The Most Comprehensive AppMaster Review You Will Ever Read

It’s 2022, and we are at the point of the digital age where the pace of technological innovations is exponentially rising. Several organizations have started adopting No Code development to fulfill the shortage of developers.^[1] You can use No Code apps to build web and mobile applications without writing a single line of code.

AppMaster is one such No Code platform designed to help businesses create production-level applications with code generation.

It has a wide range of functionalities allowing you to create a database, manage complex business logic, manage APIs, develop web dashboards, and design native apps without code.

We tried and tested AppMaster so you can make an informed decision before spending your money.

In this blog, we are sharing a comprehensive AppMaster review while taking a deep dive into all the features offered by the platform.

Anatomy of AppMaster Studio

AppMaster Studio is the platform where you can create your applications and get an overview of all the projects. Let’s have a look at the elements of the studio.

Dashboard

It is divided into two segments:

Front End - It provides info about the mobile and web applications currently in the pipeline.
Back End - It has all the information regarding automation, total endpoints, and data models used by your apps.

Menu - It lets you navigate through the Products of AppMaster.

Help - The question mark icon gives you different options like asking the community, watching tutorials, reading documentation, etc. to help you when you are stuck.
Chatbot - You can get chat support when the team is available. Email and call support is available in higher plans.

The AppMaster Studio helps you collaborate with your team and get the context of all the processes going on in your projects.

Products Offerings by AppMaster

The robust ecosystem of AppMaster’s No Code Platform is divided into four products:

Mobile Apps Builder
Web Apps Designer
Data Models Designer
Business Process Editor

We will walk you through each of these product offerings and what we love the most about it. Let’s get started.

Mobile Apps Builder

You can start building native apps with visual programming (drag-and-drop) and publish them to App Store and Google Play.

Building a production-ready mobile application might have a learning curve if you are completely new to No Code but nothing that you can’t manage with a few tutorials.

What we loved:

Triggers and Events

Add automation to your app through a simple drag-and-drop interface. Create triggers for specific actions performed by users and perform actions accordingly.

Let’s say you have developed a gym visit tracking app. If your user visits the gym ten times, you can send them a push notification congratulating them for the achievement.

Easy Hardware Access

AppMaster makes it easy for you to get access to the smartphone’s hardware. You can ask for access to device resources like camera, microphone, accelerometer, compass, light sensor, GPS, geolocation, player, and calendar.

Continuing the example of the Gym App, you can get access to the GPS location of the user and track every visit to the Gym.

Real-Time Preview

Get a preview of your updates in real-time for version control. You can use this feature to test the performance and design before deploying your android and iOS apps.

Web Apps Designer

Develop Single Page Applications like an admin panel, a customer-facing interface, or a client portal. It is not created to develop full-fledged web applications. Instead, it is created to build internal apps that can act as a support function to business users’ workflow.

Citizen developers can quickly create apps through their web app builder.

What we loved:

Modules and API library

Connect your app to hundreds of apps and services available in the marketplace including Slack, Telegram, and Google Maps. You can install and set up modules from the marketplace without even leaving the AppMaster platform.

Simply click on the module you like and hit install. Once it’s installed, you can control access to the module from the dashboard.

Vue routing

Vue is a progressive framework for building UI. AppMaster allows you to create web components using Vue.js. This allows your users to switch between pages without having to refresh the page. This decreases the load time and improves the app performance significantly.

Client Aware Time Values

When a client is using your web app, they will see all the timestamps and historic data adjusted with their time zone. For example, you are building a customer portal for an MNC.

The staff of different countries will look at the time according to their time zone. This minor feature takes a massive load off the programmers.

Data Models Designer

It is AppMaster’s No Code tool for creating data models, setting their properties (fields), and adding relationships between tables. The Data Model Designer uses PostgreSQL 13, so it’s not limited to AppMaster’s cloud.

You can upload your application to any compatible cloud, like AWS or Azure. You can use Data Model Designer to create a scalable backend for your apps.

