DIY apps : A list of online mobile applications creation resources [13 + 13 more]

Applications (either web, mobile or desktop) are exploding exponentially, simply because they make people's lives easier and fun. In a couple of clicks, an App gives your audience the bite site chunks of information they need at exactly the right moment. Apps enable you to interact with your customers, employees and community quickly and effectively. Apps are great marketing tools, demonstrating you are at the forefront of innovation. Soon, people will expect every go ahead business, organization or connected individual to have an App. In this article we have attempted to compile a small collection of online application building websites, that you might find handy in your initial search. Wording is mostly taken from the website’s own description of services and application creation process.

MobileRoadie is a very popular web app builder amongst the media savvy. The first thing you'll probably notice when you visit this site is that the company touts high-profile celebrities as some of its customers. That said, it serves plenty of small businesses looking to create a native mobile presence, according to the company's CEO Michael Schneider. "Consumers aren't really consuming the information that small businesses are putting out online in the same way that they were in the past," he said.  You can use the platform to create a mobile version of your web site for free; the service starts at $99 per month for creating native iPhone or Android smartphone apps.

Those of you who dream of a successful startup better pay attention to TheAppBuilder. It’s one of those stories where a couple of savvy developers discover a market gap and come up with a well-executed and successful solution. In their words, “we wanted to allow anyone to create an app, same way that WordPress works with websites. We want to cater to the small business owner who just wants a presence on mobile marketplaces. He/she might not have coding skills, but they really shouldn’t need any to use TheAppBuilder. Those who want to take things further and have some HTML5 skills can use some really fancy techniques. We’ve even seen people building and embedding games using HTML5 canvas.”

Knack is a database, forms and web applications builder with powerful options for formulas, equations, files, and images. It allows for easy and flexible relationships to connect your data (including one-to-many and many-to-many). You can import data from spreadsheets or add it manually. Allows for simple drag and drop applications creation and seamless integration to your website or blog.

An online mobile applications creator, focused primarily on businesses without large software creation budgets. Bizness Apps is making mobile apps affordable and simple for all small businesses. DIY iPhone, iPad, HTML5, and Android app platform that allows any small business to simultaneously create, edit, and manage mobile apps online without any programming knowledge needed. Coupons supported, as well as a wealth of other features like gps integration, event logging, push notifications, facebook and twitter integration.

Creating a mobile app with iBuildapp can also have an app published within minutes. The Publication Tool allows individuals, businesses and corporations to create customize apps and manage their own iPhone/iPad Application via online application creation engine. The idea is to offer an easy way for traditional media publishers to port their content to Apple’s devices via web based interface. Users can create their own Catalogs, Flyers, Brochures, Reports, Digests, etc and deliver it via our SaaS solution. Marketing and Social Media can create their social communities easily within minutes and communicate to the clients instantly. Founded in 2010, IBuildApp is providing solutions to Fortune 2000 and small businesses, not-profit organizations and media artists.

AppShed Academy is a versatile and comprehensive online tool to facilitate student development of apps in education. Intuitive, step-by-step learning allows teachers to include app development in the ICT curriculum without the need for an in-depth understanding of the app creation. This exciting technology allows students to express their creativity through a powerful app building tool which can be tied in with school projects and assignments as well as extra-curricular activities like sports teams.

MyApps (still on Beta version) is an online service that allows users to create their own mobile applications for various platforms. The key features of MyApps are its user-friendliness, the capability to create applications fast, and accessibility. No specialist knowledge is required to create an application. The website offers two options: one for individual users and one for businesses. Regular users log on and choose one of the 16 types of application (including Lover, University and Cooking), configure the format and then add functional modules by simply dragging them from the menu. Each application has an advertising module, but users can deactivate it once they pay the annual fee.

Weever offers everybody – small businesses, not-for-profits, and individuals like you – the opportunity to get their site on to the mobile web easily and affordably. Weever is the next step in expanding the mobile web … for anyone who wants to use it. Weever Apps works across iPhone, Android, Blackberry Touch and iPad/tablets out of the box. Weever works in the browser, but it can also be installed like any other app. Weever is accessible ; A non-technical administrator can update the app at any time. Weever is also affordable ; the Basic Apps are free.

AppBaker is a powerful online platform that makes it easy for agencies and traditional web developers to build delicious mobile apps for their customers. With an abundance of features and capabilities, AppBaker offers a fast and inexpensive way to build and manage unique, native, custom branded iOS, Android and HTML5 apps, covering about 99% of mobile devices. What sets AppBaker apart is that it’s got just the right mix of technology, creative freedom and discipline. For example, it gives you all the tools you need to build your app but lets you go wild with the creative parts, it can turn your app from native iOS into Android and HTML5 with a click of a button, and it takes care of complicated stuff like making sure your app is following each App Store’s specifications. AppBaker also offers these pre-cooked, industry specific things it calls StarterPacks. StarterPacks are a great solution for agencies with a lot of clients within the same industry, or ones that are looking to build a great industry-specialized app, even faster, but without compromising its quality, customization or professional result.

ViziApps enables anyone with computing skills to create a custom mobile business app. The selection of widgets, images, and icons make coding unnecessary and significantly speeds the mobile app development process. Taking advantage of ViziApps' drag-and-drop approach to mobile app development, users can use the images provided in the ViziApps Studio or incorporate their own images, such as logos, photos, and illustrations. A portfolio of templates lets app builders start with a proven design, then customize their apps to effectively promote their particular brands. All without doing any programming.

Zoho Creator a very popular database software creator helps you build web based database applications to organize your business information. Online database software is designed to offer an organized mechanism for storing, managing and retrieving business information over the web. Online Database software helps you store business critical information in the cloud, where everyone can easily access the data from anywhere, anytime. Zoho Creator's drag and drop interface makes database application development a breeze.

