Top 5 Tools for Building Mobile Apps: How to Hack Your Build Time

To build a successful mobile app, you typically have to entertain your users with an emotion-driven product, or eliminate some type of user pain. Either way, using these top 5 tools for building mobile apps will enable you to develop products that satisfy your users, and push your apps to ma​rket ​fast.

In other words, these popular tools enable you to hack your builds, and greatly increase your efficiency as a coder. For more helpful IT career tips, news and job listings make sure you subscribe to Codeslaw, here.
 

Xamarin

Xamarin​ is a cross-platform mobile development tool that makes it convenient for you to launch high-quality apps for iOS, Android and Windows. And, because you’ll be able to write your app’s code in C# using Xamarin, you’ll save a ton of time.

With Xamarin, you’ll ultimately be able to publish your mobile apps to all of the major mobile app mark​etplaces ​without having to manage multiple coding languages. Plus, mobile apps that are built with Xamarin are native, too. So, your end users will still receive a full user experience, while you ideally get to monetize mobile apps in practically half the time.

Companies​ like Slack, Pinterest and Kellogg’s all use Xamarin to build mobile apps. You can trust that this is an extremely solid tool that plenty of independent and team-oriented coders benefit from using.
 

PhoneGap

PhoneGap​ is a cross-development tool for building mobile apps which relies on your existing HTML, CSS and JavaScript skills.

This tool uses a single codebase and native APIs to help you rapidly develop products, and publish them to the major mobile app marketplaces in a quick timeframe.

You can use the PhoneGap command line interface or PhoneGap Desktop app (GUI) to create and serve apps. The PhoneGap Developer mobile app also allows you to quickly understand how your build looks and feels locally. And, once your products are ready for market, PhoneGap Build can even package and maintain your assets for you.
 

Alpha Anywhere

Alpha Anywhere​ allows developers to rapidly build web and mobile apps that feel native. This is a tool that’s affordable, powerful and constantly evolving.

The Alpha Anywhere platform lets you build apps that integrate with existing web services and databases. You’ll also get to develop in an environment that’s loaded with wizards. This is ultimately a tool that’s focused on helping businesses thrive - especially businesses that are reliant on mobile forms and offline capable apps.

So if you’re a ​corporate programmer,​ or even if you’d simply like to code for corporate clients, Alpha Anywhere may be the optimal solution for you.
 

Unity

Unity​ is a multiplatform game engine that’s an excellent choice for coders who work (or want to work) with 2D or 3D mobile games.

If you’re even slightly interested in the mobile app arena, then you should know that ​mobile games account for roughly 85% of all mobile app revenues​. So, Unity is a tool that can help you dive into the most fruitful niche of the entire mobile app economy.

While there is a learning curve to using Unity, there are plenty of community-based tutorials, a well-maintained scripting reference, great frameworks and a smooth UI available to help you make the transition.

Unity is also completely free to start, which makes it a popular choice for indie devs and established game studios alike.

 

Appcelerator

Appcelerator​ aims to help developers quickly build and scale native, cross-platform mobile apps. This is a platform that’s constantly improving their product lineup on a regular basis. So, Appcelerator is a promising and convenient option for developers who are already familiar with MVC frameworks.

There are great SDKs, video tutorials, and forums available for any ​web developer​ who wants to make the move into the mobile arena using Appcelerator. Plus, Appcelerator also offers a nice in-house analytics solution for helping you improve your user funnels and overall UX.

 

If you make the jump to using any of these tools, you can immediately put yourself, your clients and possibly your entire team in a much more advantageous position.

You’ll build mobile apps that look and feel native (in some cases, they a​ re native). Your iOS and Android products will be on the market faster than many competing products.

But most importantly, by using these tools, you’ll h​ack your way to having a steady stream of users who love the products you make.

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