What we loved:

Visual Designer

They have made designing data models as simple as drawing on Microsoft Paint. As you can see in the GIF above, you can define and edit relationships. One data model can be associated with an infinite number of others.

Business Process Editor

This platform allows you to create a flow between your applications and your processes. Even though it’s No Code, it is relatively difficult automating business processes that are complex. Before automating, you must perform a thorough business process analysis.^[2]

But you can use this to automate repetitive and menial processes. Ensure you follow the best practices of Business Process Separations^[3] before diving into automating a business process.

What we loved:

Documentation

Overall documentation of AppMaster is comprehensive and easy to follow, but when it comes to Business Process Editor, they take it up a notch with their YouTube lessons.

These long-form tutorial videos teach you to use the editor so you can design your business logic. They cover block structure, flows, and different block types for you to implement practically.

A Few Cons of AppMaster

We have shown you how much we love AppMaster. But if we had to be the devil’s advocate, here are some things that could be better:

appmaster business process editor — Business Process Editor

Lack of Templates

Most No Code platforms have template libraries for users to replicate. AppMaster could add a library with some of the top use-cases like eCommerce mobile apps or social apps to increase the pace of development.

No Shortcuts

This is very specific feedback from many reviewers^[3] online. It can make a significant impact. If you are spending a few hours creating and designing apps on their canvas, you will get natural at it. Shortcuts would help increase the productivity and performance of the citizen developers. For example, if we could have standard accepted shortcuts like Ctrl+Z to undo a relationship in the Data Model Designer.

No Freemium Plan

There is a 7-day free trial available for new users. But once your seven days are over, all your data freezes until you purchase a plan. But if we get in their shoes, we understand that deploying cloud capacity at a scale for thousands of freemium users can be expensive.

AppMaster is popular for evolving at a rapid speed. They have been deploying innovative features to their platforms quicker than ever. The template idea is already marked in their feature request as ‘planned’. We hope as time goes by, they will address other issues as well.

appmaster app performance dashboard — Appmaster Performance Dashboard

Is AppMaster for You?

Whether you are a business user or want to create a personal app, AppMaster is a great resource. It offers a complete environment to create and innovate. They have a small Discord community where you can ask questions directly to the team.

If AppMaster matches your business requirements, you should go ahead with it. We are excited to see what AppMaster brings to the table in their next series of updates.

This article was a part of our No Code review series. In our earlier edition, we had dissected and reviewed Elementor, the popular WordPress website builder. Follow us on Twitter and stay tuned with such articles and the overall growth of the No Code landscape.

Mailchimp vs MailerLite - Which One is Better for You?

Years ago, email marketing used to be just a brand spamming emails to people who don’t want to receive them. Throughout the years, it has evolved into an advanced marketing practice that allows users to make informed decisions. Companies have started sending educational emails, exclusive offers, and company information all from email marketing software. Mailchimp and Mailerlite are two of the top email marketing tools in the market. This review of Mailchimp vs Mailerlite will help you understand which one is better for you.

Comparing Mailchimp vs Mailerlite

We have tried both of these email marketing tools and decided to conduct an in-depth analysis. We have compared pricing, user interface, the availability of support, and many more factors that would help you make an informed decision.

Pricing

For most businesses, everything comes down to affordability. Let’s have a look at who has a better value offering between Mailerlite vs Mailchimp.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp offers a free plan^[2] where you can add 2,000 contacts with 10,000 emails/month. If you have a bigger emailing list but can sacrifice those additional 2000 email sends, you can choose Mailchimp’s free plan.

It also gives you access to simple email automation, basic templates, and a state-of-the-art marketing CRM.

But when we look at the paid plan, the curve gets pretty steep.

When you compare the paid plans, Mailchimp is extremely expensive compared to Mailerlite. So bottom line, if you want the free plan - Use Mailchimp. If you are planning to pay and want affordability - Use Mailerlite.

Mailerlite

Mailerlite’s free plan^[3] includes some advanced email marketing features like automation, landing pages, website builder. You can have up to 1000 email addresses and send up to 12,000 emails every month. You also get access to email support in the free plan.

