Bizness Apps, the startup that gives small businesses the tools to quickly and easily build mobile apps, launched in October 2010 and has been growing like gangbusters, reaching over 1,000 applications, 10 languages, and over 20 countries in less than 9 months. It also recently partnered with WuFoo to give SMBS the ability to create and seamlessly add contact forms, online surveys, and invitations to their apps. The startup also has an interesting founding story that provides some useful lessons for your entrepreneurs. Check out our April coverage here.
Bizness Apps’s value proposition is simple: The startup wants to make mobile apps affordable, customizable, and simple to make for the small business owner. Thus, the startup offers a DIY iPhone, iPad, and Android app platform that enables SMBs to create, edit, and manage mobile apps without any programming experience required. You start with a template, customize them to suit your business, and then Bizness Apps makes them native apps and distributes them on iTunes and the Android Marketplace.
The startup is not without competitors in this space, as iSites, SwebApps and Mobile Roadie are targeting a similar endpoint. But Bizness Apps has a real advantage in the fact that it’s product is easy to use, designed well, yet remains affordable. The price for using either their iOS or Android platform is $39, while those that want to create both Android and iOS apps pay $59. This affordability is very appealing to small businesses looking to take advantage of mobile business without having to fork over thousands of dollars to do so.
Native apps are great and all, you might say, but what about this supposed HTML5 revolution? Where my web apps at? Nothwithstanding the fact that there’s been a hot debate over whether app developers should go for HTML5 or native apps (as evidenced by MG’s post on the subject back in February), Bizness Apps Founder and CEO Andrew Gazdecki said that he thinks the best approach is to make a bet on mobile as a whole — not one or the other.
That’s why the startup is today announcing the launch of an HTML5 version of their DIY mobile app platform for small businesses. With this new web functionality, users of the service are now able to create nearly identical mobile experiences for every mobile platform including iOS, Android, Blackberry, Windows Mobile, and so on — they can go native or HTML5, or both. For an extra $10 a month.
As part of the HTML5 platform launch, Bizness Apps has built a QR code-enabled mobile marketing template to provide SMBs with a simple and affordable way to market their mobile apps to their customers. The template image, as seen above, is automatically created (with the ability to print) with one click from inside the HTML5 platform.
The idea here, Gazdecki says, is to help direct a business’ customers to the appropriate app based on what type of mobile device they’re using. For example, if a user has an Android phone, they would scan the Android themed QR code to be directed to the business’ Android app.
Availability on native and HTML5 is another important piece to the puzzle in building a platform agnostic app development tool for SMBs, and with its affordability, and new mobile marketing capabilities, Bizness Apps has become an exciting platform and looks well-positioned to weather the native vs. web apps debate.
The startup is offering a coupon code for 25 free apps for TC readers, which you can check out by signing up here. The coupon code is “techcrunch”.
For more, check out the video below: