Evaluating Low Code Mobile App Development Platforms

This is a special guest post by Alan Singer an experienced enterprise IT consultant and developer. “Evaluating Low-Code Mobile App Development Platforms. One Developer’s 90-Minute Mobile App Experience” explains how Singer set evaluation criteria and tested a number of low-code mobile app development platforms to determine which one would deliver exactly what modern enterprises need. 

“One Developer’s 90-Minute Mobile App Experience Evaluating Low-Code Mobile App Development Platforms” 

Leisure time activities come in many forms. Some people love watching sports, others play golf, and there are those who have hobbies such as building model planes, knitting or home renovating. For me, it’s building enterprise class applications – most recently, web and mobile apps and I derive great satisfaction from building application software. My mission was all about the evaluation of low code development platforms (mobile) and finding the best one on the market.

So what makes a good low code development platform? The ideal low code development platform provides several advantages, chief among them being speed, ease of use for anyone (even with no technical know-how), automated control, ability to make changes in a timely manner, and a multi-channel capability. Given that low code has the ability to accelerate app development, it offers businesses a huge monetary benefit in that it not only cuts costs but also the development phase.

Speed is a key advantage that has prompted many companies to adopt low code development platforms to build complex apps with varied functionalities. Therefore, low-code app development platform capabilities naturally vary to meet diverse requirements. So it becomes all the more imperative to choose a solution that best meets your unique needs. However, in my low code app development platform evaluation I’ve considered the most critical criteria that drive business success overall.

With my clients clamoring for more web and mobile apps than ever before, I decided to build my skills and build the apps with low-code rapid application development technology.

This was an incredibly satisfying experience as I was able to identify a low-code mobile app development platform to build a complex mobile and web app in a timeframe, and with such ease, that I had previously considered absolutely impossible.

In November, I decided to do a full review of the low-code mobile app development platform– I had several analyst reports and each one listed many web and mobile rapid development platforms to build a mobile app fast. To benchmark my effort, I formulated 8 criteria as the method for evaluation of low code mobile app development platforms:

1. Speed to deliver complex business applications
2. Speed to change apps as needs and requirements evolve
3. Platform cost, licensing terms and both short-term and long-term predictable pricing
4. Ease and speed (cost) of learning to become a proficient developer
5. Richness, depth and capability of the development environment –including integration with databases and systems of record, workflow automation, deployment, scaling
6. Mobile capability – including build once for all devices, native feel and speed, offline use cases, powerful re-connect synchronization, offline handling of large files and a large amount of video, audio and images (with annotation)
7. Adherence to standards and developer “friendliness” – including ease of adding custom code anywhere in the back-end and front-end
8. Product and company heritage, engineering integrity and future roadmap

Through the process of going to each vendor’s website, reading about the product, downloading (or signing up) for a trial version, exploring each platform as much as I could, I would attempt to build one or two standard applications using each platform with varying degrees of success and level of satisfaction.

By early December, I had identified 7 platforms that met some of the criteria that were important for low code development tools, and had attributes that would also be useful in a large corporate environment. (The low-code mobile app development platforms that I spent quite a bit of time evaluating, and used to develop working applications were Caspio, Outsystems, Knack, RollBase, Wavemaker, QuickBase and Mendix. I discounted several others early on [including Microsoft PowerApps] because of obvious deficiencies.) [Read a review of PowerApps.]

As Christmas approached, I fully immersed myself in the final platform: the Alpha Anywhere low-code application development platform. After I downloaded a trial and installed it on a Windows machine, I watched a few videos to become familiar with the overall platform. I soon progressed to the Photo App Tutorial video on the Alpha Software website.

I will not beat around the bush: this tutorial — which I followed step-by-step, and took 90 minutes in total from start to finish — enabled me to low-code development to build a mobile application that was running on my desktop machine, my iPad, my iPhone and my HTC android phone. In my evaluation of low code app development platforms, I found that it was the only product that allowed me to build a multi-platform app with extraordinary ease of use.

The low-code mobile app I built was fully responsive, used the device camera from within the application to take a photo, and stored that photo in a relational database that had also been setup as part of that tutorial. 90 minutes was all it took – and the app looked and performed exactly like a native app, even though it was a hybrid app.

The software was user-friendly, did not require huge amounts of hand-coding and I was able to build, customize, and build cloud-based apps with ease. The functional interfaces, features, and simple integration with third-party tools also enabled me to develop my app with a straightforward approach and quick adaptation. The asy application deployment particularly reduced the time for developing the mobile app. Another critical benefit was the ability to make changes in a timely manner as and when required in the short 90-min building phase. It didn’t stop the flow of development and I could quickly make modifications and move on to the next step without having to perform any lengthy adjustments.

Besides another important finding of my low code app development platform evaluation was: NOT ONE of the other low code platforms offered a tutorial that could have led me to create such a sophisticated and powerful mobile app in anything like the time that I could do it in Alpha Anywhere. For example, Outsystems has a 30 hour tutorial and it takes until the 20th hour to build an application – and even then, it has much less functionality than the Alpha Anywhere tutorial app. Frankly, Alpha Anywhere was able to deliver an outstanding and unique result.

NOT ONE of the other low-code mobile app development platforms offered a tutorial that could have led me to create such a sophisticated and powerful mobile app in anything like the time that I could do it in the Alpha Anywhere app builder.

Based on my low code app development platform evaluation, I am not at all surprised that Alpha Anywhere was the ONLY low- code rapid mobile app development (RMAD) technology recognized with an IDG/InfoWorld Technology of the Year Award. Editors recognized Alpha Anywhere for its database and data integration capabilities, robust offline capability, and media and image handling.

If you are:

• are a developer or an organization looking to build full-featured  enterprise-class mobile and web apps quickly, 
• want to feel confident that the low-code app development platform you choose will not run out of power and be scalable,  and
• focused on being able to write once for all devices, 
• need to deliver powerful and robust offline apps

Then do yourself a favor and check out Alpha Anywhere low-code mobile app development. (Watch this video on Alpha Anywhere’s  Low-Code Mobile App Development Platform for Building Mobile and Web Apps or read a detailed look at Alpha Anywhere’s low-code mobile app development architecture.)

Try the Alpha Anywhere low-code mobile app development platform for free.
(Watch this video on Alpha Anywhere’s  Low-Code Mobile App Development Platform for Building Web and Mobile Apps or read the Low Code App Development Handbook.)

How Alpha Software Can Help

Alpha Software offers a low code development platform that is designed to expedite cross-platform app development and time-to-market while simultaneously cutting down the costs of both development and deployment. No matter how complex or unique the app requirements, it has been found that Alpha Software delivers just what businesses need - in every low code app development platform evaluation ever conducted. The Company offers a no-code app builder as well.

Ready to discuss your app development needs and get the industry's leading mobile app builder? Get the best low-code app development software. Contact us at 781-850-4600.

About the author

Since the early 1980′s, Alan Singer has been working as an IT consultant, assisting large and medium sized organizations create key business outcomes that have been enabled and accelerated by the strategic implementation of innovative Information Technology solutions.

As an application developer, business leader and IT consultant, Alan has devoted himself to researching, testing and evaluating the latest software trends and software solutions that accelerate business outcomes which empower organizations to weather the “digital storm” that has hit the world of business. Alan consults to organizations who are keen to innovate and take advantage of enterprise software solutions such as low-code platforms and enterprise content management (ECM). He helps clients rapidly deliver the essential solutions needed for today’s corporate, Government, and Education organizations.