.png)
People aiming to build their very own app or software should choose Adalo for power and ease, AppSheet for internal business tools, and Softr for creating a frontend from a database.
Read on to learn:
- Overview
- How to choose the right platform
- 10 top platforms for mobile app development
- Next steps for platform selection
Let’s jump into the 10 best platforms for mobile app development.
The 10 Best Mobile App Development Platforms
What are Mobile App Development Platforms?
Mobile app development platforms let you create your own app using a building interface, allowing you to customize it to your unique tastes and brand. These platforms have a variety of target audiences, difficulty levels, and use cases.
True to its name, users will access your app on mobile devices like phones and tablets, as well as desktops or laptops.
You’ll be able to create 3 types of apps with a mobile app development platform:
- Web Apps: These are essentially supercharged websites that function like apps — you can make payments, book appointments, or input data from an external source. Users access web apps by entering a URL (www.URL.com) into a browser like Chrome or Safari.
- Progressive Web Apps (PWAs): PWAs provide more oomph from web apps, as they’re downloaded directly to a device via a link. This lets them work directly with a device’s hardware and drivers, providing various unique functions not always offered by web apps, like camera access and photo editing, GPS features, offline access, and other valuable actions.
- Native Mobile Apps: These apps allow for the same amount of power as PWAs, but instead of being available through a link, they are published on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, where they can be downloaded directly.
App store availability offers vital advantages, primarily because the iOS (Apple) and Android (Google) app stores have over 1 billion visitors. These folks are on the app stores with a strong desire to find and download an app. So, if you select a platform allowing app store publishing, you open your app to a large market of demand-driven users.
Mobile app development platforms sometimes specialize in specific use cases. Some are designed to develop tools for your team, such as project management boards or marketing funnels. Others are suited for building tools that accommodate anonymous users, like apps for booking, e-commerce, or ordering.
However, a few app development platforms, like Adalo and Bubble, can build internal business tools and external client-facing apps. Choosing the right platform depends on your technical background and the type of app you envision building.
How to Choose the Right Mobile App Platform
Today, there are loads of mobile app development platforms. To ensure you pick the perfect app builder, consider the following:
- Your level of technical experience: Some app development platforms are more geared toward techies, and they require some knowledge of the logic behind programming and a general idea of how computers work. Others, however, don’t need any tech skills and can be used right off the bat.
- Customization features: Regardless of your pre-existing technical knowledge, you’ll want a platform that allows enough customization and design freedom to build an app that looks and feels unique, almost as if it were made with coding.
- Free version or free trial: It goes without saying, but knowing exactly how the platform functions and feels before handing over your hard-earned cash is essential in choosing the right platform. Thus, always go with an app builder that offers a free version that you can take your time with or, at the very least, a limited free trial.
- Modern and gorgeous templates: While some folks prefer building their app from a blank slate, most will want a pre-built template to kickstart their building. Excellent app development platforms always have a library of at least a few dozen customized templates you can choose from, and they always look the part, ensuring your final product looks like it was built in 2024, not 2004.
#1 Adalo
Best For
Individuals, entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small and medium businesses that need an app for any purpose, like external apps for e-commerce or booking or internal apps for KPI dashboards or CRM.
Key Features
Adalo is one of the easiest yet most powerful app development tools, offering a no-code building interface requiring zero programming or tech skills.
It’s intuitive enough to use immediately after you create an account, yet powerful enough as it gives you nearly pixel-perfect design freedom, 1,000s of third-party integrations, publishing on the Apple App and Google Play Store, and much more.
Pricing
Get started with Adalo for only $45/month (billed monthly).
The Bottom Line
Adalo is a super simple yet incredibly robust mobile app development platform, making it our favorite one on the list.
#2 AppSheet
Best For
AppSheet, an app-building platform offered by Google, mainly caters to the needs of entrepreneurs and small businesses that want to make their own internal business tools.
Key Features
To get your building started on the right foot, AppSheet provides an ample set of templates for various internal business tools, like Kanban boards, onboarding, project management, and much more. You’ll also be able to publish your app to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
Pricing
AppSheet prices range from $5 to $20 per month per user.
The Bottom Line
AppSheet is a tremendous budget-friendly mobile app development platform for folks needing an internal business app.
#3 Softr
Best For
Softr is for businesses of all sizes with their own databases and wants to create apps from them.
Key Features
You can connect databases from popular providers like Airtable, Google Sheets, SmartSuite, HubSpot, and more. Then, use Softr’s simple block-based building interface to quickly cobble together a beautiful-looking app, which you can publish to the web or as a PWA.
Pricing
Softr ranges from $59/month (billed monthly) to $323/month (billed monthly).
The Bottom Line
Softr is a great, easy-to-use mobile app builder for businesses that need great apps for their operations in a jiff.
#4 Draftbit
Best For
Because Draftbit is a low-code tool, you’ll need technical skills and coding knowledge to use the platform. However, if you are a techie, Draftbit has the features and scalability options to meet the needs of nearly any organization, from tiny startups to mammoth Fortune 500s.
Key Features
Techies love Draftbit because it comes with several tech-centric features: You can keep your app’s source code and share it with the GitHub community, and you can patch in your own lines of JavaScript to create particular functionalities that only your app can feature.
