I'm starting to become very concerned about my future path with AppGyver

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Recently I was just trying to show my app to a friend… to have someone else take a look at it. This turns out to be very difficult to me.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but if you wanted to show the app to someone actually on the phone, before you go through the long buggy build process, then they have to download the SAPAppgyver application (the easy part). After this, you don’t want to give them your user ID and password do you? I’m not gonna wait around to give someone a PIN, so the only other way is that QRcode/URL to get into Preview. But that constantly changes. It’s not like you could send it to someone late at night and have them wake up in the morning and check the URL because it will change or time out. I think it is only valid for four hours. But it’s extremely difficult
from what I have experienced.

So I thought about writing this up. And then I thought about what incentive do they have to fix it?

Because I’m not a paying customer.
SAP, the owner, doesn’t really need me.
They purchased the tool to have in their toolbox for their global product, SAP. If you think about it, all us freebie people are to them is a free source of beta testing.
Lots of us out there banging our heads against simple issues like a date picker, playing a video, a hamburger menu in a mobile app, or even just trying to get an app built into the stores. Look how many threads there are on this not working. We are helping them improve their product, while having lots of frustrations.

How many of us are coming here because we want to achieve something now? I doubt many of us are coming here because we want to invest time learning the tool, because it may be mature in one year. In fact, many threads on the forum are from over a year ago talking about things that would be coming, and they’re still not here.

SAP isn’t going away tomorrow. They don’t need to have a product built in 90 days (like some of us).
They’re playing the long game, and we’re coming here trying to get something done now. This is the disconnect.

If you’re just trying to do an MVP and then move onto real code or something else, then more power to you. It may work for you for that. But if you’re actually trying to do something for real, then does it really make business sense to bet your business on this tool? I don’t think so.
And that doesn’t change SAP’s position one bit !

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For me the pros out weight the cons. That decision is personal so some will chose to go elsewhere.

There are workaround to issues like you describe. Build and publish a webview version, create some test credentials, host it yourself and then appgyver is simply a building platform, which I think is really what they want.

Your posts seem as though you have a lot of issues with appgyver. I think the effort needs to go into finding ways around the mountains rather than through them.

There are loads of bugs and things that don´t work quite how they should, but few that there isn´t a viable workaround for.

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I understand everything the friend says and I understand all his points. I understand and respect. These are your statements and I understand and respect each one of them.

But I want to give my testimony:

I speak here, solely and exclusively for myself. So these are “my personal opinions”, all based on my own personal practices in the field, on a daily basis.

As an individual who wants to have an application available to the public, with no knowledge of programming or even logic, and no willingness to pay to use this or that platform… and even more: within a scenario that is private to me, with my needs, I gave myself the “luxury” of testing various platforms that serve to build applications without code (as they say out there).

I did this with many and would do with many others that came up.

But as I said at the beginning, among all the attempts I proposed to make, the AppGyver platform was the one that presented the best and the one that brought the best results.

All my research started when I wanted to have an app and I went looking for professionals and companies that could do what I wanted.

I found professionals charging me (in values ​​here in Brazil) between 10 thousand and 50 thousand Reais to make my idea come true.

Add to that the fact that I definitely don’t want to pay to use a platform (point). But I want to see the app ready there at the end of the entire project.

And so, given all the research work I’ve done, at a certain point I see that my idea actually becomes a reality, and best of all: developed by me (with the help of many colleagues who use the platform) .

Do you know what it means for a person with no knowledge of programming, aged almost 60 years, without a lot of financial resources, to be able to see a “dream” come true?

Well, I am that person…

So, as I said: it is a posture and a personal opinion that is exclusively mine.

I keep using AppGyver, despite everything and all the difficulties, as it is the tool that best suits my needs.

But as I said and I repeat: I understand and respect your views and all your statements. This is perhaps not even the best scenario for you within your needs and expectations.

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Bump
No replies from anyone at AG.
Disappointing

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AppGyver head of product here, sorry for not responding earlier!

I hear your grievances, and I understand the perspective. It is true that features highly requested by the community like third party plugins have been lagging way behind our initial schedule, but progress is happening – for example, in that specific case, we are now finally internally developing the first 100% decoupled plugins using our sandbox plugin dev env, which doesn’t require the full client runtime source code to work, so that’s one major milestone on our way to release. We are doing our best to also fix bugs as they are uncovered, as well as implement features (like the recent Copy app) – if you look at the changelog, things are happening. Most features we are working on will benefit the Community Edition use cases too.

We are also active on the forums, providing free support for Community Edition users to get their questions answered, including project-specific ones that are more about “how do I program X and Y”. Finally, the features the original poster brings up – making it easy for a friend to check out your app, date picker and video player working as expected, navigation menu options, Build Service working – are all relevant for the SAP use cases too, and are on the roadmap or under work. It’s not like encountering some issue in the Community Edition means that it’s irrelevant for the SAP use cases – on the contrary.

