Create your own Android app for free with Goesapp.com

Create your own Android app for free with Goesapp.com

Cook up your app well within 5 minutes with Goesapp! 

Android is, no wonder, the fastest growing smartphone OS. More and more people continue to use it, and yet more people always find their way to it, charmed by its versatility. And with a variety of different devices everywhere, people often prefer to do their e-reading on Android-powered devices. Smartphones, tablets and phablets continue to replace e-readers everywhere, thanks to their smart-pricing and multitude of uses. Therefore, it has become essential for bloggers like you and me to grab our share of readerbase among Android users.

What has primarily made Android smartphone OS of the masses is its sheer number of apps. Not all of them are free, and most aren't truly quality apps, but you can always find something useful from the wilderness called Google Play. And this is why it is quite useful to build our own Android apps, basically turning our blogs and sites into dedicated, standalone apps.

But hey! Not all of us are Android developers. As for me, although I do develop Linux programs, customize my own distros and write scripts for automating my stuff, Android development is still not my thing. And naturally, what caught my attention is a brave new initiative, a free service that turns your site into an app within a few minutes, and with minimal user intervention required. The name of this brilliant, free service is GoesAPP.

URL of the service: www.Goesapp.com

Why should I use Goesapp.com

My blog's app looks cool! 

Goesapp.com is a free site that allows you to build your own dedicated, standalone Android app which keeps your readers updated. The developers have kindly decided to keep the core service free, and it will hopefully remain free in the coming days. I was contacted by one of the developers, who mentioned the service to me. And I was thrilled after getting to use it. Not only you can build multiple apps, turning every site you like into an individual app, but additionally you can also contact your readers specifically, through push notifications. Now comes the inevitable question, why would anyone like to use Goesapp? Well, here are the possible answers:

1. If you're a blogger like me, you might like your devoted readers to have a particular app just for accessing your site. That is really cool, considering the fact that it would give your blog/site a premium feel. Additionally, people who like your posts and articles would be able to stay in touch easily with you. It is quite easy to see how your site's popularity rating would rise because of a dedicated app. Often, people simply don't bother to subscribe to your feeds. Some are not even aware of the existence of such a mechanism! However, if people have an app installed on their smart devices that can connect to your site, chances are, their hands would certainly itch after a while, leading them to open the app. This way, your site gets more viewers and readers.

An additional benefit is Android's built-in sharing feature. Using this feature, people would be able to share your articles more quickly and easily, inviting even more readers! And so it continues, following the model of geometric progression.

2. If you are not a blogger, no problem. It might be the case that you like a certain site or blog, and would like to stay it touch with it. Not every celebrated site has its own app. For example, Mr. Donald Latumahina's famous life-improvement blog Life Optimizer is one of the most visited sites of its category. You might like his site, and want to stay updated. So, why not build a dedicated app for the site? You can definitely use Google Currents or its kind, but if you do have space on your smartphone, it is cool to have an exclusive app featuring the site. Additionally, this gives you liberty to share the freely with your friends and family, convincing them of Life Optimizer's worth.

Thus, Goesapp.com gives you power to popularize your interests. If you want to checkout an already created app, you might want to try installing my blog's app. However, your antivirus might categorize it as an intrusive adware, which you can safely ignore. The confusion arises because of push notifications, which can be sent to the users through the app. However, only 5 can be sent each month, and I personally used only 1, to see it it works.

My blog's Android app: DOWNLOAD HERE

NOTE: Since we are installing an apk directly here, using a File Manager app, make sure you have your 'Unknown Sources' ticked, under Settings=>Security.

How to use the service: a quick review

Once you open the site www.Goesapp.com and sign up, you are presented with a sleek, modern interface asking you to enter the URL of the site/blog you're trying to build your app for. Once you do that, you are shifted to yet another screen, where you can enter/alter basic personalization settings. Give it a name of your choice, set a Category, enter a nice befitting description and select an icon of your choice. After that, you're requested to 'add value' to your app, that is, add some additional settings. Here, you can add a gallery of your choice, or a link to your Facebook page so that others can follow you there, contact information or even a video. Make sure you read the terms and conditions (clicking on the Terms hyperlink) and hit 'Generate app'.

Now that the process has started, go grab a coffee, or take a bite, for it takes around a minute to complete. Once you're done, the display becomes like the screenshot below. You can choose to share the news with your friends and family, generate and embed code for your website or just simply download the app. For the latter, simply hover your pointed over the 'Download' option, and left-click. You're done, and the download starts.

Merits of the service 

Other than elegantly designing an app for the site you own/like, and that too for a price tag of $0.00, the service also allows you to stay in touch with your readers. Using the 'Push Notification' option, you can send notifications to your readers, and thus reach a wider audience. The following are the merits of the service:

1. It's free! The developers clearly mention that they are not going to charge you anything, neither at present nor in the future. However, additional services might be added later, and you might optionally want to pay for accessing them. That's entirely based on your choice. The core service would continue to be free.

2. The interface of the developed app is clean and sleek. It takes minimal training to install it, and you can easily post it onto your Play Dev account, if you have one. Or else, simply hand it over to your friends and family, and any file manager can get it installed.

3. The total process takes well below 5 minutes. It also allows you to create multiple apps for multiple services.

4. Push notifications, as I already mentioned, are really cool. However, you can only send 5 of them every month.

5. The generated app fits well into most Android devices. It flawlessly uses Android's 'share' feature.

6. The entire process is bound to increase your pageviews if used correctly and wisely. Once you make your app, be sure to spread the word about it. Periodically notifying everyone about it can also help, but spamming any user or community is not welcome.

7. The development team is really kind and considerate. If you have any query or suggestion, be sure to send them an email.

Demerits of the service 

As you can see, my blog's app is
just a rendering of my site's
mobile version.
But hey, it works!

Although it is entirely free and elegant, I still found a few glitches which should be mentioned for convenience of the user. Some of these are:

1. The total app size is ridiculously large. As for this blog of mine, generated app size is 3.6 MB! This is rather disturbing, but nothing we can't live with.

2. Possibly due to the 'Push notifications' feature, the app is categorized as an intrusive adware by many antivirus services, such as AVG. However, after manually overriding the setting, I did not find any problem with it.

3. Although the interface is nice, it's essentially featureless otherwise. Your app appears too be little better than a glorified web-browser, programmed to render and open your blog/site only. But again, we can't expect more from such a brand new service, which is additionally free.

4. Sites which don't have a dedicated mobile version don't fit very well inside the app. However, since most sites and blogs do have mobile versions, this is not really a problem. Also, if you have a large screen, you can easily read your content no matter how the text is rendered.

Final verdict 

Overall, I can honestly say that Goesapp is a really impressive new service, and it does give you a new opportunity to increase your userbase. Whether or not you're a blogger, I believe you'd appreciate what it has to offer. Also, if you find it useful, please consider giving the devs a big hand, by sharing the word on social media, so that others can also benefit from this magnificent service. That would certainly boost the moral of the developers, and help them continue development. And sharing is caring.

After all, at the end of the day, your blog matter. :)