your own designs for all kinds of elements. What’s interesting is that you can check real time previews of your app even as you are designing and developing it.
With BiznessApps you can easily update your app online and make as many changes as you like without having to follow the long drawn out process of an update on Google Play or iTunes. Apart from all this, the platform is rich with tutorials and training materials. The subscription plans here begin at $29 a month for PWAs and go up to $99 a month for mobile apps.
Choose wisely, choose well. Find an app builder that is good for you because what works for your friend or colleague might not work that well for you. It is important that you give this part of the process some time before going on to select an app building platform for your mobile app for business.

Published by HackerNoon on 2020/10/05