Free App Maker

The site was a recent analyst’s conference in Boston, the seat of the current innovation economy and home to a burgeoning tech corridor. With appsbar, a free app maker for Android, iOS, Blackberry, and Windows phones coming out of a year-long beta, founder Scott Hirsch was asked about the potential revenue streams for the service.

“I would prefer we maintain a commitment to quality,” said Hirsch, “rather than a rush to revenue.”

Hirsch’s service is free and will remain so as part of his quest and unique vision for the “crowd-sourcing of app development.”

Appsbar was founded in April of 2011, initially offering app development services for iOS and Android phones before adding Blackberry, Windows, and HTML5 services as well. Before coming out of beta, just a few days after the aforementioned conference, appsbar had become the top publisher of apps on Google Play and has already serviced over 100,000 users.

Appsbar opens up the mobile marketing category for small and medium-size businesses, artists and musicians, and individuals who want to create in that space. Appsbar has done this by removing the two largest barriers; cost and programming expertise. Appsbar is doing for mobile apps what companies like Intuit and Blogger have done for novices looking to publish websites and blogs.

Since inception, the site has had over 1.2 million unique visitors and its users were responsible for over 9 million app launches.

Until the advent of appsbar’s free app maker, building a professional-looking app had been complex and costly - many app developers charge upwards of $125 per hour or $5,000 a week, and apps created from scratch often take at least several weeks to develop, at a total cost of $10,000 to $20,000, not including monthly hosting fees. It is by design a major investment.

Appsbar enables anyone to go online and have an app ready in an hour by personalizing, customizing and adapting sophisticated but easy to use templates. Just as early Web-page-creation tools ranging from Dreamweaver to GeoCities made it possible for anyone to create their own website, Appsbar aims to democratize the creation of apps.

As we migrate more and more to a world where mobile devices are ubiquitous in the business word and society in general, mobile apps will be the way we communicate with fans, customers, and clients. For zero cost, the mom-and-pop store can engage its customers in ways that were previously cost prohibitive.