Max Katz

There are more than over 40 services that provide a mobile backend as a service, also known as BaaS. The most well known are Parse (acquired by Facebook), Kinvey, StackMob, and many more. Appery.io also provides a mobile backend.  All make it very easy to setup a backend for your app such cloud database, Push notifications and other features. built.io is a new backend as a service (BaaS) provider and joins the already crowded space.

Many believe that to build a mobile app (HTML, hybrid, or native) all you need is to create a mobile backed. In the article What Happens When Almost Anybody Can Build A Mobile Business App? the author talks about how easy it is to create a mobile app using build.io backend services. And it is very easy — to create the mobile backend. But who is going to create the app UI and then connect the UI to the mobile backend? A mobile app is not just the backend. A mobile app has user interface (UI), backend services, 3rd party APIs and then connections between UI and the services.

What tools can you use to build the mobile UI and connect the UI to the services? One response I recently got was: “Use Eclipse or xCode”

The reason you would be using cloud-based backend services is because they are very simple to create and use. You don’t have to install anything, configure anything. Just sign up and start building your backend. Eclipse and xCode are very powerful tools but they are not easy to use. They are traditional tools meaning they need to be downloaded, installed and configured. At least for Eclipse, you would need to download and configure various frameworks to build the app UI. It’s not easy and will take a long time. So, why would you easily create a cloud-based mobile backend but then pick more complicated tools for building the UI?

A mobile app is more than just a backend. It is mobile UI, backend services and 3rd party APIs, all integrated. Appery.io is the only cloud-based platform that provides all the tools you need:

1. Visual and source UI development tools
2. Integrated backend services (BaaS)
3. Connections to any API as well as pre-built connectors to many popular APIs