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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TeamDesk
Score 9.0 out of 10
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TeamDesk is a low-code development platform for online database creation. Business owners or managers can build a unique web database solution without any programming to facilitate working with data, organize routine work and create an accessible data source for teams.
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.
Teamdesk is perfect for any operational tracking requirements for companies small or large, and any situation where you need to integrate with other systems since it can be set up to do that flexibly via its API and Webhooks. For example, you could track contacts, time and expense, projects and tasks, schedules, web leads, check-ins, order entry, quotes and invoices, support ticketing, and use the more advanced features to integrate with other systems to pull in currency exchange rates, various lists of data from other databases, send faxes, send bulk emails and so on. It does not do offline storage, so it would not be appropriate for a situation that offline work.
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.
Provide a very good, customizable user management system.
Gives a lot of flexibility to customize database to your needs without requiring coding skills. Even allows to customize interface if you can code in html.
Provides unlimited space and records.
Gives an opportunity to have a database on EU servers to comply with GDPR
Offers very good pricing options comparing to competitors (Salesforce, Quickbase, etc.) and offers unlimited space.
Gives an opportunity to share your ideas how to improve the platform, many of which are being implemented
Customers service if very helpful and friendly. All my questions were answered within a couple hours.
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.
The only down side that I see, is that you have to be willing to spend some time creating your database. You start with a blank canvas and all the tools you need to design a custom database. But, you have to take the time to do it. If you take that time, it is well worth it.
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.
Quickbase is a good product which I have been using for 5 years (powerful, nice interface) but - not so powerful as TeamDesk - started to move toward large companies (>50 people) - more expensive than TeamDesk Zoho was not as flexible as TeamDesk Caspio was not as powerful as TeamDesk
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.
The per user cost is significantly lower than any prior option we have tried. The time spent getting things set up was time well spent for the overall long-term savings.
