Google AppMaker was a low-code development environment. App Maker is included with G Suite Business and Enterprise editions, as well as with G Suite for Education. It was discontinued in early 2021.
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HCL Domino
Score 8.0 out of 10
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HCL Domino (formerly IBM Domino, and before that Lotus Domino) is an enterprise application development platform, boasting mobile-app capabilities to enterprise authentication and a companion low-code app builder called Domino Volt.
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Pricing
Google App Maker (discontinued)
HCL Domino
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google App Maker (discontinued)
HCL Domino
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google App Maker (discontinued)
HCL Domino
Features
Google App Maker (discontinued)
HCL Domino
Low-Code Development
Comparison of Low-Code Development features of Product A and Product B
App Maker is exceptionally strong when you need things to just get done, but your internal development team has a full queue. Or maybe you don't even have an internal development team! If you need a check-in system, an applicant tracking system, an office cleaning checklist with notifications and reports, etc. you can use App Maker to throw something together and make sure your team can use it. You can also collaborate on it, so teams can make this part of their process improvement goals.
If you're looking for a high-security environment, then Domino is great. The built-in cybersecurity features are seamless, unlike those in the Microsoft or Google environments. Large databases are easily managed, and Domino enables us to automate many of our business workflows. It's easier to use than Microsoft PowerApps, for example. It doesn't integrate easily with other systems, which can be problematic at times. And because of the long-term lack of support from when IBM owned it, the user community has dwindled somewhat, making it hard to reach out for help.
Minimal coding experience required. Javascript is a must-have, but the documentation is excellent, and once you're past the learning curve, it's great!
Great WYSIWYG editor. It's easy to see the layout and still have deep control over what you're putting together.
Excellent integrations with G Suite. There are methods built-in that allow you to easily authenticate and work with the G Suite APIs.
Definitely not for beginners. App Maker certainly isn't usable by "everybody," but it's excellent for those who are willing to learn and get their hands dirty!
Experienced developers will have issues. The target user is someone who doesn't want to (or know how to) use something like App Engine or Kubernetes. People with more experience will certainly see limitations and find it difficult to use to the fullest extent.
Data sources can be iffy to manage. It used to be that App Maker would use a sheet or "Drive table" as a data source, but it now requires a GCP data source like CloudSQL.
I am not a fan of the Domino ID for authentication purposes. Some Admins appreciate this feature, but ID aging, updating and management issues are burdensome.
Integrations with current available software applications as a result of lower Domino adoption rates.
Administration tools are somewhat dated and clunky. Even with updates and patches, the Domino administrator console hasn't changed in years.
The UI is somewhat dated, and the email experience is not at all like Outlook, but we love the versatility and functionality of Domino. I would absolutely hate to give it up for anything else. We've tried to replicate some of Domino's functionality in SharePoint and found that Domino is considerably better.
App Maker is a very "do it yourself" platform. There is a huge amount of documentation and plenty of examples to begin learning, plus a vast community support through StackOverflow that can assist anywhere that you're stuck, but the great thing is that it's all up to you. If there are specific features that don't work, Google is always there to help troubleshoot.
App Maker is really kind of new in its own space. We haven't seen the level of functionality, nor the deep integrations, with anything else. It can replace a lot of products, and we've seen it in place in many applications across our organization, so it's been able to reduce our spend on products that offer specific functionality and still need to be customized.
We use SharePoint, SQL and Teams but only for the things that they excel in. For example, we use teams for small team interactions (including external participants). We use teams for meetings too. We've discovered that Teams collaboration is not as full-functional as Domino and more importantly, that our members (financial services) do not trust the Open Office365 cloud. SharePoint and Team collaborative features are often blocked in our member organizations. Domino is much easier to identify and unblock at the firewall level. It's much easier to restrict collaboration to approved options in Domino.
We have seen a reduction in time spent on manual processes by being able to automate functions in Google Sheets, take input with special functionality, and have App Maker do the work for us.
We have seen the internal development queue decrease, which allows us to focus on larger projects that couldn't be handled by App Maker.
We have seen ownership and process improvements increase in certain departments, as they are able to get to work themselves.