ShoutEm, is focused on companies that want to publish an ongoing stream of content and information to a mobile app. ShoutEm is a mobile application creation platform that allows you to create mobile app for iOs, Android and HTML5 in just minutes. Wheather you bring content into your site into one of their CMS integration options or creating your content directly into their appbuilder its easy to get your message to mobile app users. If you are designing for your brand or simply bringing your idea to the mobile market ShoutEm makes it easy for you to make the vision connection to your audience.

Something more niche, Wufoo is a web application that helps anybody build amazing online forms. When you design a form with Wufoo, it automatically builds the database, backend and scripts needed to make collecting and understanding your data easy, fast and fun. Because they host everything, all you need is your web browser and a few short minutes to build a form and start using it right away.

Furthermore, check out the following :

Application Craft. The company's development environment uses a drag-and-drop interface for assembling features and touts one-click application deployment on platforms including Apple iOS, Android and, actually, Facebook. It uses HTML widgets for geo-targeting, analytics, and social media sharing. The company's free version supports creation of up to 10 apps (but you have to run the company's ads in them when you distribute them).  

App Press. Founded in 2010, the company behind this cloud platform for Android and Apple iOS apps created it with graphic designers and creative agencies in mind and it shows. A small business can rely heavily on existing content to create highly visual mobile applications. The App Press service offers an instant preview feature so progress can be reviewed along the way.

MobileAppLoader. This platform offers templates for all sorts of small businesses to use in their mobile app development -- that includes everyone car dealerships to contractors to automotive services companies to hair salons. Its claim to fame is "app in a snap," which lets a small business get an application created and published fairly quickly.

EachScape is an open drag & drop environment for creating, managing and monetizing high-end applications. Using EachScape, non-developers can create high quality, highly customized, gorgeous applications delivered in native code. Applications built on EachScape are truly custom, not based on templates. We offer a rich set of features and functionality that can be incorporated into any app. Gain immediate access to a rich mobile ecosystem with incredibly powerful code from developers.

AppFurnace is a set of online tools that help you to create all kinds of apps without having to be a programming genius. You can produce simple interfaces, location-aware apps and extend beyond our in-built functionality with your own JavaScript and make your app the way you want it. AppFurnace isn’t just a template, it gives you control to design interfaces, create location-aware experiences and, if you want to take it further, add your own JavaScript and produce exactly what experience you want.

Springbase is a complete development environment in the web browser, coupled with a fast, secure application delivery platform. You can start developing right away. When you're ready, push your applications to any number of users around the world, with no software to install and no servers to manage.

Caspio empowers anyone to quickly create online databases and complete business applications without writing a single line of code. Using an intuitive app-builder, the user can simply "point-and-click" your way to creating powerful online database apps that deploy seamlessly to your own website, intranet, CMS, or blog. Since 2000, organizations of all sizes utilize the Caspio award-winning, highly-scalable online database platform to become more productive and profitable.

Appsbar was designed to fill the gap between over-simplified apps and costly, professionally-produced apps. It presents myriad personalization opportunities with a unique interface that guides creators through the entire. Appsbar was introduced in 2011 as the first cost-free way for anyone, at any skill level and with a limited budget, to make rich, personalized apps that reflect their own personality, business or event with direct access to app stores.

AppMakr is a do-it-yourself app creation platform that lets anyone make their own iPhone and Android apps—no coding required. Between push notifications, HTML 5 functionality, native high-resolution photo galleries, branding and design customization, ad support, live updates, the AQI (App Quality Index) and more, you’ll be able to make a robust, high quality app to show off your awesome content.

App Express. Billed as a do-it-yourself app builder for small and midsize businesses, this platform supports the development of applications for appointment scheduling, handling invoicing and accepting payments, messaging and marketing with coupons (among other things). The service allows for creation of apps that work on either iOS or Android. It also includes an option for creating a one-page mobile-optimized Web site. A future edition will support HTML5.

MobBase. Pitched at companies that are trying to build a mobile fanbase, so there's lots of media considered for the app templates. It supports the development of custom apps for iOS and Android.

Andromo is different than those 'cross-platform' app makers you may have seen. Andromo actually generates custom Java source code for each app you make, compiling and linking it on our cloud servers using Google's official Android SDK. You get a stand-alone, native Android app. Not some sort of half-baked HTML content masquerading as a real app. Andromo apps look and feel like real Android apps because that is exactly what they are. They are faster, more efficient, better looking and more reliable than apps made with a simple 'cross-platform' app maker.

BuildChatter. Making Facebook applications has never been this easy. BuildChatter is specially designed to create various forms of Facebook applications that you might want to make. Be it a fan page or an online store, BuildChatter will provide you the perfect tools which will help in giving your page a unique touch. It is easy to operate and provides a wide array of options and designs to the user. BuildChatter also allows the users to build a custom Facebook Application. All of this can be easily done within a matter of minutes.

For more platform specific tools you can read here.

One of the key attractions for developers in creating apps is the ability to earn money from either selling the app itself or running advertisements on it. However, for midsize businesses not intent on making apps a profit center, mobile app development can still be a useful tool in the enterprise. First, IT managers should consider that mobile use is still expanding, and the majority of device owners install and access apps round the clock, even during social situations or travel far from home. For this reason, a mobile app might be a useful complement to traditional corporate communication tools, such as e-mail. For example, a company could create a company portal app for its employees in order to disseminate company news, distribute training podcasts or videos, or even send out emergency messages. As it is easier to access content from a device carried at all times rather than from a desktop PC at the office or a laptop left at home, it could increase buy-in regarding enterprise communications. [1] Read more at IBM’s “Midsize Insider”

[1] Ref. http://midsizeinsider.com/en-us/article/android-app-development-surging-as-indic