The paid plans are Pay-as-you-go depending on the number of emails you want to send. Have a look at the exact pricing:

It is a great value offering for a scalable email marketing strategy. It gives you access to some of the great features that are gated in the free plan like customizable favicon, different time-zone delivery, promotional pop-ups, newsletter, and 24/7 live chat support.

Editor

Mailchimp

Mailchimp gives you two options to create your email marketing campaign:

Classic builder

The timeless email marketing editor of Mailchimp that’s unchanged since its launch.

New builder

The beta builder has some new features and User Interface advancements.

As you can see, the new builder is sleek and has more dynamic functionalities. Yet there are minor drawbacks as it is a beta feature. You can only use this builder for regular email and single abandoned cart emails at this moment.

If you want to send any other types of emails, you have to create them in the classic builder. Both of these editors are fast and simple to use provide all the popular content blocks such as video, columns, social buttons, etc.

Mailerlite

Similarly, Mailerlite has two builders in their free plan.

Rich-Text Editor

Write text and add links to your email.

Drag & Drop Editor

Add images, logos, discounts and let your customers navigate through dynamic marketing campaigns.

If you want to create a simple text-based email, use the rich-text editor whereas if you want to write a promotional email with images, links, and interactive elements, you can easily get it done with a drag and drop editor.

They also have a Custom HTML editor where you can access the code and add advanced features to your email. However, that is not included in Mailerlite’s free plan.

Email Templates

Mailchimp

Mailchimp provides 100+ to build emails and landing pages easily. It is available in the free plan. If you need to create an email marketing campaign fast, use these email templates with all the replaceable content blocks and launch the campaign within minutes.

Mailerlite

Unfortunately, Mailerlite doesn’t provide newsletter templates in the free plan. You can’t even create reusable templates for your account with the free plan.

Although, if you are a paid user, you can access all the email templates, create your templates, and share them with your team to easily deliver emails in the future. The lite user interface makes it really easy to create email templates.

Support

Mailchimp

Here’s one of the drawbacks of using the free plan of Mailchimp. If you are a free user, you will get email support for the first 30 days. After that, you can only access their help page to resolve your problems. It has 24/7 live chat support available for all the paid plans.

A plus side to this help page is that it’s available in multiple languages (English, Español, Français, and Deutsch).

Mailerlite

Mailerlite has a knowledge base with video tutorials to help you navigate through apps. The free plan includes email support for a lifetime but all the paid plans starting from the minimum have 24/7 live chat support.

If you are very inclined towards getting support, you can pay for an add-on service called Mailerpro. It costs 100$/month and provides you with a dedicated partner that helps you set up your Mailchimp data and help you increase deliverability.

Data and Reports

Mailchimp

Mailchimp has a far superior reporting feature than Mailerlite if you are using the paid plan. Apart from simple email marketing data like open rate, click rate, and location data, Mailchimp provides:

Click maps - It shows you where people click in your email campaign
Social Post Reports - Shows you data if you post on social media through Mailchimp
Campaign benchmarking - Analyze your email data by comparing it to other businesses in your industry.

If you are a business that wants to ace email campaigns, this data-based feedback might make a huge difference in your choice of email marketing software.

Mailerlite

Mailerlite reports cover almost all the most important data. Some of the top analytics metrics of Mailerlite would include email campaign activity, engagement rate, open rate with the device info, link tracking, click maps, and opens by location.

These are pretty basic metrics that are provided by almost all the email marketing tools in the market.

What Should I Choose?

To sort it out for you, we will tell you exactly which email marketing software between Mailerlite vs Mailchimp fulfills your email marketing needs.

When Should You Choose Mailchimp?

You Want to Upgrade Your Email Marketing Stack

Mailchimp does everything an email marketing tool does and more. It is an advanced tool that would help you take a deep dive into your email marketing efforts. It tops almost all the lists of popular email marketing tools. All the subtle yet effective features will help you take your marketing up a notch.