So, even though we are obviously also working on enabling the enterprise use cases, the Community Edition is and will remain an important part of the offering and product strategy – definitely not just an afterthought that provides extra beta testing capability, or anything like that.

I know the proof is in the pudding, and there’s a lot we can do better. We are working on extra resources to improve our responsiveness on the forums and how we communicate about new product features, as well as being able to better prioritize community-requested features. There are also a lot of cool things in the pipeline, such as a full backend creation product, and we hope they’ll be worth the wait.

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SHOW SHOW SHOW SHOW :grinning: :pray:

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For different reasons than @jaymer_jaymer mentions above, I agree with the subject. I don’t believe SAP uses it to test out anything, the enhancements move too slow and there’s not a large enough user base judging by the forums to reasonably vet changes.

I started using Appgyver 4 years ago, built 2 apps and left due to the lack of support and activity in these forums. I tried paid support and hit dead ends. The free support on the forums is too slow and more often then not the answer is “we’re working on it”. ie. we were talking about an embedded video player 4 years ago and its still nowhere to be seen.

Its a fun product to make you think you’re getting somewhere, but I would bet almost all users move on to something better supported. Save yourself the frustration and use something else or learn to code.

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I think I would take your bet. There are many published apps with developers that are content with the current capabilities and have no intention of moving on. I can easily see many situations where the limitations outweigh the issues, but that’s not the case for me and many others.

I suspect that a large number never get to the published app stage, but of those that do, a significant percentage stay. Just my feeling of course.

My app is live, working well and the basis for a growing business. I didn´t see that possibility with the other options I tried.

What are your actual issues? All I can see from your post is that you need more and better support. But about what?

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I have to agree. But I also don’t expect anything from the price tag of free - beggars can’t be chooser - and I have to throw the towel in the ring, having wasted weeks here. Good thing my employer is me. The promise of fast nocode building of apps is empty. You are better off spending your time learning to code proper if you have the intellecual overhead.

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Really it should come down to the requirements of the app more than the features of the platform. For the type of apps I like to make this platform is more than adequate to handle what I need, and it provides enough flexibility for creating work-arounds to many of the limitations I do run into.

On the other hand, I do see a lot of app ideas posted on here that just aren’t feasible, or at all possible with AppGyver in it’s current state, and.it would make more sense in these cases to either adjust the app requirements or seek a different solution. Or learn to code.

To use the cliche’ - “It is what it is”.

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So hire your userbase. Look at what DigitalOcean does. They give you discounts on things if you write documentation. Maybe allow enterprise level support tickets by users who give back. We need something. This is chaotic and unprofessional.

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Out of interest, if Digital Ocean satisfies your requirements, what is it that keeps you here, with Appgyver?

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I was so damn happy when i found out that there was a white label, totally free web platform that allows you to build no-code/less code apps.

Coming from a totally $hitty paid platform with 4 employees that took 3 months to answer a simple question, appgyver was like a promise land.

That being said, I managed to publish 4 apps under my name with absolutely no knowledge on coding.

Yes things are slow, but this is a place for hobbyists or people that dont have a gazillion $$$ to pay for an app. Ofcourse someone who needs apps for projects or work, would choose another platform or even contact a dev. You cant ask too much for something that is being offered for free. At least this is my point of view.

This forum seems to be more crowded day by day and questions are being answered and bugs are getting squashed.

As for SAP… with the money they have, i think they would had built a platform on their own if it was for monetization.

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Well said, agree totally.

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I hope you consider also integrating adds soon

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I’m surprised there’s not more feedback from users about the free tool disappearing?
Is this even a thing anymore?

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@jaymer_jaymer Free tool disappearing? Can you clarify? Other the web deployment hosting, I’m not aware of anything else being sunsetted right now.

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Sorry. That’s what I meant. Free hosting. Lot more complicated for all the nocoders now, I assume. Just thought more ppl would be complaining.

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The free firebase hosting alternative that was proposed is nice to know and does not seem so complicated. I will test it out and If i face issues, i can always request help from the community. No coding is also about learning new things.

Users do complain a lot about many other issues that are not being taken care of.
And that’s the very reason AppGyver has been free. They cannot charge for a tool that is unfinished and with many bugs.

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There are other alternatives to easily host your app. The video below is one I did with hosting with hostinger, but tons of platforms let you host web apps. You can extract the contents of the zip folder and easily host on many sites, and likely you can do this on some sites for free if you use their domain and simply get a subdomain.

I know this is only one of a few issues, but i have found if you are dilligent with research you can either find answers, or find new ways to acheive the same result. Ultimately if you are reasonable (not expecting to make the next big social network with basic components and a free Firebase plan), there is enough functionality to make some powerful stuff.

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