This looks amazing, but maybe more like the @squarespace of native app makers rather than the @wordpress based on the pricing.. really impressive and I look forward to playing around with it more!
This looks amazing! As a designer with some coding experience who has been wanting to build my own apps, this looks like it would be a really useful tool to try out.
@jadlimcaco Thanks 😄 We'd love to see what will you create with it. Have you already used React Native? If you're planning to stick with RN, check this out - https://school.shoutem.com/
Wow so cool to see the Shout'em team still rocking it! I used version 1 of Shout'em way back in the day when it was about creating your own microblog! Awesome guys!!
Awesome product. This is the future :). It would be nice to have a free tier that wasn't just a trial. Perhaps just limit publishing for a paid tier, but as it stands, the pricing seems a little steep for me, and possibly a lot of people this tool is actually targeted at.
For people with no coding skills, comparing Shoutem's pricing to something like the Build vs. Buy Calculator is interesting. I see a lot of value in this just to get going and get something out there fast.
For the Shoutem team–I've seen other app-building platforms come and go. What makes you guys successful and live up to developer standards after they join a team using Shoutem?
Hi @kunalslab, thanks for the comment! We are one of the first platforms, launched in 2010 and still on the market. With the new platform, we focused a lot to make it developer friendly. In the past year and a half, we did many user testing sessions throughout the whole product development phase.
First, we built our platform focused on developers first. When building apps, developers reimplement over 80% of the features over and over. Using simple modular architecture, they can reuse already built modules (extensions) and focus on solving the unique problems.
Second, we made sure we choose the right technology. The end result app needs to have native look and feel, and it should be easy to develop apps for both iOS and Android. That's why we decided to go with React Native, which was liked even by our native developers.
And finally, we made sure our platform is accessible to the developers community. This means both making it free and completely open source. There's no lock-in: developers can build their apps using extensions built by Shoutem and the community. They have complete app project and they decide what to do with it.
@marctytus We're working on the migration of the apps from our current customers. We're already able to migrate some of the apps. Feel free to contact us on support@shoutem.com if you have an active app ;)
Looks nice. Kind of reminds me of the Ionic Creator but for React Native. As a developer, I am usually hesitant to use such all-in-one solutions and tend to stick to a CLI-heavy stack of standard tools. I saw from the video intro that unlike other tools, Shoutem seems to be developer-friendly, so I might give it a try. I am just concerned about the extensibility their so called pre-made components. I'd often prefer to use components that have native parts to speed up performance, and I sure hope that Shoutem has thought about all that.
@preslavrachev Well, you are right! We did think about it. :) With Shoutem, there's no restriction on how you can use React Native. That said, you can use any feature from React Native, including creating completely native modules.
All of our extensions (pre-made components) are open sourced (https://github.com/shoutem/exten...) and act as libraries in apps. However, there's one big difference comparing extensions to plain libraries: extensions are designed to be reusable in the multiple apps with their defined structure. That way extensions can rely on each other, which allows you to create very complex apps with reusable building blocks.
Do not worry about our CLI. It's here only to speed up the development of the mobile apps, but you can build apps without it.
Wow, this is gorgeous and very well crafted. Congrats! I went straight for the developer "create your own extension" and the documentation looks to be on point and verbose, so thank you for that! Do you have any plans to try and get more developers to develop for the platform? Or is the focus right now not really on that and hoping for organic growth of developers?
Hi @kevinguebert, our plan is to create a developer community similar to the WordPress one. We want to open up extension marketplace where developers can share and sell their extensions.
I'm a bit confused on how to signup for a developer account. Inside builder it just brings you to http://shoutem.github.io/, but the only signup is at the bottom for a newsletter, there is no mention about creating an account.
@kalamyty You're right. It's a bit confusing. We'll improve that. To sign up as a developer, go to new.shoutem.com and register as a new user. Afterwards, follow the Getting Started tutorial: http://shoutem.github.io/docs/ex... which will describe you how to become developer using Shoutem CLI.
Braavo