Come with me if you want to live!
The Terminator

How to build an app? There are two ways to do it. Do-it-yourself (DIY) platforms for building apps promise that you will manage to craft your own app without any technical skills. Additionally, they provide budget-friendly solution – you can create an app for a reasonable cost or even for free. Sounds like a magic wand and a philosophic stone two-in-one, heh? Let us talk about the second way of developing an app. Good-old custom software development companies at your service. Only the laziest haven’t compared the pros and cons of freelancers and development companies, to an in-house team with outsourced staff. However, that’s not the point of our discussion. We are just trying to destroy any myths connected with app building trends and compare the advantages and disadvantages of both app makers and software development companies. The fundamental difference between them is like between Terminator T-800 and T-1000. Let us explain this metaphor.

I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle.
The Terminator

It is hard to imagine a person that isn’t familiar with James Cameron’s action movie. Everybody knows the charismatic character of Arnold Schwarzenegger with his killing quotes and badass appearance. One of his features as an archetypic symbol is old-school reliability. Returning back to the discourse of custom mobile app development, what does this give to us? Upstart app creators that multiply day-by-day are far more efficient and promising at first sight, than the services of software developers. Their advantages are obvious and compelling, like the superiority of a new and cutting-edge T-1000 to Schwarzenegger’s T-800. We will try to see the differences between them through the eyes of a customer.

There are three pillars of any business:

• Time
• Money
• Scalability

Let us consider app creators and development companies separately for each point.

Time

In a matter of time, everything will depend on the intended app, whether it is a simple or sophisticated product, whose development would need full immersion and strong technical skills. App creator is a PERFECT tool for a kitchen-table effort. From a short-term perspective, it allows for the implementation of more features; however the overall quality may suffer. Rich-featured but bulky and buggy prototypes could draw-off your first users and give you the headache of troubleshooting for days. Software development companies within the same short-term period, will deliver a Minimum Viable Product which still gives you a strategic edge. Why? A simplified working version of your product allows you to collect the feedback from the early adopters to understand which features need an upgrade, which are useless and which should be added. MVP gives you an opportunity to make quick adjustments and adapt your product to users’ requirements.

Money

You don’t want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish, do you? App creators tempt you with their EXTREMELY low prices. They say “Save your money”, or “don’t pay for what you can do yourself”. Seems legit, but it cuts two ways. Time is money, and when you are doing it yourself, others are entering the market having their apps tested, making them trouble-proof. While you are plugging away, implementing one more feature, counting how much you have saved, more go-getting app creators use the power of outsourced development teams as a launching pad into the IT industry. It’s up to you.

Scalability

We have previously discussed only the short term. In the long term, software developers run circles around app creators. Despite so-called cost-efficiency and availability of app making platforms, their possibilities are still limited. Okay, you have managed not just to create an app, but to create a working and a more competitive one. Wait, you also need to release it on App Store or Google Play. If it succeeds, you will have to upgrade it to move forward. And here comes what wasn’t clear at the beginning of your app creator usage. Unless you need a solution for a standardized problems, another hackneyed tiny app. In this case app creator is a hands-down winner. But growing projects need scalability app creators can’t provide. Sooner or later you will have to employ the services of software developers. Nobody will take on a project that was started on a platform. No way.

T-1000 was newer, faster, and stronger, but at the end, the old chap T-800 kicked his ass. Probably because he was more “humane”, or programmed strictly for the needs of man. Albeit permanent growth of app creators’ number, the day they will crowd out software development companies is still far distant. As long as we breathe. You are free to try the innovations and breakthrough to the future, but good-old T-800 is still alive and rocking.

I’ll be back