Your Business Is Growing Rapidly

Mailchimp is for big businesses who want to integrate email automation, email campaigns, and Google Analytics all in one dashboard. It is the right email marketing tool for you if your business is growing fast. Mailchimp has excellent features that would help you scale your strategies along with the business.

You Want Detailed Reports

Mailchimp reports are magnificent. They provide detailed analytics of your email campaigns that allows you to have a 360° view of your strategy. You can understand where exactly is the scope of improvement with actionable insights along with the data.

Having a Mailchimp account helps you make data-driven decisions.

When should You Choose Mailerlite?

You Are Setting Up Your Email Marketing Strategy

It is mostly the case with small to medium-sized businesses that have no background with an email marketing tool. If you are getting started with email marketing, Mailerlite is the perfect tool for you.

You can understand the basics of email marketing without taking a deep dive into the subject. Also, the User Interface is lite and simple to use for beginners. There are some features like setting up landing pages and creating pop-up forms that would come in handy for a startup.

You Are Looking For Affordability

As mentioned earlier, everything boils down to the price of the software. We had a pretty detailed look at the pricing section of both tools. As you could see, Mailerlite is inexpensive and has a pay-as-you-go model.

If you don’t want to spend a lot of money on email marketing software without seeing any results first, Mailerlite should be your choice. You can pay for their smallest plan, try all the features and decide whether you want to spend more.

You Are Looking For Support

Mailerlite is popular for having one of the greatest support teams in the email marketing industry. When we compare the support services, Mailerlite vs Mailchimp is not even a question.

Mailerlite provides email support forever in the free plan. And if you buy the add-on, you get a dedicated partner and priority support 24/7.

Final Thoughts

That was our Mailerlite and Mailchimp comparison. We hope we were able to help you decide upon which tool suits you the best. If you're still not convinced, you can consult our article on the best Mailchimp competitors too.

This blog was part of our comparisons series. Some of the other blogs in this series include Bubble vs Webflow and Coda vs Notion. If you want to stay updated with the latest news, tips, and trends on the No Code landscape, follow us on Twitter.

A Comprehensive Elementor Review: Is It Worth the Money in 2022?

Are you trying to decide whether to make a purchase decision on Elementor Pro? This Elementor website builder review will help you understand the tool a little better and provide you with a fresh perspective. This Elementor review takes into account all the latest features updated in the plugin in March 2022.

If you are already familiar with the basics of the tool, you should jump directly to the Pro Elementor review.

What is Elementor?

Elementor is a No Code page builder plugin that allows users to create web pages with drag and drop functionalities. It is a visual builder where you can insert design elements like buttons, headings, forms, or images on your website without coding.

Elementor Pro is a paid add-on for the free version of this plugin. Here is how the Elementor page builder looks like:

What Makes Elementor So Popular?

Elementor is the earliest and most consistent WordPress page builder since its launch. The WordPress plugin website builder shortly became a must-have in the tech stack of people who wanted to build websites without code.

The Elementor user interface is simple and designed for fast publishing. This Elementor review aims at helping you understand why the Pro version has gained popularity as well.

What is the Difference Between Free Vs Pro?

Let’s have a look at a side-by-side comparison of the Free and Pro plans of the Elementor plugin. You should keep in mind that the Pro plan includes everything available in the free version and more.

	Free	Pro
Widgets	Elementor free has more than 30 basic widgets that could be directly opened from your WordPress page builder.	Pro plan allows you to navigate between 60+ widgets like Call to Action, Price Table, Flip Box.
Pop up and Form builder	It is not available in the free version of Elementor.	You can create customized pop-ups and forms directly on this WordPress page builder.
Templates	You can access 30 templates in Elementor free.	You get access to more than 300 templates designed by experts at Elementor.
Support	There is no support available in the free version.	You get 24/7 support from your Elementor dashboard.
Theme Builder	Unavailable in Elementor free.	Create theme templates and edit headers, footers, and some pages on the Elementor editor.
Adding Custom Code	You can’t add custom CSS to widgets.	You can customize widgets by adding CSS.

