With the explosion of smart phones over the past year, more and more companies are moving beyond websites and social media to embrace the mobile revolution. This year looks to finally be the year of the mobile phone that people have been predicting for the past five years. Last year, if you didn’t have a Twitter account and a Facebook Fan Page, you weren’t in the game. This year’s must have property is an iPhone app.

iPhone apps are a great way to enable brand/consumer interaction and building brand equity. Most businesses think an iPhone app is financially and technically beyond their means. The good news is both of those issues are no longer true. I looked around the web and noticed there are several sites that allow you to create your own iPhone app and publish it either for free or for a small fee.

I set out to discover what options non-developers have for creating iPhone apps without spending too much. I sat down with my co-workers and created a wish-list of qualities that businesses might want in an iPhone app-creating-tool. We wanted:

•        an easy-to-use interface for both creating and updating apps
•        to get the hang of it quickly
•        the software to be web based
•        to integrate Twitter (in-app)
•        to link in YouTube (in-app)
•        to link in Flickr (in-app)
•        Facebook groups (in-app)
•        to enable RSS-feeds (blogs)
•        a high level of customization (interface and design)
•        unlimited updates
•        analytics
•        the ability to make an Android version

The evaluation method was simple. I visited each site and registered. I took a screenshot of a relevant part of the interface and then spent some time playing around with it. A decent site should be able to explain itself in that time. After using the application, I rated each site against my wish list.

Buildanapp is a pretty barebones app-creating tool. It allows you to classify the app from 17 different categories, such as Professional Service, Government Organization or Business Directory. The customization is limited to being able to upload your own graphics, such as background and app icons as jpg files or by direct input. At the moment, RSS-feeds are not supported, but according to Buildanapp this function, along with Twitter integration, will be added later this month. Linking URL’s is supposedly supported, but I couldn’t get it to work.

Pros: Multiple platforms (iPhone, Blackberry and Windows based), easy to use

Cons: Too basic, no RSS, no natural way of integrating social media

Price: $7.99/update, $19.99 to post to Apple app store

Rating:
 

  

Kanchoo is rich in content management and text formatting tools, making the app well suited for news distribution. Graphics like button icons, backgrounds and splash pages are pretty much the only things you can customize, which is a shame since it’s an excellent way for a company to present themselves. Kanchoo takes some time to get the hang of and the interface is overly complex. To preview your app before you submit it, you need to download software.

Pros: Very useful if you’re working in the news industry

Cons: Takes time to learn, expensive

Price: Initial submission fee 88$. Hosting is 28$/month.

Rating: 

MobileRoadie creates apps for the iPhone and Android phones. The tool is highly customizable, allowing the creator to integrate the most popular social media assets, a store, RSS, a wall for user/brand interaction, geo segmentation and stats on number of downloads and what excerpts are most popular. A fun and easy app well worth checking out – if you’ve got a chunk of change to burn.

Pros: Easy-to-use, social media friendly, rich features

Cons: Too expensive

Price: setup fee $499. Hosting is $29/month.

Rating: 

Mobbase is an app positioned for musicians and their fans, but this web-based service includes many features applicable for brand promotion as well. The app is extremely customizable, allowing you to define all the graphics including individual backgrounds on every page, the design and layout of the buttons, splash pages, bottom bars, etc. The service integrates most of the desirable social media tools such as Twitter (sorting by username, @mentions and #hashtags), videos (YouTube: entire channel, specific video or tags), photos (“sets” if you’re using Flickr or Albums with Picasa), blogs and RSS (two streams) in a natural way, along with a few other interesting features.

Pros: Highly customizable, easy-to-use, social media friendly
 
Cons: Can’t change name of buttons, analytics only tracks number of downloads

Price: $20 activation fee + $5/month for first 500 downloads, $1/month for every 1000 downloads after that.

Rating:
 

Swebapps is a rich app-creating tool intended for companies. Choose whether you want 4, 6 or 8 buttons and select among more than 30 features, including Facebook, a portfolio, Twitter and podcasts. There is an extra analytics feature called app-tracker that measures not only the numbers of downloads, but what buttons are used the most. The service is very intuitive and simple while still offering a lot. 

 
Pros: Intuitive and easy-to-use, good analytics, client signup, many RSS feeds

Cons: Rather expensive, can only add one Twitter account

Price: $50/button, $10 app tracker, hosting fee $25/month

Rating:

Conclusion:

All the app creating apps tested were useful, but it comes down to what your ambition level is, how much you’re willing to spend and who your target is. The most social media friendly were Mobbase and Mobile Roadie. These were also my personal favorites, as they enable a great deal of customization and have loads of interesting features to get my creative juices flowing. The other apps had some great features – especially the analytics with Swebapps. But Mobbase takes home the gold as Mobile Roadie and Swebapps are priced much higher without offering a whole lot more.