Pricing
To build your own app, Draftbit’s pricing tiers start from as little as $29/month (billed monthly) and go as high as $995/month (billed monthly) for enterprise plans. However, you can also contract out the Draftbit team to create your app for you — these plans start at $2,000/month (billed monthly).
The Bottom Line
Draftbit is a splendid mobile app-building platform that also offers app store and web app publishing for techies from large and small organizations.
#5 Bravo Studio
Best For
Figma designers who want to transform their designs into gorgeously unique mobile apps should seriously consider Bravo Studio.
Key Features
In addition to being the best platform for creating apps from Figma designs, Bravo Studio allows publishing on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It integrates Zapier, Stripe, AdMob, and more, enabling you to add tons of juice.
Pricing
Bravo’s pricing starts as low as $22/month (billed monthly). The most expensive plan clocks in at $222/month (billed monthly).
The Bottom Line
If you’re looking for a program to create breathtaking and unique apps from your Figma designs, Bravo Studios is the platform for your needs — this special feature makes it one of our top 5 mobile app development platforms.
#6 Bubble
Best For
Bubble is one of the most flexible, no-code mobile app development tools available. Its building interface offers considerable power, allowing you to create nearly any app you can imagine. But beware, Bubble has a tough learning curve, which will take a few months to master.
Key Features
Bubble provides one of the most robust and involved ecosystems in mobile app development to help you overcome the formidable learning curve. You’ll find a rich trove of tutorials, help guides, YouTube videos, and a very active forum to help you grasp the complex building interface.
Pricing
Bubble’s pricing tiers range from as low as $32/month (billed monthly) to $349/month (billed monthly).
The Bottom Line
If you have the time to learn it, Bubble offers one of the best mobile app development platforms. It provides enough flexibility to create almost any web app to execute a myriad of tasks.
#7 Backendless
Best For
Backendless is a low-code app builder that requires some technical experience. It allows you to make apps for almost any use case.
Key Features
If you have coding experience, you’ll love that you can code in your unique functionalities so the app performs precisely how you want it. Backendless also allows for publishing on the Apple App Store, Google Play Store, and the web.
Pricing
Backendless costs as low as $15/month per account user. The platform allows you to add features at a per-item cost, ranging from $10 to $50/feature.
The Bottom Line
While Backendless offers the tech crowd a splendid platform for creating almost any app.
#8 Glide
Best For
If you need a head-turning web app for your business operations, Glide’s your huckleberry.
Key Features
When it comes to beauty and aesthetics, Glide is second to none. Each template is breathtakingly modern and sleek, ensuring your final product grabs all the attention. Besides functionalities, Glide offers powerful AI tools, allowing your app to summarize documents, describe pictures, and more.
Pricing
Glide pricing starts at $86/month (billed monthly) and reaches $249/month (billed monthly).
The Bottom Line
For folks looking to create an unforgettable, aesthetically pleasing web app, go with Glide.
#9 Noloco
Best For
Want an easy, no-code mobile app development platform to create web apps for your medium to large-sized organization? Go with Noloco.
Key Features
No matter which pricing plan you choose, Noloco lets you create an unlimited number of apps, which you can use to automate hundreds of time-consuming business processes. And, if you already have a database with a popular provider like Airtable, MySQL, Xano, and others, you can plug it right into your Noloco app.
Pricing
Noloco's pricing ranges from $49/month (billed monthly) to $149/month (billed monthly).
The Bottom Line
Noloco is one of the best mobile app development platforms for creating nearly any internal business tool, app, or software.
#10 Zoho Creator
Best For
Techies looking for a budget-friendly, low-code app-building platform for small businesses, enterprises, and everything in between will be at home with Zoho Creator.
Key Features
Zoho lets you create web apps and PWAs that work on iOS and Android devices. You’ll also be able to create your own AI tools to automate repetitive tasks, like sending confirmation emails after receiving payments. Delightfully, all pricing tiers have superb support, giving you a live, dedicated account manager to see you through any issues.
Pricing
Zoho Creator’s pricing ranges from $12 to $37/month per user.
The Bottom Line
Zoho Creator is a cheap, powerful, low-code mobile app development platform for nearly any business.
Frequently Asked Questions
What Mobile App Development Platform is Best for Beginners?
Adalo, Glide, and Softr are all great platforms for folks who have no experience with no-code app builders. However, you’ll need a database to use Softr, and Glide doesn’t allow app store publishing. Neither platform matches Adalo in terms of design freedom and customization.
What Are the Best for Business Apps?
Adalo, Noloco, AppSheet, Backendless, and Softr all provide enough functionality to create apps and software for most business applications.
Can I Publish in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store?
Adalo, Backendless, Bravo, Draftbit, and AppSheet allow app store publishing. However, Backendless and Draftbit are both low-code platforms, so they’ll require some pre-existing tech skills, like understanding SQL, knowing how APIs work, and more.
While Bravo is an outstanding platform, you’ll need to have Figma designs to use it. And, AppSheet is only used to create internal business tools. So, if you’re looking for a robust app builder that lets you bring to life almost any app you can imagine for release on the app stores, go with Adalo.
'{{rich-cta}}'
Next Steps: Choosing the Right Platform
Remember, if you choose one of the low-code platforms on our list, you’ll need some technical skills — otherwise, learning the platform might be challenging.
All in all, we recommend you choose a mobile app development platform like Adalo. It’s simple, easy, and allows you to build nearly any app you can customize to your needs and tastes.
.png)
.png)
.png)