Pricing Policy

The Elementor WordPress plugin is not just a page builder. The tool also offers cloud hosting for WordPress^[1] sites. Therefore, there are two ways you can approach the pricing of Elementor Pro.

Elementor Cloud Website - You get Elementor Pro along with a trusted and secure cloud hosting for your entire site.
Elementor Pro Plugin - You get the Pro plugin addon (Page builder) for your hosted website.

Elementor Cloud Website

Cloud Website is a hosting platform that offers 360° access to your website directly at one fixed price of $99/year. You don’t need to host a domain on a 3rd party platform, manually update the security, pay the infrastructure fee, and maintain the website since Elementor Cloud Platform does it all for you.

Here are the 3 key differences between building your entire site with a 3rd party host vs Elementor’s Cloud Hosting:

Google Cloud Platform

It is based on a highly secure and trusted Google Cloud Platform which runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube.

CDN By Cloudflare

Your website will be backed by Content Delivery Network by Cloudfare that directs your visitors automatically to the closest and fastest server for a smooth user experience. You also get the free SSL certificate along with the plan ensuring your website is secure and encrypted.

Premium Support

Get assistance on your basic page builder to advanced automation queries within 24 hours from the premium support team. They have also introduced a 24/7 live chat option exclusively for this plan.

Some other noteworthy specs of the Elementor Cloud website include

20 GB storage
100 GB bandwidth
100K monthly visits
Daily backups

If you are planning to use Elementor for all the pages of your website, it makes sense to get your hosting from Elementor as well.

Elementor Pro Plugin

elementor pro pricing — Elementor Pro Pricing^[2]

Considering you have a third-party hosting platform for your website, Elementor Pro Page builder has 5 paid plans.

Essential

$49/year
1 Website activation (You can use Elementor Pro on one website)
All of the Pro features
If you are working on your personal website, it is the plan for you.

Advanced

$99/year
3 Website activation
All of the Pro features
If you are starting out as an Elementor developer, you can choose this plan.

Expert

$199/year
25 Website activation
All the Pro Features and Experts Network Profile that helps your brand get hired.
If you are a web design freelancer or small agency, you should choose this plan.

Studio

$499/year
100 Website activation
All the Features in Expert and VIP Support that gets you priority support under 30 mins.
This plan is for brand studios and medium-sized web agencies.

Agency

$999/year
1000 Website activation
It is basically the same plan as Studio, but with more websites.
This one is designed for large corporations and agencies.

Top 5 Elementor Pro Features that Make It Great

We will start our Elementor review with the top 5 features that make Elementor Pro worth the money.

Elementor Theme Builder

This feature is a pretty successful attempt at solving one of the biggest WordPress problems. WordPress themes were rigid and used to mess up the whole design with a tiny change. Coding was required to sort this issue out and even then it wouldn’t completely solve the problem.

The Elementor Theme Builder allows users to create a customized theme for their WordPress site. Users can visually customize the headers, footers, archive pages, single post pages, and other areas of your site. Here’s how you can do that.

Step 1 - Login to your WordPress site admin panel.
Step 2 - Go to Apperances>>Themes>>Select the hello theme.

setting up elementor pro theme builder tutorial

Step 3 - Go to Templates>>Theme Builder>>Click on Try it now

Step 4 - Create customizations in all the essential parts of your website like header, footer and Error 404 page.

Step 5 - Click on your choice of part and you can edit it on the classic Elementor editor. This enables you to manage each part of your WordPress site from one dedicated page.

The Elementor Theme Builder is an excellent feature that allows you to customize the design of all the facets of your WordPress theme. It is a pretty advanced feature. Hence, it ranks as a top feature in this Elementor review.

Custom Forms

It is the most efficient way of collecting visitors’ valuable data from your website. Our Elementor review is incomplete without mentioning their forms. Elementor Pro lets you visually design forms and integrate them on your website.

These custom forms could be used to build a mailing list or to generate leads from your website. Elementor also optimizes forms for different devices. Switching between devices like desktop, tablet, and mobile keeps the form flawless.

Here’s a collage of some of these form templates created by the Elementor team.

You can create these forms from the front end and integrate them with your CRM or sales software for data.

Some of the useful features like adding reCAPTCHA, images, checkboxes make it a really powerful tool, which is why it was worthy of a mention in this Elementor review. These forms will supercharge your WordPress site.

Pro Widgets in the Page builder

Apart from basic widgets like images, text, and headlines, Elementor Pro provides 30+ powerful widgets^[3] that can make your website look professional and dynamic. Here is the list of all the widgets available exclusively on the Elementor Pro.

Some of the interesting ones are

Testimonial Carousel - Design testimonials from your clients and customers that drive social proof, trust & conversions directly from the wordpress page builder. It shows authenticity and love for your brand.
Animated headlines - Highlight your headline with animation effects and control the timing of the animation. You can play around with animation templates to create an engaging experience for the users.
PayPal Button - Collecting PayPal payments directly from your website is as easy as pressing a button.

Integrations

Elementor Pro can be seamlessly integrated with 20+ tools including Hubspot, Mailchimp, Slack, and Discord.

It helps you create website automation with No Code. You can integrate your form with MailChimp. Now, every time someone fills a form, they will be added to your subscriber's list or the list you selected while integrating it.

You can also toggle double opt-in which asks for an email confirmation. This prevents fake and spam email accounts from being added to your mailing list. This feature makes it an essential No Code marketing tool as well.

Pro Templates

It is safe to say that Elementor got popular in part due to its templates. It makes the page builder easy to use and understand. There are outstanding themes available in the free version but it fails in comparison when you look at Elementor Pro Templates. They are clean and well designed.

Apart from Elementor’s official template library, many third-party websites curate Elementor Pro Templates. Two such famous curators for both paid and free templates are TemplateMonster and Elementorism. If you read an Elementor review online, everyone (at least once) mentions their templates library.

A Few Drawbacks / Cons of Elementor Pro

This Elementor review is completely unbiased. Hence, we want you to see some of the cons or issues with Elementor Pro.

a website built with elementor pro — A Website Built with Elementor Pro

Speed issues

Performance and speed of the site have always been an issue at Elementor. Since the beginning, people have found websites developed by this page builder taking too much time to load.

This gave rise to a very hefty competitor, the WordPress-native Gutenberg block editor. Which is usually used as a replacement to Elementor to tackle speed issues. Although it helps with the speed, Gutenberg lacks some of the basic functionalities that Elementor page builder delivers.

If your visitors have high-speed internet, it should not be an issue. You can try the free versions of different marketing and website boosting tools that could suggest some changes to optimize.

No lifetime plan

As you could see in the pricing section, all the plans collect payment on an annual basis. If you build an entire site on Elementor for a client, you must keep subscribing to the annual plan. If you stop the subscription, the website won’t disappear but you would stop receiving updates on WordPress.

If WordPress or Elementor receives a big update, it might damage the design or security of your website.

If Elementor Pro had a lifetime plan for one website, it would become very easy for single website owners to maintain their site without paying heavy fees every year. However, that is not the case now.

Learning Curve

Elementor Pro has a relatively high learning curve. Since it offers a range of functionalities, it is difficult to master the platform in a short time. Although Elementor has made it easy to learn from their Academy which consists of blogs, tutorials, and webinar details to solve user problems.

The Elementor team have tried their best to make the knowledge accessible and engaging for citizen developers.

Final Thoughts

That brings us to the end of this Elementor review. If you want to create a simple website or you are just starting as a No Code developer, we would suggest you explore the free version of the page builder. Play around with the free features.

If you are getting an understanding of the basics of the tool, you can buy the essential plan. If you are already aware of the features or run an agency where you want to build websites for clients, you can consider buying Elementor Pro. You will supercharge your website with its extended functionalities.

This was our unbiased Elementor review. Follow us on Twitter to stay updated with more No Code content!